Chapter Text
The babe was…tiny.
Small and frail, with wisps of the golden-silver hair that marked her as clearly as day a member of House Targaryen. Wrapped in silver sheets and soft blankets, Rhaenyra could hardly believe this was the child her mother had struggled so hard to give birth to. Rhaenyra hadn’t seen many newborn babies, but she was certain that they should be larger than this.
Worry began to creep in. Why was she so light? Was it some sort of illness? Rhaenyra couldn’t bear the thought of losing her new sister so quickly after her mother.
As if to relieve her of her worries, the newborn girl gargled happily up at her, her tiny fist flailing in the air. The violet eyes seemed transfixed on Rhaenyra’s own silver hair. The babe made many attempts to grab it, but it seemed she did not have much control over her own body yet, for all she achieved was grasping at tendrils of nothingness in the air.
Rhaenyra gently grabbed at the babe’s tiny, tiny hands, letting them curl around Rhaenyra’s own finger.
In spite of herself, Rhaenyra’s face broke into a soft smile. Daenerys, little Daenerys, her mother had called the child.
Rhaenyra swallowed, blinking back tears that threatened to fall. She’d rushed to her mother’s bedside when the unease stirring the lords and ladies around her grew far too big for her to ignore any longer. When she’d arrived, she had only smelled blood and had seen sheets dripping with sticky, warm crimson red liquid.
Then she’d seen her mother’s body, marked and carved, as if she were nothing more than a husk, as if she were nothing more than just meat.
She remembered pushing past her father, collapsing on her knees beside her mother’s deathbed. The iron stench blood overpowered any other senses. It had felt like she was wading through thick mud. Time seemed to slow down, her heart pounded relentlessly like waves against her ribcage, and she remembered hearing a scream —a scream she’d only realized was her own hours later.
Tears had streamed down her face like a waterfall. Dragon cries—Syrax—had echoed and bellowed throughout the entirety of King’s Landing all day, mourning with her rider. Rhaenyra ignored the distant, warbling voices of the maesters and midwives, even ignoring her own father’s heavy hand and guilt-ridden voice.
Syrax, her ever-faithful Golden Lady, had tried to fly up from the Dragonpit, or so she had been told by the Dragon keepers. She’d snapped and roared at any keeper who dared to come within twenty feet of her and had even burned the cloak of a young and inexperienced keeper who had not known any better than to get close to Syrax while she rampaged.
All while Rhaenyra screamed and cried by her mother, clutching her bloodied hand, as if believing that Aemma would come back if she only gripped harder.
But no. None of that had happened.
Rhaenyra had to be dragged from the room, kicking and screaming and lashing out. Her screams and cries echoed throughout the Red Keep, just like Aemma’s had mere hours before. Aemma’s screams had been borne of pain; Rhaenyra’s had been too. Only a different kind of pain.
Aemma’s pain was one of a mother struggling to give birth to a reluctant babe. Rhaenyra’s was that of a daughter mourning her mother.
Only after Rhaenyra had been dragged out, though gently, by Ser Harrold and Ser Erryk, had she thought of the babe.
She couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit of resentment towards the babe. Her mother had given her life for the babe. All because her father wished for a male heir. Despair, grief, anger, and resentment mixed and flowed in her heart.
Despair, for she could never be enough for her father. Viserys would never look at her the way he would look at a male child. That was what drove her mother’s body beyond the point of breaking and bleeding out, wasn’t it?
Grief, for her mother. The person she loved more than any other in the world. Now she would never be able to lay in her arms again, never to embrace her mother’s warm body. Her mother, always seeming larger than life itself, so kind and warm, now a lifeless, cold body on her birthing bed. Rhaenyra bit back a cry as a fresh wave of pain stabbed her heart.
She felt anger too, anger at her father for ordering the death of her mother, all just for the hope of a male heir.
Rhaenyra laughed bitterly. Her father had killed her mother, all for a babe that was not even the male heir he’d hoped for. Was it worth it? At first, Rhaenyra’s answer had been a vehement no. How could a small child compare to the love of her mother? How could a babe ever be more important than her mother’s warm embrace?
But now, as she gazed upon a babe with pure Valyrian feature of violet eyes and pale hair, she found that her insides twisted and churned at the thought of this babe dying. As she gently hugged the babe close to her chest, she felt as if her heart was being torn in two.
What would she have done, she wondered, now that she knew what it was like to hold a living, breathing babe in her arms? Not just any babe. Blood of her blood, her own kin. Would she have acted as Viserys had done? Or would she have saved her mother over her sister?
The babe’s faint cries forced her out of her thoughts.
Rhaenyra panicked for a moment. What should she do when a babe was crying? She was no mother, nor midwife!
But evidently, it turned out she needn’t have worried. All the babe required was her attention. The moment Rhaenyra turned to peer close at the babe, the sounds changed from cries to bubbling laughter.
In that moment Rhaenyra felt a joy that only a babe could give. The bubbling laughter, the warmth close to her chest, even the sharp tugs on her hair.
How could such a bundle of pure, unadulterated joy exist? Rhaenyra hadn’t believed anything so good could ever be. Now, gazing lovingly at her sister, at Daenerys, she decided to change her mind.
No, there would be nothing ever as pure and good as Daenerys.
But Rhaenyra would make damn sure Daenerys, the last thing that remained of her mother, would stay safe and pure.
As if to guarantee Daenerys’s safety, Syrax’s roared echoed once again through the Red Keep. Danerys barely reacted, just nestling closer to her sister’s chest.
“You hear that, Daenerys?” Rhaenyra whispered, rocking the child gently; her violet eyes were beginning to close, her tiny fists letting go of Rhaenyra’s silver hair she had been toying with. “You’ll be safe. I promise. I will never let anything harm you, not ever,” she promised fiercely.
“I promise. On the memory of our mother.”