Alexithymia
(n.) the inability to express one’s feelings verbally.
Pairing : Helaena Targaryen x Aegon II Targaryen
Summary : After hearing of what happened at Bitterbridge, Helaena pays the unconscious Aegon a visit.
Warnings : Angst, spoilers for future seasons of hotd / fire and blood, not fully canon compliant
The news had been delivered to her rooms by a scroll. No servant of the castle was brave enough to face the now Mad Queen and tell her that another son of hers was gone, ripped apart by a mob.
It was said the guards outside her rooms could not bear to hear the sobs and screams so they covered their ears, knowing that there was no way they could help their queen.
The message was given to her as softly as it could have been. If only that would have been enough.
She threw the scroll across her room, burying her head in her knees and fervently shaking her head, refusing to believe it. Maelor was gone. Her baby was ripped apart…no, it couldn’t have been. What kind of monster would send the order for the head of a boy of two.
The sobs came too easily as she realised this wasn’t a dream, this wasn’t a hallucination. Her child was dead.
A scream.
The tears came without cease, her now hoarse throat paining as she let herself fall into the sheets of her bed. Her head hurt, her eyes couldn’t bear to see the light through her blurs of sight, the front of the mess of her hair wet due her weeping.
She named her youngest to die, let her first born die at their hands, was not even able to burn his body, ignored her youngest in her guilt and now she cries for him?
What kind of a mother is she..?
She screamed in her anguish, crying out for her long gone child. She felt her throat closing up and her thoughts becoming more and more unsteady. Make it stop. Just make it stop.
The tears slowed. Slowly but surely. She fell against her pillows, her body blazing with fire. Guilt, anger, resentment.
She wiped the tears that she could and glanced towards the scroll, then at the doors of her room. She took her breaths erratically, the door seemed to shake in her unstable eyesight. It was hard to think straight but she recalled the first words on the parchment.
They were addressed to “The King Aegon, Second of his Name, and his Queen, Helaena Targaryen..”
He was his child too.
Does he know? He must. Although how could he, being in the state that he was?
She hadn’t bothered to visit him once. Her skin tingled with the guilt. An irresponsible mother and an undutiful wife…so far removed from what she ever thought herself to be.
Would he even care to see her face now? Would he even remember..them? Would he?
The words stung her mind and a tear dropped to her skirt.
Trembling, she lifted herself from the bed, grabbing onto the frame for support. She wouldn’t even trust herself to walk in this condition.
She walked, slowly, grabbing onto any and everything she could as support. She stopped near her mirror and stared at her reflection.
It was…shocking but the gasp did not dare escape. Her own voice was afraid of her.
She looked pale and sickly, her face was red, her under eyes were smudged with darkness.
Her cheeks had hollowed and her neck was strained.
Her then violet eyes now seemed to be the darkest shadows and her hair was ragged and tangled.
She looked barbaric. This was the Queen? How pathetic..she thought. The Kingdoms don't deserve a sight such as her for their queen. Her children didn’t deserve such an irresponsible woman as their mother. Her husband..the seven..if only he could look at her now. He would be disgusted if he was in his right mind.
Perhaps she was better off dead.
She brushed her hair as much as she could, her hands shook around the base of the brush. She winced ever so often but refused to look anywhere but the mirror. The horrid reflection should serve as a reminder of what she let herself become. A tear or two fell occasionally. But perhaps that was part of habit now.
She picked herself up and walked towards the door, still shaking but no longer needing the support to walk. She picked up the key and unlocked her prison.
The guards shook as they felt the heavy gates opening. One of them looked inside and saw the ruin.
“Your Grace-” he whispered through his expression of wide eyes and furrowed brow. She spoke. Slow, soft but clear enough.
“I..wish to visit the King.”
The other spoke next.
“Your mother would not desire that you do so, my Queen.”
She glanced towards him. “Well, I desire to.. visit my husband.”
They exchanged a glance and she bit her tongue. She knew her mother and what she understood of her daughter’s state. Defying her mother was the least of her intentions but she knew what she wanted.
“He would most likely be unconscious as of now, Your Grace.”
A small smile appeared on her lips. It wasn’t amusing but perhaps just courtesy. At least not all her habits had disappeared. “I am aware.”
Another look exchanged.
Then one of them gave a small nod, indicating “Follow me”.
So she did. She and the guard walked near side by side through the hallways of the castle.
The maids stared in horror before giving a small bow, the lords and ladies who were roaming the corridors at that moment seemed to be taken aback by the sight and froze.
Her head alternated between two truths - the first was that she looked..not exactly how they remembered their Queen and the second and more prevalent, the Queen was out of her chambers?
She had forgotten how it felt to roam these halls, how she would dance around with Jaehaera, how she and Aegon would chase Maelor around when he stole their wedding rings, how the twins would giggle in the hallways thinking that their mother wouldn’t be able to recognise the sound of their beautiful laughter.
Her eyes threatened to erupt right there but she controlled herself. How she always managed to do so in banquets, tourneys and practically any time she was out of her chambers. Her behaviour there was also due to control. Varying degrees of it but it was the same principle.
They spun around a turn at the top of the stairs and she saw the chambers. Isolated in the dark hallway. She weakly held her hand up in signal for the guard to stop. “I will continue.. by myself.”
The guard looked at her with worried eyes. A pause and he nodded, exiting and taking position outside the hallway.
It wasn’t the wisest of choices. Letting a skilled soldier of the castle leave and continuing by yourself in such a state. What if they don’t allow her to see him? What if he refuses to see her?
She shook her head and reminded herself that he was most likely to be unconscious. It was better that way. She will not have to face his disappointment and he will be in sleep, never knowing his wife paid him a final visit.
She walked the long corridor, slowly. Calming her nerve, ignoring her emotion.
She reached the door and knocked.
The maester had been with him since the morning. Monitoring his health and scribbling some things in a notebook. He could barely feel anything one time and then feel the chronic pain of the burns the next. The Milk of the Poppy helped him get by but it left him less and less a man each day.
He was left on the bed, barely able to think an entire sentence, move a single inch, speak a single word. He felt pathetic. The King rotting away in his bed while his much capable brother runs the kingdom. Gods forbid, he felt like his father. The man he resented with every bone in his body.
If he could laugh at his own misery, he would. The one noble cause he tried to fight for and he ends up like this. I just wanted to avenge my son.
What would his beloved even think of him? She would be disappointed, no doubt. Disgusted even, looking at his body. She never visited him once. That would probably be the cause.
He heard a knock on the door. Guards had been sent to deliver him a message.
The man speaking went on a long drawl and the words barely made it through the fog of his hearing. The only things he managed to hear were–
“nce Maelor-”
“Bitterbr-”
“ripp… part-”
“dead”
The guards stayed a bit longer as he tried to piece the message together.
“-’re sorr…Grac-”
They exited the chamber.
His son was dead.
He wanted to scream his lungs out of breath, fight another battle and rip the blacks apart with his bare hands. The fire wouldn’t leave his fogged head. And yet there he lay. Helpless himself, a pathetic sight for a King.
Had the news reached Hela? It had to have. He wanted to run to her and take her in his arms before she could scream. It would break her. More than Jaehaerys’s passing already had.
His skin tingled before a sharp pain hit him.
It put vanquish to his thoughts as he writhed, the maester immediately rushing to his side to give him another dose of the Poppy. Not again. Please, not again.
Hours had passed. Or so he felt.
He was thinking of his children, how badly he wished to take Maelor into his arms again, take Jaehaera to the gardens again, spin Jaehaerys around till he’s dizzy and giggling again.
He thought of his wife, her slaps when he kissed her in public, her face when he tickled her, her laughs when they ran after their children, her eyes when she held them for the first time, her.
His eyes welled up but a tear wouldn’t dare escape. The maester was still there and..he wasn’t even sure if he was capable.
A knock. And another. It was too light to be a guard, too strong to be mother but it sounded..familiar.
The Maester opened the doors and a gasp escaped him. It was difficult but he caught onto every syllable.
“My Queen?”
Ñuha prūmia? My heart?
“My Queen?” The Maester said with a blink of confusion.
She smiled weakly. “I am here to visit him.”
The maester looked from Queen to King and paused. He too must have heard the news if it had reached these rooms. He looked back at her, gave a small but quick smile “Of course, Your Grace.”
Before she took her first full step in the room, she looked towards the Maester and with a nod, he exited, closing the chambers behind him.
She stayed near the door longer. Trying to catch her breath. Trying to prepare herself for everything. Trying as she always had.
She walked, her steps loud in the echos of the room.
“Ñuha jorrāelagon?” My love?
It came out barely a whisper, the tears threatening to leave their bounds again.
Her husband lay there. Half body burnt to flesh, not moving, face puffy due to the intake of the Poppy, he could be on the brink of death and no one would know it. At least she wouldn’t.
She lowered herself near his bed. Trying to get a closer look at his face.
His eyes..his eyes were open. Half lidded at least. He was conscious? He knows she’s here? He heard her call to him?
Her stomach dropped. No.. she didn’t expect this. She wanted to run out of the room and leave him behind. But she held herself.
She looked towards his hand..he was wearing his ring. How?
The tears fell. It was too much, seeing him, Maelor, Jaehaerys, herself. She cried as silently as she could let herself. Still acting as though he was asleep.
His finger moved toward her.
She took a shaky breath, looked at his face with the tears still falling and smiled weakly.
How he managed to remain so beautiful even as he lay there burnt, scars galore. Half fire , half blood.
“Ik-“.
He was trying to speak. To her. Even after all the weeks she didn’t visit him. He struggled through his own lips.
“Aegon..”
She took his hand as gently as she could have. Lacing each finger with his one by one.
“Iksan-“ he kept struggling.
“Ñuha prūmia, gaomagon daor.” My heart, do not.
She placed the smallest kiss on his hand, as softly as possible. Treating him as though he was the most fragile thing in the world. As if he could break at any moment.
A tear fell from one of his hooded eyes. It slid down and fell onto his pillow.
She wiped her own tears and looked at him.
King and Queen of Westeros. What they had become. The products of war. Broken, ruined, sewn into the hems of history as a tragedy.
“Iksan vao-“
“Aegon.”
“Iksan vaoreznuni.”
I am sorry.
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