【DREAMS】

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE FOR VAELOR TO GET HIS KNEE TO STOP HOPPING. Up and down, up and down. It was as if Vaelor's body was telling him and everyone else around him the truth. He was as frightened as a rabbit, and he wasn't even being chased by a fox.

Fumbling with rings, that didn't even help- it never did, but he tried anyway, something to grip himself to this world around him- the room that surrounded him, the room with a woman that so many times before, had cloaked him in comfort since he was a child. There was a warmth in the room, trying desperately to breach his walls, but today he was cold as a northern fortress, shivering at the scarce whisper of dreams.

"She came to me again," He started, fiddling with the ring of silver wrapped around one of his fingers on his left hand. "the girl and her baby." It encased his index finger- the left one, not the right, that was encased in Lannister gold.

More his foot tapped, more. Urging him to listen to himself, yet he could not. He would not. His mind was a terror, a haunted thing. Yet he was privileged enough not to live through the horrors, he had seen them. Seen it.

Aemma rested on a settee- he shouldn't trouble her with his thoughts, but she drew them out with a single look, kindly, so kindly. "It isn't something you should worry yourself over." She told him, voice sensible as ever.

How are you on the edge of birth, and yet so calm? He wondered, having remembered the screams. Both in his dreams, and out. Vaelor could recall every time when Aemma had ventured to the childbed. Her screeches shook the halls of the Red Keep, and every time but for Rhaenyra, did a terror rain down upon the inhabitants. Forever, he could remember it, but never live it, and that was a mercy he did not deserve- a mercy Viserys did not deserve. Should they not only understand, but know the misery?

"How can I not worry myself?" The ring on his right was carved with a lion with tiny rubies for the eyes. "What if it means something for you?"

A dull echo resounded as the tap, tap, tapping of Vaelor's foot continued. His leg would be aching before he even saw the tiltyard, and likely would turn worse, if Daemon chose him as an opponent during the tourney. The echo was as hollow as a noble's laugh, as his leg was already crooked as a mangled staircase.

With a swish of her fan, he found himself looking up, staring up at his fear. Looking Aemma in the face.

"Viserys has dreams." She said simply, as if dreams were only figments of mindless thought strewn together. "They give him so much hope." There was a slight tilt in her voice, that underlying mumble of agony. "I admit, I think too much hope."

She spoke as if dreams hadn't saved their house from the ashes of Old Valyria, and risen it to where it was today. Dreams were fickle things, of course. To feel them was very different from understanding them, and perhaps Vaelor didn't understand this dream at all. He certainly knew Viserys didn't understand his. Viserys dream was an illusion, caused out of his yearning for a son he could not have. Vaelor's appeared from blood and dust, built upon a sea of torn crimson and sapphire cloaks, floating in the wind as water engulfed crumbling stone.

It was not a dream he'd carried in his mind, but a nightmare, and were not all dreams of dragons, nightmares in clever garb? Daenys foresaw the Doom of Valyria, and Vaelor foresaw the misery of a silver-haired girl and her babe, and his heart, what echoed through the halls right along with the wailing babe cradled in the girl's arms?

Aemma, Aemma.

But the woman sat before him, her belly ripe with child, was far too aged to have been that girl in the visage, and yet... Aemma, Aemma. It whispered to him, a bitter chant, and in his nightmare it grew to screeching, and he could hear a mother tearing at one's flesh. He only thought it was a mother from a feeling, but it rang true in his heart. Aemma, Aemma. That name left the lips, sung by stone statues in sweet melancholy.

He hadn't told Aemma the whole of it. He never would. It would only serve to scare her, during a time where fear was a most fretful thing for a person in her condition. He'd never lied to her, but this once he would. Just this once.

A wind swept through the chamber, and Vaelor's mind returned to the present. The pale yellow curtains, dancing in the wind like forlorn lovers beneath a moonless sky- in truth, he did not even know what that looked like.

What he did know, was his foot was still tapping.

Daylight crept in, and Vaelor knew he only had so much time left. "We all hope." He finally replied, before taking a deep breath to try and soothe his trembling. "Our hopes have differences, yes, but the root remains the same." Aemma need not worry for him, not when he was so fretful over her.

Vaelor believed he was worse than she was when he was a child, and she'd only just wed Viserys. Then again, she was a child then too. His brow creased as he leaned forward in his chair, praying to Gods he didn't believe in, that he might find some comfort being close to her, for his body still felt so lifeless in a room that felt like a hearth had wrapped itself around him.

Like a child, he reached his hand out to her. She was the only mother he'd known, and yet she was barely nine years his elder.

"Please," He begged softly, "be alright."

When her hand met Vaelor's, and grasped it as tenderly as she always had, he felt like he was going to cry. He did not want her to console him, not when she should be preparing to console herself. He was of little account to herself, and yet he felt so urged to just weep. He felt overcome by swift emotions that daggered him in the heart and poisoned him with... with a taint he couldn't name.

He bit his tongue, did not dare to annoy her with his complaints, rather he spoke them silently to himself. I don't want to participate in the tourney. He gulped, his hand tightening slightly as it clasped her's, he would be remiss to admit, it was because he was afraid he may never hold it again if he participated in that tourney. That tourney where he was sure Daemon would choose him for an opponent and allow to die of slow embarrassment rather than doing him the honor of a quick death by skewering him through with his lance.

I want to stay. Here. With you. I want to stay. Even in his thoughts, he felt like he was trembling. Then, the tears fell. Vaelor couldn't stop them, it would've been hopeless to try. At least he was safe with Aemma rather than on the tiltyard with Daemon. There was only one other person he felt safe enough to falter with and she... Genavene...

He smiled, mournful on a day meant to be happy, one of celebration. He leaned down, pressing his lips to Aemma's hand. It was warm as summertime, and for a scant moment his once frozen body bloomed with the knowledge that she would be alright. She had to be.

As he rested his head upon her hand, his sodden eyes fluttered shut, and that tap, tap, tapping of his leg finally stopped.

Vaelor stayed like that until he was called away to leave for the tourney. Hope, a heavy anchor in his heart.

【A/N】

Not a chapter with a lot of dialogue, but a lot of inner-thought. Originally this was going to be a lot more dialogue, but in the end I redid basically all of this because I wasn't liking how shallow Aemma and Vaelor's dynamic felt. It isn't just that she raised him, it is that she is the only person who raised him. (that he can remember) Also, in the original thing for this, Vaelor wasn't as nervous, or he was, but to me it didn't feel visceral enough. I hope with this, I've managed to convey that.

Anyways, all of my motivation for this came in one night because of the quote "And suddenly the monster in him falls silent as he rests his head on her lap." do with that what you will.

I hoped you enjoyed this chapter, and I hope you'll join me for the next one <3