Work Text:
One.
When Jacaerys felt the small cold shivering hand of Baela Targaryen clasp his, he felt seen for the first time since the death of Sir Harwin. His mentor. His hero. His father. His mother, though loving and so empathic had lost her mother as well, he still felt as though Balea and Helaena were the only people on this dreary isle other than Luke who could truly understand him.
Unlike the girls, he couldn’t weep and cry as he truly wanted. His father had died a terrible firey death and he couldn’t grieve. It would be an admission of the truth everyone knew. That he was a Strong. Not a Velaryon. And seeing his cousin's brown hand in his pale white one only highlighted how true that statement was. As much as he knew his father, Laenor, loved him and Luke to pieces it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. The whispers would never stop until his mother was finally crowned and they could write the history books. But for now, he clung to Baela’s soft hand and felt her sadness as if it were his own.
Two.
They all stood silently shoulder to shoulder on the ridged rocks of Dragonstone as his mother married Daemon. Their clothes were black and their faces grim as they still mourned their dead parents and gained another all in the same week. Jace looked over at Baela’s sullen face, wrapped up and shaken at the chain of events that had all seemingly stemmed from her mother’s death.
Jace thought deeply about his father. About how deeply Laena’s death had cut him. How he died so violently so quickly after. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was mercy. No matter what it was all Jace knew was that he couldn’t take any more death. He had lost two fathers in a week and now stood watching his mother bind herself to another. He didn’t know what his mother was thinking but he trusted her more than anyone else in the world. He knew how the Queen and her brood viewed them now. How no one but his grandfather protected his mother. The Queen had dared to cut her, scar her, and faced no consequences. His mother needed power. She needed Daemon. Needed his fire. Needed the fear he brought. Jace wished more than anything to be big enough to protect her himself. To protect all of them. But he couldn’t. So he stood silently, finally allowed to dress in black, and watched as his mother got married in the ways of their people and expanded their little family from four to seven.
He would protect them. His mother. Baby Joffery. Luke. Helaena. Baela. He would be so strong and powerful that even the Hightower flock could doubt them.
Three.
They knew it wasn’t proper but neither of them cared. They had nightmares and were so full of grief that no one could understand. Jace knew his mother was hurt. She was not a statue who didn’t shed a tear. Sir Harwin’s death pained her but he also saw something different in how she gazed at Daemon. There was something different between them. Something stronger. So he didn’t bring all his pain and heartache to her but to Baela who seemed so confident during the day but was ravaged by nightmares at night.
In his dark room in the ancient walls of Dragonstone, Baela lay next to him, huddled under the soft covers and eyes red with tears. “Father said she was brave for what she did. That she didn’t want to die lying in a bed surrounded by maesters and midwives but a rider's death. But I think she was scared. I think she died in pain and in anguish. I hear her screams in my dreams and it frightens me.” She whispered.
“I hear him too. Harwin. Burned by flames destroying his home. Desperate to get out. Praying to his gods, thinking of us, his children who will never see him again.” Jace whispered back, face wet with his own tears. “Joffery will never know him or Laenor. The love they had for us. The love they had for my mother. I can only tell him stories but he’ll never truly know.”
Baela gripped his hand as they sobbed together. It would get better he knew. One day. But today he wanted to cry with someone who understood. Who knew the whole terrible truth and still saw him as he was. The pressure that would someday lie on his shoulders. The future looked so uncertain and full of more death and suffering. And they fell asleep together and hand in hand.