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The first thing Baelor felt was wrongness.
He had expected pain, remembered the moment the helm was lifted off and the immediate throbbing ache at the back of his head. Then the blinding flash, the fall. But there was no pain now, there was not much of anything, just a strange, weightless floating.
He opened his eyes, and saw himself. His body lay on the bed below him; pale, still, eyes closed, chest barely rising and falling. A maester was bent over it, pressing a cloth to the temple where blood had crusted. Another maester hovered nearby, mixing something in a bowl. A septon muttered prayers in the corner, fingers tracing the seven pointed star.
So this is dying, Baelor thought, with a strange, distant calm.
But he didn't feel dead. He felt light, untethered, as if he could drift up and disappear. He tried to move his feet and found himself almost falling over, his feet seeming to sink in through the floors before reappearing again. He drifted toward a wall, panicked and tried to grab hold of something, anything- and found that his hand passed through the beam.
Oh. He looked down at his body again. Then at the maesters, at the septon. They were all only focused on the flesh below, not one had spared him a glance. I'm not dead, he realized. But I'm not quite here, either.
He needed to find Maekar; if anyone could see him, it would be his brother. Yet when he reached for the door, he found himself tugged back, pulled by an invisible chain that bound him to his body. He tried again, drifting toward the door, feeling the pull, and drifting back. And again, at a different direction, and was certain he could only move a distance of thirty paces from his body.
Baelor gave up eventually, and drifted closer to the maesters attending, curious despite himself. The older maester, Maester Olyvar, he thought, a man who had served House Targaryen for forty years, was shaking his head.
"We should inform Prince Maekar," Olyvar said quietly.
The younger maester, a face Baelor did not recognise, snorted. "What am I to tell him? That his brother is dying? He knows that, he’s the one who-”
"Careful." Olyvar interjected, giving the young man a reprimanding look.
“What? It’s the truth. Everyone’s saying it.” The younger maester’s voice dropped, but Baelor heard every word. “They’re calling him a kinslayer.”
The word made Baelor recoil. Kinslayer? He thought of Maekar then; small, serious Maekar, who had followed him through the Red Keep like a shadow. Maekar, who had wept when Baelor left for his first tourney. Maekar, whose flesh still bore scars from wounds taken in Baelor’s stead during the rebellion.
Kinslayer.
"No," Baelor whispered, but no one heard him.
The older maester shushed the younger one, glancing toward the door. "He is still a prince of the realm. You will speak of him with respect."
The younger maester fell silent. Baelor’s spirit hovered there, frozen, the word echoing through his skull like a bell. Kinslayer. Gods, they thought Maekar had tried to kill him. They thought his brother a murderer.
He looked down at his body again, and for the first time since he had woken, Baelor felt something other than calm. Fury burned through him. No, he thought, his spirit straining against the walls of the room. No. They did not understand, it was an accident, my Maekar would never-
But his voice was no more than wind through empty halls, and no one heard.
The room door opened, and Baelor turned to find his brother standing framed in the doorway like a figure carved from stone, shoulders squared beneath a dented cuirass, silver hair plastered to his brow with sweat. He moved stiffly, favoring his left leg, and a bruise was blooming across his cheek.
Baelor surged across the room, hands outstretched, eyes frantic, desperate to touch, to reassure himself. His fingers met nothing, sliding through Maekar’s arm as though through smoke, but he did not stop. He circled his brother like a hawk, searching for any hurts and wounds.
Maekar’s arms were scraped but whole. He has a limp, yes, but seemed to be only a sprain. His face was marred by only scratches. Relief flooded through Baelor, though he should not have been so worried. His brother is strong, he thought to himself proudly.
Look at me, Maekar. I’m here. I’m right here, Baelor said to his brother, but Maekar’s gaze never lifted. His eyes were fixed on the bed, on the pale body lying motionless beneath the sheets. Baelor stood inches away, so close he could see the tremor of Maekar’s lips, the sheen of unshed tears, the restless clench and unclench of his hands as though he had forgotten how to hold them.
The sight tore at Baelor more than any wound. He whispered his brother’s name, pleaded with him, begged him to look up, to see. But the words dissolved into silence. Maekar did not hear. He could not. And Baelor, drifting helplessly in the space between life and death, could only watch as his brother grieved for him as though he were already gone.
The door opened again, and Valarr stepped inside. For a heartbeat Baelor’s spirit lifted at the sight of his son, but the light faltered as soon as he saw the expression carved into Valarr’s face. Cold. Unyielding. A mask of marble that Baelor had never seen before on his boy’s face. Valarr did not spare Maekar a glance, he walked in and stopped at the foot of the bed, gaze fixed on the still body, his father’s body.
“Valarr,” Maekar said, voice cracking under the weight of grief. “Valarr, I’m sorry-”
“You shouldn’t be here.” Valarr’s voice was flat, emptied of warmth. “You shouldn’t be anywhere near him.”
Silence fell heavy between them. Valarr’s hands gripped the foot of the bed, knuckles whitening, jaw clenched tight. For a fleeting moment Baelor glimpsed the boy beneath the mask; the frightened child, the grieving son, but it vanished almost as quickly as it appeared, swallowed by the hardness of his anger.
“It should have been you,” Valarr whispered, and then he turned, walking out without another word.
Baelor stared after him, stunned, the echo of his son’s voice ringing in his chest. Valarr, my boy. You can’t- He longed to follow, to seize him, to shake him until he understood, to tell him that his uncle was not the enemy. But the tether held him fast, binding him to the body on the bed, and Valarr was already gone.
When Baelor turned back, his frustration dissolved into something heavier. Maekar stood frozen, a single tear tracing down his cheek. He did not wipe it away, he did not even seem to notice it. Baelor breathed his brother’s name, again, futilely.
Maekar lowered himself to his knees beside Baelor’s body. His hands trembled as he reached out, lifting the limp hand as though it were sacred. He brought it to his face, and he pressed a kiss to the palm, lips shaking against cold skin.
“It should have been me,” Maekar whispered.
No, Baelor replied.
“I’m sorry,” Maekar’s voice broke, tears flowing freely. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean- I never meant-”
Maekar, stopped, shaking his head, eyes shut tight. “I should have seen, should have known. I should have-”
Stop! Baelor shouted, reaching out to shake Maekar by his shoulders.
“Forgive me.” His forehead pressed to Baelor’s hand, tears falling freely now. “Please, Baelor, you must wake and forgive me.”
Baelor knelt beside him, reaching, desperate to touch, desperate to comfort. His hands passed through his brother like mist. You have nothing to be sorry for, he pleaded. Nothing. Do you hear me?
But his voice continued to be unheard, unfelt. And Maekar wept alone.
Baelor had stopped counting the days, each passed in a blur. Time had lost all meaning in this strange half life he inhabited; the candle burned down and was replaced, the maesters came and went, the light through the windows shifted from gold to grey to black and back again. None of it mattered, none of it touched him.
And through it all, Maekar never really left, except for the stretches when Baelor would later learn, through the whispers of maids and servants, that he must have gone to Aerion, who had been badly injured as well.
When he was with Baelor, he sat in the chair beside the bed, silent and hollow eyed, his grief worn openly across his face. Baelor never saw him eat, the food came three times a day, and each time it was taken away, untouched. He scarcely slept either, or if he did, it was only in snatches, his head nodding forward before jerking awake again, eyes wild as they searched Baelor's face for any sign of change.
The whispers grew louder with each passing day, and Baelor heard every one of them. They came through the walls like poison seeping through cracks; the servants who thought they were being quiet, the knights who thought they were being clever, the courtiers who had come to gawk at the fallen prince and stayed to pick at his bones. None of them knew he was there. None of them knew he could hear.
Kinslayer, they called his brother. That he had aimed for his own blood. That he had always been jealous, always last, always lesser, each word a knife sharper than the last. Baelor wanted to scream, to fight, to make them see; to grab them by their shoulders and shake them until they understood that they knew nothing of his brother, who had once wept when he'd broken Baelor's nose by accident at three and ten.
Baelor remembered it clearly. The crack of it, the hot rush of blood down his lip, and Maekar's face gone white with horror, already stammering apologies before Baelor had even registered the pain. He had to hold the boy by the back of the neck and tell him to stop, that it was nothing, that he wasn't angry. And he hadn't been, he had only been proud. His quiet, sullen little brother had a force in him that none of them had expected, and Baelor had laughed through the blood and the sting of it, delighted, while his brother stood clung to him, shaking and refusing to be comforted.
On the fifth night, or the sixth, Baelor had lost count, Maekar finally broke. It started with a whisper, so soft that Baelor almost missed it. "I don't know if you can hear me."
"The maester said you probably could." Maekar's laugh was a broken thing, brittle and hollow, the sound of something shattering inside him. "He said you're still here somewhere. Somewhere I can't reach."
He took a breath. It shuddered in his chest, ragged and uneven, and Baelor saw his hands trembling where they rested on his knees.
"I don’t even remember the blow. I raised my mace because I had to, because you were coming at me and I-" He stopped. His jaw tightened. "I just wanted to get to my boy."
He was crying now. Great, heaving sobs that shook his whole body, tears streaming down his face and falling onto the blanket. He didn't wipe them away. He didn't seem to notice them at all. He just sat there, broken and trembling, and wept.
"Don't leave me," Maekar gasped. "Don't leave me alone. You're the only one who ever- And I-"
He couldn't finish. The words dissolved into sobs, and he bowed his head over Baelor's hand, his shoulders shaking. Baelor knelt beside him, wrapped arms that could not hold, and said comforting words that could not be heard.
Maester Olyvar came at dawn on the tenth day. He checked his body’s pulse, his breathing, and the wound on his head. His frown deepened with each passing moment.
"The swelling hasn't worsened," he said quietly, "but it hasn't improved much, either. He needs cleaner air, quieter surroundings, my prince."
"What are you saying?” Maekar's head snapped up.
"I suggest he should be moved." Olyvar’s voice was gentle, but firm. "Summerhall, nearest, and the air there is better. The halls are emptier. It might help."
Might, Baelor noted dejectedly, drifting closer. But it was enough for Maekar.
"I'll arrange it," he said. His voice was hoarse, cracked from crying, but there was something in it now; a spark of purpose, a flicker of hope. "We leave tomorrow, please make the preparations.”
Olyvar nodded before leaving, and Maekar turned back to Baelor's body. He reached out, brushing a strand of dark hair from Baelor's forehead with a hand that trembled. His touch was feather light, reverent, as if he were afraid of breaking something already broken.
"Remember Summerhall, Baelor? When we were boys? Maybe it'll help," Maekar said, and his voice was so quiet now that Baelor had to strain to hear it. "Maybe you'll wake up there. Maybe-"
He stopped.
"Maybe you'll wake up and tell me you forgive me."
There's nothing to forgive, Baelor thought, and the thought was fierce, desperate, aching with a love that had only been reserved for Maekar. There is nothing you could do, valonqar, that you’d have to beg me for forgiveness for.
Baelor remembered the summers spent at Summerhall as children, long before it became Maekar and Dyanna’s. Running through the halls, their laughter echoing off the stone walls. Swimming in the lake with their brothers, Maekar splashing him, Baelor dunking him in retaliation. Maekar, eight years old, crying because he'd scraped his knee, and Baelor carrying him back to the castle on his back, their two brothers following close behind.
"You're heavy," he had complained jokingly, pretending to drop him. “I should leave you here-”
"No!" Maekar had shouted into his ear, Baelor regretting his teasing immediately at that. Then his small arms curled tighter around his neck. “Don’t leave me, lekia.”
"Never," Baelor had promised.
Summerhall was quiet.
That was the first thing Baelor noticed; the stillness of it, the emptiness. The halls that had once echoed with laughter and footsteps were silent now, shrouded in a hush that felt almost sacred. The servants spoke in whispers. The guards walked on soft feet. Even the birds seemed to have fallen silent, as if the very stones knew that a prince lay dying within their walls.
They put Baelor in his old chambers, the one he had used as a boy, the one Maekar would sneak into dead at night because the boy had been scared to sleep alone but too stubborn to admit it. He always did love it here, Baelor thought, drifting toward the window. It felt like home.
There had been a time, brief and unexamined, when he had minded that Summerhall was no longer their family’s but Maekar and Dyanna's. It was during his visit to celebrate the birth of Maekar's firstborn, Daeron.
The pool they had swum in as boys had been closed off and turned into a water garden, all smooth stone and lilies. There were tapestries on walls that had been bare, cushioned seats in alcoves where he and Maekar had hidden from their septa, a woman's touch in every corner where Baelor's memories had begun to disappear. But the bitterness passed, and he did not ponder about why it had been there in the first place.
The king and queen arrived on the second day.
Baelor's spirit was drifting near the window when he heard the commotion; raised voices, hurried footsteps, the slam of a door somewhere in the distance. He turned, and there his mother was, blazing with fury, her dark eyes flashing with a rage that Baelor had never seen. Daeron was at her heels, his face troubled, his hands raised as if to calm her.
"What did you do to your brother?" Myriah cried out.
The words stopped Baelor cold, and he saw Maekar flinched, though he tried to hide it. Maekar had been sitting in the chair beside Baelor's bed, as he always was, as he had been for days. His face was gaunt, his eyes hollow, his hands trembling where they rested on his knees.
"Mother-" he started.
"Don't." Myriah's voice was ice. "Whatever you say, whatever happened, you raised that boy. You coddled him," Myriah continued, and her voice was shaking now. "You indulged him. You let him run wild and now look. Look at what he has done. What you have done."
"Mother, I-" Maekar tried again, but was cut off, again.
"There would not have been a trial had you raised him properly." Myriah's eyes were bright with tears. "He would never have demanded that trial. And Baelor would never have-"
She stopped. Her voice cracked. She pressed a hand to her mouth, and for a moment, Baelor saw the fear beneath the fury. The woman who was losing her son, the woman who was drowning in grief and lashing out at the nearest target.
"You did this," Myriah said, and her voice was cold again. "And yet your son remains whole, while mine-"
She couldn't finish. She doubled over his body, clinging to his pale body, her shoulders shaking with her sobs. Daeron stepped forward, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.
"Maybe you should leave, son." Daeron said, giving Maekar a sad smile. "Just for a little while. Just until your mother has had time to..." He trailed off.
Maekar stood there for a long moment, pale and still, his hands trembling at his sides. He looked at Baelor’s body on the bed. Then at their father. Then at Baelor again, as though waiting for someone to tell him that he didn't have to go, that he was welcome here beside his brother's bed. No one did, so he left.
Another memory surfaced, for Baelor, as he watched his brother retreating away. Maekar as a boy, nine years old, crying in the corner because their father had yelled at him for some childish mistake. Baelor, sitting beside him, not saying a word, just being there.
"You're the only one who doesn't think I'm stupid," Maekar had whispered.
"You're not stupid," Baelor had said. "People have accidents, Maekar."
"I swear I didn't mean it." Maekar had wiped his nose on his sleeve, his voice cracking on each word. "I swear I didn't mean to, but they won't believe me."
"I know you best, valonqar." Baelor had put his arm around him and pulled him close. "And I believe you. It was just an accident."
Maekar had looked at him then, really looked, and his eyes had been so wide, so grateful, so full of awe. It was just an accident, and decades later Baelor was still the only one who seemed to believe him.
His parents took turns to sit with him. Kiera read to him, Matarys climbed onto the bed and fell asleep against his side. Rhae and Daella brought him drawings they had made, bright and clumsy, and propped them up where he could see.
Daeron sat with him in the evenings in silence. Valarr came with news from court, trying to keep things normal. The maester checked his wounds and changed his dressings and updated whoever was in the room at the time that he was improving, though his eyes said otherwise.
Maekar's absence sat in the room like a missing limb.
It was the dead of night when the door opened. He heard the latch first, then the footsteps, uneven and too heavy, and then the breathing, ragged and loud in the silence. It had been a week since their father had sent Maekar away, and the man who stood in the doorway now was not the man who had left.
He was thinner, the skin beneath his eyes had gone dark and bruised, and his cheeks gaunt. His tunic was untucked, half unlaced, and there was a flush across his throat and his cheekbones that Baelor did not understand at first, not until Maekar swayed slightly in the doorway and caught himself on the frame.
Maekar was drunk. He entered and started pacing back and forth across the room, his boots loud against the stone, his breathing coming in sharp, furious bursts. He didn't look at Baelor. He looked at the walls, the ceiling, the floor, everywhere but the bed, as though the sight of his brother lying there would undo whatever thin thread was holding him together.
When he finally spoke, his voice was raw. "You did this."
Baelor's heart dropped.
"You took his side. You looked at that boy, that arrogant, reckless, stupid boy, and you chose him over your own blood." Maekar's voice cracked on the last word, and he turned sharply on his heel, pacing back toward the window.
"And for what? To win some favour with the smallfolk? Gods forbid the benevolent Baelor Breakspear turn away a hedge knight's plea." He spat the name like it tasted foul.
“You would have let that boy kill my son and would have smiled while he did it, because it made you look good. Because it made you look kind. And I am the one they call kinslayer." He scoffed mockingly, but immediately it drained into sorrow.
"You gave me no choice, you forced me to- You knew what could happen and you made me do it anyway. And now they call me a kinslayer, brother, and you lie there, and you- And I am supposed to bear it."
"You made me this," he whispered, his shoulders shaking. "You made me a kinslayer, so I hope it was worth it."
Then he stormed off, the door shut behind him hard enough to rattle the hinges, and the room fell silent again. Baelor tried to chase after him, held back by an invisible wall that refused to budge no matter how hard he thrashed. A part of him wanted to be angry at the accusation, but found that he couldn't. All he had heard beneath the fury was fear, and beneath the fear, the voice of a boy saying I swear I didn't mean it.
An hour later, the door opened again, to Baelor’s surprise.
Maekar came back slowly this time. It seemed the fury had burned out of him, or the wine had drowned it. He sank into the chair beside the bed and sat with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, and for a long time he didn't speak at all.
When he did, it was quiet, almost conversational. As though he were talking to himself and had forgotten Baelor was there, or perhaps because he believed Baelor could not hear.
"Did you not trust me?" He lifted his head and looked at Baelor's face, searching it the way he always did, hoping for some flicker of response that never came. "Is that why you gave no warning? You could have told me. You could have sent word that you meant to stand as his champion and I would have... I would have understood, Baelor. Did you think me too cruel to understand?"
No, Baelor thought, rushing to kneel by his brother’s feet, and the word was so immediate, so fierce, that for a moment he was sure he had said it aloud. No, I never thought that. Not once.
"I heard Aerys believed I did it on purpose, and wonders if he is next.” Maekar laughed, a thin and awful sound.
"And Rhaegel won't even write. I have sent four letters and he has not answered a single one. Four letters, Baelor."
Something in Baelor's chest came apart at that. Four letters, written in that careful, rigid hand of Maekar's, each one sent and each one met with silence. He thought of Rhaegel, gentle Rhaegel, who had refused to leave Maekar's bedside when he had his pox.
Baelor had wanted to be there, but their father had forbidden it. The heir could not be risked, he'd said, and Baelor had understood, and obeyed, as was expected of him. It had been Rhaegel who stayed, who held the cold cloth to Maekar's skin and slept in the chair beside him. And now that same brother could not bring himself to answer a letter. Baelor could not reconcile the two.
Maekar's voice gave out. He pressed his hands against his eyes and his shoulders curled inward, and the sound that came out of him was of such pain.
"Maybe this is my punishment," he said, and his voice was so small and so wrecked that Baelor barely recognised it. “For loving you the way I- For this sickness I carry."
Baelor's mind went very still, confused by Maekar’s words. Maekar wiped his face with the back of his hand, roughly, the way he had done as a boy, and moved to sit beside his body, on the bed. Baelor watched Maekar lower his head into the crook of his neck, one hand clenching the tunic his body was wearing.
"I'll stop," Maekar whispered into his skin. "I swear to you, Baelor, I'll stop. I'll cut it out of me if I have to. I'll leave Summerhall and I won't come to court, I won't write, I won't make you look at me." His voice broke and he pressed closer, his fingers twisting tighter in the fabric. "You won't have to feel it, you won't have to know. I'll keep away from you, and you'll be safe, and I will never hurt you again. I promise."
He was shaking so hard Baelor could have sworn he could feel it.
"You don't even have to forgive me. I don't need that, I know I don't deserve it. Just wake up." His voice splintered, and what was left of it was thin and high and young, the voice of a boy instead of this bearded man. "Please. Just wake up. You can hate me, you can blame me, I will bear all of it, just open your eyes, please. Don’t leave me, lekia."
And there it was, the word Maekar had used as a boy, pressed into Baelor's neck with the same desperate need, and Baelor understood. Every look that had lingered a beat too long. Every touch that Maekar had pulled back from too quickly. Every silence between them that had felt full of something neither of them had named.
The way Maekar had flinched when he announced his betrothal to Jena. The way he had stood rigid and at their wedding. Twenty years of it, and Baelor had not seen, because he had not been looking, because it had never once occurred to him to look.
Maekar was in love with him. Had been in love with him perhaps for longer than Baelor could have guessed. And had carried it alone, all this time, in silence, telling no one, asking for nothing, and expecting nothing at all.
And Maekar was lying against him now, promising to carve that love out of himself like a sickness, promising distance, promising absence, promising to disappear from Baelor's life as penance for a feeling he had never chosen, and all Baelor could think, with a clarity that felt like falling, was no.
Not that, anything but that. He could not bear Maekar being away from him, not now, not when he saw how lonely his brother has been. He would not be able to bear the empty chair. He would not bear a world in which his brother loved him and believed that love to be a thing worth punishing.
He did not know what that meant, and he was not quite ready to know. But Maekar's hand was in his tunic and Maekar's tears were on his neck and Baelor wanted to wake up and hug his brother more than he had ever wanted anything, and he could not, for the life he was clinging to, call the love Maekar carries for him a revulsion.
A few years after their respective betrothals, when their sons were still toddlers, they had been sent to Dorne to treat some matter Baelor could no longer recall. It had been years since they had spent any real time together, just the two of them.
Baelor had his family on Dragonstone, Maekar had his at Summerhall, and they saw each other at tourneys and namedays and the occasional council their father summoned them to, but those were stolen hours at best, crowded with other people and other obligations.
This was different. Weeks on the road together, and then the slow, unhurried days of negotiation, and the evenings that belonged to no one but themselves. And he remembered one night in particular, when they had been given adjoining chambers, and Maekar had come to his after supper with a flagon of spiced tea the Dornish drank in the evenings, something warm and fragrant with cinnamon and clove.
They sat together by the fire, there was ample space but somehow they had ended up knee to knee, shoulder to shoulder. They sat in comfortable silence, having spent the whole day talking, to the Martells, and to each other, to the lords and ladies.
The fire in the hearth cracked and settled, and the desert air came through the window, cool and dry. Maekar drank his tea and Baelor drank his and neither of them felt the need to fill the space with anything at all.
Baelor remembered thinking, I have not been this happy in a long time.
He had not examined it back then. It seemed natural, to feel such giddiness after being reunited with his favourite brother. He had packed it away without asking why a silent room, a cup of tea and his brother's presence had been enough to unclench the tightness in his chest that had been there for years at that point.
Eventually he went back to Dragonstone, kissed Jena, held his sons close and resumed his life, and willed himself to not think about that trip again, lest he have to ask himself why leaving Dorne had felt like leaving half of himself behind.
He thought about it now, looking at Maekar’s shoulder shaking as his brother sobbed into his neck. He thought about that night in Dorne, and he understood what that happiness had been. Not contentment, not relief, and not the easy pleasure of a brother's company after a long absence. He had missed him. Gods, he had missed him with a constant ache.
Maekar was five, climbing into his lap uninvited, small, warm, smelling of grass and honeyed treats. He had cupped his hands around Baelor's ear and had whispered it so lowly, like it was an important secret, that he loved Baelor best. Baelor had laughed and kissed his fat red cheeks, and Maekar had shoved away from him and run off with his face crumpling.
Baelor had sat there bewildered, not understanding what he had done wrong. He understood now. The boy had wanted to hear it back, and he wondered now what else had Maekar been telling him that Baelor had foolishly missed.
Baelor woke to pain.
It was a dull, throbbing ache in his skull, the ghost of Maekar's mace, he thought dimly, and it grounded him, anchored his spirit to his body. He felt the weight of furs on his chest, the softness of the pillow beneath his head, the dryness of his throat.
The room was dim, lit only by a single candle flickering on the table beside him. The windows were dark. Still night, then, or early morning. He didn't know how long he had been gone. Didn't know how many days or weeks had passed while he drifted in that strange half life, watching the world move on without him.
Maekar was there, in the chair beside the bed, slumped forward with his head bowed. He was thin, his silver hair dishevelled and falling across his face. He looked broken.
Baelor tried to speak, but his throat was dry, his voice a rasp. "Maekar."
Maekar's head snapped up. For a moment he just stared, his eyes wide and disbelieving, and Baelor watched the emotions move across his face; shock, hope, fear, before Maekar stumbled to his feet.
"You're awake. You're- you're awake." He turned toward the door, already moving. "I'll get the maester."
Baelor caught his wrist. Maekar stopped, and when he saw Baelor straining to reach him he came back and sat at the edge of the bed, his hand hovering as though afraid to touch.
"Don't," Baelor said. His voice was barely a whisper, rough from disuse. "Don't go."
"Baelor, you need-"
Baelor didn't think. He only knew that Maekar was there, within reach at last, and that he could not bear to let him go, so he pulled him down, and Maekar was too stunned to resist, and their lips met. It was clumsy and graceless and awkward. Baelor's body was weak, his coordination gone, and Maekar was frozen, not kissing back, not pulling away, just there, rigid and still.
Baelor pulled back. Maekar stared at him, his mouth open, his face drained of all colour.
"You- the blow to your head. Something must have-"
"I heard you," Baelor interjected. "I heard everything. Every word. Every night. I was still here, Maekar. I was always here."
"That's not- you can't have-"
"I heard you beg me not to make you a kinslayer. I heard you blame yourself." Baelor's voice cracked. "I heard you say you loved me."
"Baelor, please." Maekar's face crumpled, and he tried to pull away, but Baelor held on.
"Not once, Maekar," Baelor said. "Not once did I blame you. Not once did I feel what you were so afraid I would feel. You have been the most precious person in my life for as long as I can remember, and I lay there listening to you tear yourself apart and I could not move, I could not speak, I could not reach you, and it was the worst thing I have ever endured."
Maekar was crying again. Silent tears on his thin face, his breath hitching, his whole body trembling under Baelor's hand.
"I don't care what they call you," Baelor whispered. "I don't care what they think. I don't care about the whispers or the blame. I care about you. And I-"
He stopped. He wanted to be careful with what he wanted to say, he had only understood them in the dark, lying still, listening to his brother weep, and now that he had a voice again they felt too large for it.
"I didn't know what it was," he said, slowly. "I thought it was brotherhood. I thought it was because we were alike, or because I was the eldest and felt responsible, or because you had always trailed along after me. I told myself all of those things, and none of them were enough to explain it, and I never asked why." He met Maekar's eyes. “I think I have always loved you more deeply than I ever understood, valonqar. I don't know what to call it yet. I only know that I cannot bear to lose you."
"You can't mean that.” Maekar shook his head. A tiny, broken movement. “You can't. I almost killed you, Baelor."
“Do you know what I thought about? The whole time I have been lying here, unable to move, unable to speak, I did not think of the trial, nor the mace. I only thought of you, brother. I lay here and listened to you suffer and the only thing I wanted, the only thing that mattered to me was to put my arms around you and tell you it was all right." His grip on Maekar's wrist tightened. "What does that tell you?"
"I won't lie to you," Baelor said. "I am still figuring out what it means for us, and I cannot promise you I will be any good at this." He brushed his thumb across Maekar's wrist, where his pulse was hammering.
"But I can tell you that I love you. That I have loved you longer and more fiercely than I have ever loved anyone, and that whatever this is, whatever it becomes, I am not afraid of it. And I can promise you this." He held Maekar's gaze. "You will never be alone again. Do you hear me? I will not allow it."
Maekar made a sound that was between a laugh and a sob, and his hand came up to cover his mouth, and his shoulders shook, and Baelor pulled him down again, gently this time, and Maekar went. He pressed his face into Baelor's neck the way he had done when Baelor couldn't feel it, and Baelor held him there with whatever strength he had left, one hand in his brother's tangled hair, and felt Maekar's tears hot against his skin.
“Lekia-” Maekar whispered.
"Never," Baelor promised. “I will never leave you again, valonqar.”