Work Text:
The air in Ashford Castle felt too thick to breathe, heavy with the weight of summer heat and a grief so profound it seemed to warp the very stone of the walls.
Prince Baelor Breakspear was dead. The Hand of the King, the heir to the Iron Throne.
But to the boy currently struggling to guide a towering, hollowed-out man down the dim corridor, Baelor had been so much more. And to the man whose hand Aegon held, Baelor had been everything.
Prince Maekar's steps were heavy, dragging, and devoid of the fierce, prickly pride that usually defined his every movement. His head was bowed, the striking silver hair falling limp across his forehead. His pale eyes, usually burning with a restless, defensive fire, were wide, unblinking, and entirely dead. They stared at the flagstones but saw nothing of Ashford. They were trapped behind the visor of a tourney helm, watching a spiked mace connect with the back of his brother's head over and over and over again.
"Just a little further, father," Aegon whispered, his own voice hoarse and raw from crying. "Just to your chambers. You need to lie down." When Egg pulled gently, Maekar did not resist. He rose, but it was a terrifyingly mechanical movement. He simply followed the tug on his hand, his large frame swaying slightly before stabilizing. He walked when Egg walked; he stopped when Egg stopped. He was a mountain being led by a child.
Maekar did not answer. He hadn't spoken a single word since Baelor had fallen to the dirt, since the helmet was removed and a piece of the prince's skull had come away with it. When Maekar had realized whose mace had delivered the fatal blow, something inside the Prince of Summerhall had simply snapped, severing his mind from the waking world. Maekar did not blink. His violet eyes, usually so sharp, were dull and hollow. They looked like glass.
It had been a nightmare to get him this far. When the trial of seven had ended, Maekar had stood in the dirt like a statue. The squires had to approach him as one might approach a wounded, unpredictable horse. They had to pry his armored gauntlets from his hands. Aegon remembered, with a fresh sob tearing at his throat, the way his father’s massive hands had trembled when the steel was removed, the way Maekar had stared at his own palms as if they belonged to a monster.
The servants had to unbuckle his breastplate, pull the padded gambeson over his head, and guide him to a washbasin. They had stripped and poured warm water over his broad shoulders to wash away the sweat and the dirt and the blood. Baelor's blood. Maekar had not shivered. He had not helped them. He had simply let them turn him, wipe him, and dress him in a simple black tunic, pliant and lifeless as a doll.
Further down the hall, in another chamber, Aegon’s older brother Aerion was resting, nursing his wounds and pride, utterly oblivious or uncaring of the magnitude of the tragedy he had set into motion. But Aegon couldn't think about Aerion right now. He could only think about the shattered man beside him.
They reached the heavy oaken door of Maekar’s temporary chamber. Aegon reached up, his small hand twisting the iron ring and pushing it open. The room was dark, the shutters drawn tight against the afternoon sun. Aegon preferred it that way. The sunlight felt offensive today.
"Step up, father," Aegon guided gently, pulling Maekar into the room and kicking the door shut behind them.
The silence of the chamber closed in around them. Aegon led his father toward the large featherbed. Maekar stopped at the edge of it, standing rigidly, staring at the embroidered quilt.
For the children of Maekar and the children of Baelor, the truth of their fathers had never been a scandal or a secret shame; it had simply been their lives. The realm saw the perfect Crown Prince and his stern younger brother. But behind the doors of the Red Keep or the walls of Summerhall, Aegon and his siblings saw the way Baelor’s hand would linger on the back of Maekar’s neck. They saw how Maekar’s perpetual, angry scowl would instantly melt away the moment Baelor entered a room. They saw the stolen glances, the quiet, murmured conversations, the fierce, protective devotion that went far beyond fraternal duty.
They were brothers, yes. But they were also two halves of a single soul.
In High Valyrian, the word for father and uncle was the same, kepa. Valarr and Matarys, Daeron, Aerion, Aemon, Daella, Rhae and Aegon—they had all used it interchangeably. Baelor was kepa, Maekar was kepa.
Now, one kepa was dead, murdered by the hand of the other.
"Sit, father," Aegon choked out, the tears finally spilling hot and fast down his cheeks. He pushed gently against Maekar’s chest.
Maekar yielded to the slight pressure, his knees buckling. He sat on the edge of the bed, his broad shoulders slumped, his hands resting limply in his lap. Aegon knelt, taking his father's large boots, unlacing them with trembling fingers, and pulling them off.
"You have to rest before... before tomorrow," Aegon said, the words catching in his throat. Tomorrow was the pyre, they would give Baelor back to the flames. Aegon didn't know how Maekar would survive watching the fire consume the only person he had ever truly loved.
Aegon stood and pushed on Maekar’s shoulders until the large man fell back against the pillows. Maekar’s legs were still dangling off the side, so Aegon grabbed them, grunting with the effort, and hoisted them up onto the mattress.
For a long moment, Aegon just stood by the bed, looking at his father. Maekar was staring blankly at the canopy above, his chest barely rising and falling. He looked entirely hollowed out, a fortress whose inner keep had burned to the ground, leaving only the stone facade standing.
Unable to bear the terrible distance between them, Aegon climbed up onto the high bed. He crawled over and curled his small body into the space between Maekar’s side and his arm.
It was muscle memory. It was an instinct carved into Maekar's very bones over a decade of fatherhood. The moment Aegon’s weight settled against his ribs, Maekar’s heavy, muscular arm lifted and dropped, wrapping around the boy, pulling him tight against his side.
Aegon let out a fractured, broken sob. The embrace was so familiar, so warm, yet the chest beneath his cheek felt like a tomb.
"I miss him too, kepa," Aegon whispered, burying his face into the black linen of Maekar’s tunic. "I miss him so much."
Maekar’s jaw tightened. A violent tremor ran through his massive frame, but still, he said nothing. His breathing hitched, becoming shallow and ragged.
"It wasn't your fault," Aegon pleaded, his voice rising in desperation. He clutched fistfuls of his father's tunic. "It was chaos. Kepa... Baelor knew you would never, ever hurt him. He knew. Kepa, please, you have to speak to me. You're scaring me."
Maekar squeezed his eyes shut. A single slow tear escaped the corner of his eye, tracking through the faint dusting of dirt still left on his cheek, disappearing into his silver beard.
"He loved you," Aegon cried, the words tumbling out of him in a torrent of childhood grief. "You know he did. He wouldn't want you to be like this. He wouldn't want you to go away too! You’re still here, father! I'm still here! Daeron is still here! Please... please don't leave us too."
Aegon pressed his ear against Maekar’s chest, listening to the frantic, erratic beating of his father’s heart. It sounded like a trapped bird battering itself against a cage.
Maekar’s grip on Aegon tightened until it almost hurt, burying the boy against his side as if he could shield them both from the agonizing reality of the world outside the chamber. Aegon wept openly, his tears soaking a dark patch into Maekar's shirt, his small frame shaking with every sob.
Maekar lay there, a prisoner in his own mind, trapped in the endless loop of the mace falling, the crunch of bone, the sight of the blood matting Baelor's dark hair. The love of his life. His brother. His king. Gone. By his own hand. He did not cry. He could not cry. To weep would be to acknowledge that the world was still turning, that time was still moving forward into a world where Baelor Breakspear did not exist.
Aegon shifted, burying his face deeper into his father's neck, breathing in the scent of him—sweat, linen, and the faint, coppery tang of the blood they hadn't quite managed to scrub away.
"I love you, kepa," Aegon whispered fiercely into the darkness of the room. "I love you. Please come back."
They lay there for what felt like hours, a tangle of limbs and shared devastation, a boy trying to hold the broken pieces of his father together with nothing but tears and desperate, childish hope. The shadows in the room grew longer as the afternoon bled toward the evening.
And then, shattering the fragile quiet of the bedchamber, the iron latch of the door loudly clicked, and the heavy door groaned as it began to swing open.
The wedge of yellow torchlight from the corridor cut violently across the darkened room, blinding in its suddenness. The heavy oak door creaked, the sound scraping against the raw, fragile silence of the bedchamber.
Framed in the doorway stood Valarr.
The young prince, Baelor’s eldest son and the new heir to the Iron Throne, looked like a ghost that had wandered away from its grave. His usually immaculate dark hair and silver streaked hair was a mess. He dressed now in a hastily thrown-on tunic of mourning black. But it was his face that was the most startling. Valarr’s youthful, handsome features were entirely slack, drained of all color, his eyes bloodshot and swollen, red-rimmed from weeping until there was nothing left.
Aegon felt his father's body go rigid beneath him, the massive muscles locking like a flinching dog expecting a lash. Maekar did not turn his head to look at the door. He simply squeezed his eyes shut, turning his face away into the pillows, a silent, pathetic bracing for the hatred and condemnation he believed he entirely deserved. He was the monster who had murdered the sun. Why shouldn't the sun's son strike him down?
Valarr stared at the bed. He looked at the broken ruin of his uncle. He looked at the way little Aegon was curled against him, a desperate shield of a boy trying to protect a shattered man. Valarr's hands, hanging at his sides, trembled violently. The conflict within him was a physical, agonizing war. This was the man who had swung the mace. This was the hand that had crushed his father’s skull.
But as Valarr took a halting step into the room, the anger he was supposed to feel, the fury that they would expect of a grieving son, simply dissolved into ash. Because he was not looking at a murderer. He was looking at his kepa. He was looking at the man his father had loved more than life itself, and the man looked as though he had already died.
Valarr kicked the door shut with his heel, plunging the room back into the merciful, muted gloom.
He moved toward the bed circling around to the empty side, opposite Aegon. The floorboards groaned faintly beneath his weight.
Panic flared in Aegon's small chest. He didn't know what Valarr was going to do. He scrambled up slightly, throwing an arm over Maekar's chest, placing himself between his older cousin and his father.
"Please," Aegon begged, his voice a frantic, wet whisper, fresh tears streaming down his cheeks. "Valarr, please. It was an accident. The helm... he didn't know. He couldn't see. Please don't hate him, Valarr. Please don't hate us."
Valarr stopped at the edge of the mattress. He looked down at Aegon, his chest heaving with ragged, uneven breaths. Then, his gaze fell to Maekar’s face. Maekar still wouldn't look at him. The mighty Prince of Summerhall was crying, a single, silent tear sliding over the bridge of his nose, waiting for Valarr to curse his name.
"Hate him?" Valarr choked out. His voice broke entirely, a terrible, fractured sound that tore the last shreds of restraint from his soul. "How could I hate him, Egg? How?"
Valarr’s legs gave out. He collapsed onto the edge of the mattress, his shoulders shaking hard. He crawled up onto the bed, the polished, confident prince vanishing entirely, leaving behind only a terrified, heartbroken boy who had lost his father.
He crossed the space between them and collapsed against Maekar’s other side. He threw his arms across Maekar’s broad chest, burying his face into his uncle’s shoulder, right near the crook of his neck.
"Kepa," Valarr sobbed, the word tearing out of him like a plea to the gods. "I know it was an accident, kepa. I know."
Maekar let out a sound then—a stifled, strangled gasp that sounded like a man drowning. It was the first sound he had made since the tourney grounds, a horrifying, guttural expression of absolute agony.
"I know it was an accident," Valarr wept, his fingers desperately gripping the black linen of Maekar's tunic, pulling him close just as Aegon was doing on the other side. "I know you didn't mean it. You would never... you would never hurt him. You were his other half. He loved you. I know he loved you. You were his soul."
The dam broke. The unbreakable anvil finally shattered completely. Maekar could not speak—his throat was locked tight with a grief too monumental for language—but his chest heaved with violent, silent sobs. His face contorted, tears pouring freely from his closed eyes, soaking into the pillows and Valarr’s dark hair.
With agonizing slowness, Maekar lifted his other, impossibly heavy arm. His hand trembled violently as he brought it down around Valarr’s shaking shoulders. He pulled Valarr in tight against his chest, gripping the boy fiercely, pressing his cheek against the top of Valarr’s head.
"I just wish he didn't die," Valarr babbled, the words tumbling over each other between hitching sobs, spilling out into the dark. "I just wish he was here. I don't know what to do without him. Everyone is looking at me out there, they keep calling me 'Your Grace' and bowing, and I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to be him. I just want him back. I want my father back. Please, I just want him back. The lords keep looking at me, telling me I'm the Prince of Dragonstone now. They keep asking me about the succession, about the court, and I don't care. I don't care about any of it! I just want my father. I want him to walk through that door and tell me it was all a bad dream. I don't know how to be him. I can't be him."
Aegon, weeping uncontrollably on Maekar's left side, reached his small hand across his father's heaving chest and grabbed Valarr's fingers. Valarr gripped Aegon's hand back, squeezing tight.
Maekar held them both, his arms forming a desperately tight perimeter around the two boys, as if he could somehow shield them from the horrible reality of what he had done, of the world he had broken. He buried his face in the space between their heads, his silent weeping shaking the bed. He had killed his brother, his lover, his king. He had stolen the father of the boy sobbing on his right, and traumatized the son clinging to his left. He felt like poison, yet they clung to him as if he were their only cure.
The sun set completely outside the walls of Ashford, stealing the last slivers of light from the chamber.
They did not move. None of them left the bed. They stayed tangled together in the dark, three broken dragons anchored to one another in an ocean of despair. They wept until their eyes were dry and their throats were raw, and then they just lay there, listening to the hitched breathing of one another, dreading the inevitable dawn.
Because tomorrow morning, the sun would rise. Tomorrow morning, they would have to walk out to the courtyard. And tomorrow morning, they would have to set fire to the only man who had ever made any of them whole.
The morning did not arrive with the warmth of the summer sun, but rather crept into the bedchamber like a gray shroud. Through the narrow gaps in the heavy wooden shutters, the pale light of dawn painted harsh, cold lines across the floorboards.
On the great featherbed, the three princes lay exactly as the night had left them, a tangled, desperate knot of shared devastation. Maekar remained on his back, staring blindly at the canopy, his arms still locked rigidly around the sleeping forms of his youngest son and his nephew. Their breathing was the only sound in the room, heavy and erratic, punctuated by the occasional, sleepy hitch of a sob.
Then, the iron latch clicked again.
Daeron stepped over the threshold, closing the door softly behind him. Usually, Daeron would enter a room preceded by the sour stench of wine, his steps unsteady, his eyes darting unfocused.
But not today.
Today, Daeron was terrifyingly sober. His face was washed clean of dirt and sweat, his blonde hair pulled back tightly and tied with a black leather cord. He wore a high-collared doublet of mourning black, devoid of any house colors or silver thread. He looked pale, hollowed out by his own private grief—for days he had been running from a nightmare of a great, dead dragon crashing down upon him, convinced it was his own death he foresaw. When Baelor’s helm was removed, Daeron had vomited, realizing with crushing guilt that the great dragon had been his uncle all along.
He walked softly to the edge of the bed, looking down at the broken pieces of his family. He reached out, placing a gentle hand on Valarr's shoulder.
"Cousin," Daeron whispered, his voice steady. "Valarr, wake up."
Valarr shifted, a groan catching in his throat as the waking world crashed back into his consciousness, bringing the memory of yesterday with it. He opened his red-rimmed eyes, looking up at Daeron in confusion.
"It's morning," Daeron said softly, the sorrow in his eyes reflecting Valarr's own. "You must rise, cousin. The lords are gathering. They need to see Baelor’s son. They need to see their prince."
Valarr squeezed his eyes shut, turning his face back toward Maekar’s chest. "I can't," he whispered brokenly. "Daeron, I can't do it."
"You can," Daeron insisted gently, gripping the young man's shoulder. "You have to. Go to your squires, Valarr. Wash your face. Put on your blacks. I will take care of him." Daeron nodded toward Maekar. "I will bring him. I promise."
Reluctantly, Valarr untangled himself from Maekar’s fierce grip. He looked down at the silent, unblinking man who had been a second father to him. He pressed his hand against Maekar’s cheek for a fleeting second before slipping off the mattress. Without another word, wrapping his arms around his own stomach, Valarr staggered out of the room.
With Valarr gone, Daeron moved to the other side of the bed. Aegon was already awake, sitting up on his knees, his large eyes darting to Daeron. Egg looked entirely spent, his face puffy, his tunic wrinkled and stained with tears.
In the center of the outer yard, the funeral pyre rose like a grim tower, constructed from logs and stuffed with dry kindling. Atop the structure lay the body of Prince Baelor Breakspear, draped in a heavy, dark silken shroud that bore the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen.
A solemn crowd had gathered. Lords and ladies in their finest mourning black stood in a wide, silent circle, their heads bowed.
At the front of the gathering stood the royal family. Prince Valarr stood as straight as he could manage, his chin trembling, his hands balled into white-knuckled fists at his sides. Beside him stood Daeron, his eyes unnaturally sharp, his jaw set in a hard line.
Maekar was a hollow vessel. He moved only because Daeron pulled him; he stood only because the earth beneath his feet refused to swallow him whole. His violet eyes were glazed, locked in a permanent, dead stare toward the base of the pyre. He wore the black linen tunic Daeron had laced for him, looking less like a proud prince and more like a condemned man walking to the block.
The Septon stepped forward, he raised his hands, his voice booming over the silent courtyard, saying the prayers for the dead, commendations to the Stranger to guide the soul of the bravest prince Westeros had ever known.
The Septon stepped back, guards stepped forward with torches. At Valarr’s broken nod, they lowered the fire to the four corners of the pyre.
The oil-soaked kindling caught instantly.
A collective, ragged sigh went through the crowd as the orange-red flames licked hungrily up the wood. The heat blossomed outward in a sudden, violent wave, forcing the front row of lords to step back. The smoke rose into the clear morning sky, thick and gray, beginning to obscure the dark shroud that covered Baelor.
Maekar did not blink against the heat. The roaring reflection of the flames danced in his dead eyes. The fire was climbing, wrapping around the logs, reaching the platform where Baelor lay.
The intense heat of the pyre caused the heavy pine logs beneath Baelor's body to shift and pop. With a loud crack, a support beam settled, causing the top platform to tilt slightly.
To the crowd, it was a routine shifting of a burning structure. But to Maekar’s shattered, guilt-ridden mind, reality warped completely.
Through the shifting distortion of the heat waves and the rising smoke, Maekar didn't see a corpse shifting on logs. He saw Baelor move.
He saw the dark shroud convulse. In his mind, he saw Baelor, trapped beneath the silk, waking up into an inferno, screaming for him, burning alive because of the blow Maekar had delivered. The thought of his brother, his lover, his absolute world, waking up in agony and burning to death alone was a horror too monumental for Maekar’s fragile sanity to bear.
Maekar took a sharp, sudden step forward.
"Father?" Aegon whispered, his voice laced with panic, reaching out to catch Maekar’s sleeve. "Kepa?"
That single, fragile point of contact—the small hand of his youngest son—acted as an iron chain dragging Maekar back from the precipice of madness.
Maekar froze. He blinked, the glaze shattering from his pale violet eyes. The horrific illusion of Baelor writhing beneath the shroud dissolved, replaced by the brutal truth of reality. It was only the pine logs collapsing inward. The body atop the pyre was entirely still, already being consumed by the roaring, unforgiving flames. Baelor was not waking up. Baelor was never waking up again.
A violent, silent sob tore through Maekar’s chest, but he did not take another step toward the fire. Instead, he reached down and enveloped Aegon’s small hand in his own calloused palm. He gripped the boy’s fingers with the desperate, bruising intensity of a drowning man clinging to the last piece of wreckage. Aegon squeezed back just as fiercely, pressing his side against his father's leg.
They stood like that for hours. Maekar did not move as the flames climbed higher, turning the sky black with smoke. He forced himself to watch. He forced himself to bear witness to the destruction of his own heart, standing as a silent shield between the terrifying heat of the pyre and the children huddled around him.
When the fire finally began to die down, leaving only a glowing mound of red-hot embers and gray ash, the lords began to disperse in hushed, solemn groups. But Maekar remained.
His mind was a desolate wasteland. Every instinct in his blood screamed at him to draw his sword and fall upon it, or to walk directly into the dying embers and let the heat take him to wherever Baelor had gone. The world without his brother's laugh, without those mismatched eyes looking at him with absolute adoration, was completely uninhabitable. The Anvil had no purpose without the Hammer to strike in tandem.
I cannot do this, Maekar thought, a crushing, suffocating panic rising in his throat. I cannot breathe this air if he is not breathing it too.
But then, he felt the slight tremble in the small hand still locked in his own.
Maekar slowly turned his head. He looked down at Aegon, whose face was streaked with tears. He looked to his right, where Valarr stood completely hollowed out, staring at the embers of his father. He saw Daeron, holding himself together by a mere thread of willpower.
Baelor’s sons. Their sons.
The realization hit Maekar with the force of a physical blow. If he gave in to his grief—if he allowed the darkness to claim him—he would be leaving these boys entirely alone in a world full of vipers. He would be betraying the very vows he had sworn to Baelor in the dark. He had promised to protect their family, to be the shield that guarded the sun's legacy.
He had to live. It was a horrifying sentence, but he had to endure it. He would lock his shattered heart away in the deepest, darkest vault of his soul, and he would survive strictly on duty, because the children needed a father.
If he was to protect these children, he had to make hard, terrible choices. His thoughts immediately snapped to Aerion.
A dark, venomous anger coiled in Maekar’s gut. Aerion, with his cruel arrogance and petty spite, had started this entire nightmare. It was Aerion who had attacked the puppeteers, Aerion who had demanded the Trial of Seven, Aerion who had forced Baelor to stand in the dirt to defend a hedge knight against his own family. Maekar realized with a sickening twist of failure that his second son was poison. If Aerion remained in Westeros, his cruelty would eventually destroy Valarr, Matarys, and the rest of them.
I will send him away, Maekar decided, his jaw locking into a hard, unforgiving line. He will go to Lys. Let him fester in the Free Cities. I will not let his madness rot Baelor’s legacy.
Then, his heavy gaze dropped back to Aegon.
Egg, who had crawled into his bed in the darkest hour of the night. Egg, who had held him together when he was shattering. The Red Keep was no place for a boy with that much pure heart. The court would twist him, use him, and eventually break him. He needed to be forged differently than Aerion had been.
Maekar looked across the courtyard, his eyes settling on the towering, battered figure of Ser Duncan the Tall, standing awkwardly at the edge of the grounds. Baelor had died for that man. Baelor had seen something true and honorable in the hedge knight.
I will give him the boy, Maekar thought, his grip softening just a fraction around Aegon’s hand. Egg will be his squire. He will sleep in the dirt, he will patch his own clothes, and he will learn what it truly means to serve the realm, away from the poison of the court.
It broke Maekar’s heart to send the boy away, but he knew it was the only way to save him.
Maekar finally turned his back on the ashes. He was no longer the man he had been yesterday. The man who had loved and laughed in the shadows with Baelor had burned on that pyre. All that remained was Prince Maekar Targaryen, cold, hard, and entirely forged of iron, ready to bear the weight of a sunless world.