Work Text:
***
There is a little spring in his step whenever she’s with child.
It seems like a play of words in some sense, that the Spring Prince walks with a spring in his step. Baelon has always been lively after all, even long before their marriage ever came to be. Alyssa can still remember her years as a young girl clinging to his legs, watching as he seemed to move restlessly, oftentimes with a wooden sword in his hands and an easy smile on his face. Their mother always said he had been lively even in the womb, so much like their younger son Daemon had been. Yet, over the years that she has been wed to him, Alyssa can always notice the extra burst of mirth that comes with the onset of a new pregnancy.
His dark purple eyes seem to beam brighter, his grins seem to grow wider. Only when their babe is born does he seem even happier than he is then.
That does not mean he does not worry however. Baelon frets far too much in Alyssa’s honest opinion. The first time she ever got with child, she could hardly walk two feet without him tailing her, his body and expression taut with a mixture of gentleness and worry. The afterbirth was no different, with Baelon reluctant to bed her even six moons after she had brought her Viserys to the world. That he even tried - and failed horribly unsurprisingly - to convince not to ride her dragon the last few moons before her labours exemplified it all. Even their mother always rode Silverwing until the eighth moon came about. Baelon however, ever so protective, feared her dauntless tricks on Meleys in the air might put the babe at risk.
Still, two healthy children - both whom easily took to the skies within barely a fortnight of being born - have assuaged most of his unfounded concern, and now, as the third’s fated arrival approaches, Alyssa cannot help but feel as calm as the lazy waters of the Mander when her husband walks towards her, his steps elated. He is still in his dragonriding clothes: a loose black undershirt, a fur-lined overtunic meant to fight out the cool winter winds, and black leather pants disappearing into grey boots. There is little adornment on his body. But even in his plainest wear, Baelon looks like half a god. His dark purple eyes brighten up as much and as quickly as his smile, his silver swishing about, tied back into a tail as his long strides quicken at the sight of her.
He greets Alyssa with a less than formal kiss, taking her in with a look of adoration - one that still makes her blush just as madly as when she was a girl - then kneels upon the black marble floor before the couch she is laying on. She’s propped up on silken pillows near as bulging as her belly, with two more lifting her swollen feet higher up in her line of sight. Alyssa feels like one of those whales the Ibbenese scour the cold seas for. Baelon’s gaze never flickers away from utmost reverence.
“You haven’t moved from there all day,” Baelon muses with an affectionate smile touching his lips, her smaller hands enveloped in his larger ones. His gloves have long been discarded, leaving his calloused skin to brush against her own softer, but still briefly sword-hewn hands. Alyssa snorts.
“I would like to see you walk around in this state.”
Baelon’s smile only deepens. One of his hands caresses her cheek, running down to the edges of her hair. Tanned fingers twine with the dirty blonde hair Alyssa has always hated. Hair that Baelon says outshines even his purest of silver locks.
“I have never denied you are far braver than I, my love,” he mumbles, his mouth busy pressing the lightest of kisses upon the skin of her cheek. “Baelon the Brave they call me, yet you have braved battles - nay, wars - that would have destroyed most men. Even ones with dragons.”
Alyssa cannot help the smile that stretches across her flushed face. Even so many years later, her brother still has this damnable effect on her. Even so, she looks at him slyly. Alyssa never lets him win after all. Ten nameday old Baelon once said, after all, that little sisters were made to be their older siblings’ bane, and that she was his in particular. Alyssa has since made it her mission to prove that true.
“Only most?”
“All men then,” Baelon immediately corrects wholeheartedly, still smiling. His lips press a kiss to her right hand, besides her ringed forefinger. “I brought the boys with me to Dragonstone. Viserys wanted to pick an egg for the babe while we were there. Daemon wanted to claim a dragon instead. Caraxes in fact. He was quite vexed when he learned his uncle had already claimed him long ago.”
The mention of her eldest’s soft nature and his younger brother’s more dastardly one cannot help but prompt out a giggle out of her. Alyssa loves her sons, but the Seven Above know how two children could be so dissimilar. Viserys was amiable and sweet, Daemon hot-tempered and bold. Yet, the love between the two of them will never truly break, Alyssa thinks.
Much like our love .
“A pink egg,” Baelon continues with an animated rise of his eyebrows, moving to caress her cheek, “with purple swirls and flakes of gold flaring from the top. Smaller than some, but I reckon she will come out fierce.
Alyssa cannot help but arch an eyebrow at the insinuation. “I can remember him being very eager for a yellow one. It seems strange for him to change his mind so suddenly, given his stubbornness. And for you to call it a she-dragon… You have never been a good liar, my heart. You seem certain we will have a girl. Did you not once boast of your prowess at making sons?“
It’s all said in teasing, although Baelon has the decency to blush. His earnest smile doesn’t falter. He looks at her with cheeks flushed pink - closer to the brother she knows and loves than the fearless prince of legend - and places one hand over the swell hidden beneath layers of silk, almost coaxingly. The babe kicks barely a heartbeat after, almost as if knowing that their sire was reaching out for them.
“I pray it is a girl,” her love finally says after a beat, “I love our sons and I would never regret having either of them. But… I wish so desperately for the bond between Aem and Rhaenys. To scare away the boys and to call her “my little princess” even long after she has had children of her own… To let her braid my hair and to order me around like you once did.”
“Like I still do,” Alyssa corrects smugly. Baelon lets out a chuckle, beaming. His forehead meets hers halfway.
“Exactly like you. Although we never did agree on a name… You have always been so particular about naming our children in honour after someone neither of us have ever known. All of them tragic figures, I must say.”
“We were named for people we’ve never known. People who died in such a fashion…If you can call drowning off a ship drunk a tragic death. It is to remember our dead, brother. So that mayhaps one Viserys who suffered may watch from the halls of our ancestors as another one soars,” Alyssa reminds him, both her eyebrows archesd in defiance. Her husband raises his arms in surrender, an action that has followed him ever since he once tried to convince her to not ride Meleys while with babe. It still brings about the same sense of satisfaction even now.
“And besides,” she continues, “we already have the name for a boy. Aegon, after our late brother. Since you are so eager for a daughter, then why do you not find a name for her, my love?”
Baelon’s eyes widen at this, half in shock and half in thanks. Already, a dozen names seem to flow from his lips, as if he has been thinking this for far longer than even Alyssa thought. He makes note of Aerea who died from wounds she took from Valyria, of Rhaena, their mother and father’s tragic sister, even of Vaella, their grandsire’s stillborn daughter. Alyssa can only watch as he seems to move incessantly out of excitement, more a boy of ten than a man of seven-and-twenty namedays. On and on, they roll off his tongue, seemingly endless before he stops abruptly, his face conflicted. It makes Alyssa’s own mirth dissipate in worry.
“What about Daenerys?” Baelon asks quietly, his eyes wistful. The excitement is still there, but it’s been tempered. Almost reflexively, Alyssa’s hand squeezes his in comfort. Daenerys, the sister she never knew. The sister that the Shivers stole.
Baelon rarely speaks of her, as all who ever knew her did. Even decades later, even the slightest mention of her seems to drain the room of all its light. Her own mother used to weep at the sight of Alyssa in memory of the daughter she lost. Yet, the few times Baelon spoke of her, he never failed to mention vague memories of a smiling girl who would have been the wonder of Alyssa’s world.
“That is a very apt name,” Alyssa agrees warmly after a second, a look of contemplation on her face. Despite herself, her heart still feels heavier than it was before. “Aegon for a boy. After our brother Aegon. And Daenerys for a girl… After our lost sister.”
The smile the couple share is one of knowing and agreement. They do not speak much after that. Instead they relish in each other's presence. Relish in their two boys already growing so strong and their forthcoming child and the many children Alyssa is sure will come after them.
A small army of her own , she has always jested and hoped to be true. With little Daenerys at the head, being the bane of her brothers.
It is an image full of hope and belief. One that in the moment seems impossible to shatter.
Yet the cruelty of the Gods have always been greater than even the whims of the Valyrians, those divine half-gods who conquered the skies so easily.
It was spring that followed the birth of Baelon the Brave, as was the luck of both his sons. But autumn breaks when his love is stolen from him, and winter whisks his third child, a boy named Aegon, away.
***