Chapter Text
CHAPTER 1
The ghosts swarm.
They speak as one person.
Each loves you.
Each has left something undone.
- from "Unbidden" by Rae Armantrout
Helaena, 16
King's Landing City, 2005
Ever since Helaena was a child, she sees a spectre in the mirror. She recognizes her features but that could not be right. It must be a ghost surely, because she has never seen herself in such heavily embroidered clothes nor did she ever looked so despondent. No, it can only be a ghost but as she stares in the mirror, it feels that the woman looking back was the one haunted as she rambles half finished visions. Haunted by undesired foreknowledge that the gods force her to spew from her mouth. Like the prophecies needed to be given birth and her entire existence was just a consequence of this purpose.
She looks older than her, this phantom, but their similarities cannot be denied. From the freckles on her face down to the small mole on her neck, everything about them are identical. She is always alone in a room surrounded by heavy drapes of emerald green with beaten silver mirrors, reflecting the light from seven pointed star candelabras. The stone walls are decorated with tapestries depicting dragons that seems to radiate power and madness. Sometimes, Helaena will be walking down the hall on her way to her cello lessons and she will catch a glimpse of this apparition in her bedroom mirror stitching spiders on her embroidery. However, most frequently, she sees her standing on the ledge of a high arched window appearing to be staring over the horizon and then flickering her gaze to the ground below. It is in these moments that terror seize her heart. Not because of the hallucinations her mind brings forth, but of the secret truth which she felt in her heart of hearts that jumping would have given both her and this ghostly woman the reprieve they desire. However, there is no escape from the trappings of the Targaryen name. So Helaena bows her head, increase the volume on her airpods and pretends she doesn't see.
She strived to anchor her mind to the present and exerted an effort to look different from her doppelganger. She tames her locks into waves of spun silver and let her mother dress her in a modest Chanel tweed ensemble. She filled her days with a routine of sports and entomologic pursuits to hone her body and mind. Helaena is aware that though she is not as striking nor charming as some Targaryen women before her, most people mistook her heavy lidded gaze over lilac eyes as mysterious. She prays they will never find out that a force beyond the grave is the reason for her allure. How visions of a tragic fate seems to unfold before her eyes, seemlessly interweaving the past to her present. How she struggles to tell what is real from the pigment of her imagination.
"You have to let me go," Helaena once pleaded while looking at the wraith-like reflection on her bathroom mirror.
The ghost, who has never acknowledged her presence, suddenly appeared in front of her with throat cut open and bleeding through her white shift. Then with a thousand voices it spoke as one.
"The river shall swallow the dragons,
for blood that remains unpaid.
The spider must pay penance,
to untangle the deal once made."
Helaena's lungs burned as she tried to re-emerge from her tub, spilling water all over her tiled floor. She doesn't even remember coming into the water.