Chapter Text
“In another life, my love, I would keep you close and never let you go,” he confesses, whispering the words into the scars of his lover’s back as a caress.
Nyx laughs, the soft sound rumbling through him, tilting his head back until Regis can bury his face into his neck. “I would let you,” he says back, equally as quiet, equally as true, relaxing into his hold so beautifully. So trustingly. “In another life, I’d let you.”
Baelor is sat at Jena’s deathbed when it happens.
He doesn’t know it will be her deathbed when he sits at its side, not that day when he brings their boys to visit their mother after breaking their fast. Of course, it was not a day he had hoped would come at all, not so soon, but he-
He’s a Prince of the Realm, Hand of the King, Heir to the Iron Throne, and none of those titles has meant a single thing in this. He has the power to call upon the best Maesters of the Citadel, the coin to hire the most respected Healers and Mages from across the Narrow Sea, the reputation to ask the local woodwitches for the aid and he has done all of that in his desperation, leaning upon his Father’s name when his own was not enough, and yet-
Not one of them has even been able to name the wasting sickness that haunts his wife.
What began with a simple cough and general malaise a year after their youngest son’s birth, long past the time of birthing fever, had progressed to shortness of breath and then shaking of her limbs and then to blood against her teeth and then and then and then. She has held onto life, symptoms getting worse with every year, every moon, every day that passes.
And, now.
Now, his sons know their mother (their beautiful, strong mother who laughs like the storm and delights in the rain and loves them so very much) only as this pale, frail figure who is barely strong enough to smile so weakly at them when she is awake.
Now, his brothers look at him with pity in their eyes, every time he calls for a new Maester or a new treatment is discovered or Jena is strong enough to hold their boys. Now, his mother and father stop talking when he enters a room, as if he cannot hear them planning for a funeral. Now, his wife has not woken in days.
Now, Valarr and Matarys cry themselves to sleep at night and he-
She is dying. He knows this, he does.
He cannot-
“Jena,” Baelor whispers, sitting at her bedside, their youngest in his lap, curled against his chest – Matarys, a boy of five who has never known his mother whole and hale. He takes her hand in one of his own (the bones so delicate, the skin so dull; nothing at all like the strong, calloused hands of the woman who loved to ride) and in his other he holds their sons – Valarr, all of eight name days, old enough to just barely remember who his mother used to be and be terrified of the sight she makes in the bed before them. “I’ve brought the boys.”
I’ve brought the boys, he’s said every morn since she was confined to this bed, carving what little time he can from his day to ensure that – even if they can no longer break their fasts together – she can see their boys before their lessons begin. Time as a family, all four of them, and if it means that Baelor has to work until the hour of the wolf to ensure his duties are completed in a timely manner, then so be it.
(It matters not, when he spends his nights sat at this very bedside regardless)
At the beginning, Valarr and Matarys would clamber carelessly onto the bed, telling their mother of their dreams as Jena laughed and brushed shaking hands over their hair and made them promise to be good in their lessons.
They stay with him, now, after last time-
(Jena’s pained gasp, what little colour she had draining from her face until she was corpse pale, her chest heaving as blood speckled her lips and-)
After the last time, they dare not climb onto her bed. Their boys watch their mother from a distance, wariness and fear in their eyes that he hates, that he knows Jena hates; their boys are too young for this. Too young to lose their mother.
Today, Jena’s eyes barely move beneath their lids. Her breath comes, slow and laboured, a rattling cry that echoes wrongly in their rooms once so full of life.
She doesn’t wake.
He lifts her hand to his lips and begs, as a prince of his station never should: “Jena, please.” For our boys.
Her breath hitches. She groans.
“Muña?” Valarr whispers, stepping closer to the edge of the bed.
The hand in his own twitches weakly, her fingers tightening around his own for the briefest of moments. Her eyes – dulled and tired – slip open and her mouth moves into something attempting a smile. “My boys,” she rasps out.
“Muña!” Matarys pulls away from his chest, half crawling onto the bed to be closer to her, yet ever so careful to not actually touch his mother. A boy of five should never learn to be so careful and Baelor burns with the injustice that the world has taught their son this so early.
“My boys,” Jena says again and her hand, the one laying on the bedspread, moves as if to reach for them. It falls after barely rising and she gasps for breath at the strain it costs her.
What colour there is in her skin flees.
“Do not strain yourself.”
The words fall from his lips as if he does not know that simply breathing strains his wife, now. As if he does not know that-
“Baelor…” What little voice she has left fails as she looks to him. She doesn’t try to continue.
He understands anyway.
He swallows past the fire in his throat and grips her hand tighter. “I promise,” he murmurs hoarsely, ordering his voice not to shake; remembering the words he had given to her the year before, when the last of the Healers and Mages summoned had been able to do nothing.
I promise I’ll take care of our boys.
Her eyes brighten, that brilliant blue so like Matarys’ shining almost like it used to before, and her grimace of a smile softens into something beautiful.
She turns her head until her cheek rests again the plump pillow, turning her smile on their sons once more. Pale and exhausted, her breath still coming in sharp gasps, she shines with her love for them. She-
“Muña!”
She stops breathing.
He should call for a Maester. He should move from where he sits. He should-
Their eldest trembles at his side. Their youngest lunges from his lap, throwing himself at his mother.
Baelor sits there, still holding Jena’s cold hand, watching as Matarys sobs loudly into his mothers still chest, as Valarr cries silently at the side of the bed and he thinks, distantly: Noctis cried for Aulea like this, too.
And then...
Oh.