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Helaena wakes up crying at twenty past three, the sound thin and piercing, cutting cleanly through the darkness of the house like a bird’s call.
Alicent blinks awake with it, heart lurching into her throat before her mind quite manages to catch up. For the first few seconds, her body’s steeling itself, preparing for catastrophe, until she remembers with a jolt of weariness that this is simply what their nights are like now.
The cry sounds again, persistent and sharp, and Alicent feels her jaw tighten before she’s consciously aware of it.
It’s shameful, ugly and almost instinctual — the irritation. It burns through her so quickly it almost feels like it’s her body that’s betraying her, and not her mind, that it’s simply her nerves overreacting before her brain can correct them.
Alicent squeezes her eyes shut. She tells herself that Helaena is only a toddler, that she doesn’t know anything, that she needs her mothers, that this is normal, that this is the price of love and the proof of it and not a feat worth challenging Sisyphus over. That it isn’t something she should begrudge her.
The guilt comes fast on the heels of the annoyance, settles heavily over her, like a cloak she can’t help but burrow under. Guilt is familiar, something she’s known deeply since her own childhood, a language she’s been taught by her father.
Besides her, the other side of the bed is already empty—Rhaenyra is gone, as usual, without so much as a hint of exasperation or any hesitation whatsoever.
Alicent lets out a sigh and turns her head toward the door, listening. There is the soft creak of the hallway floorboards, the one that always gives it away, and then the low murmur of Rhaenyra’s voice, worn soft with sleep but unhurried. As though the sound of their daughter crying has not startled her awake, like she’s been waiting for it.
“It’s alright, sweetheart,” she hears her say distantly, smooth as butter, “I’ve got you, yeah? Want Mr Bugs?”
Alicent swings her legs over the side of the bed and sits there, hands folded tightly in her lap. She does not get up. She tells herself she does not need to. Rhaenyra is already there. Rhaenyra always is. Alicent would just be intruding, and isn’t Dr Robby always saying that Helaena needs bonding time with both of her mothers?
She allows herself to believe it, because it is easier than admitting the other truth: that she is afraid of walking into that room and finding their daughter reaching for Rhaenyra first.
She pictures it without trying: Rhaenyra scooping Helaena up against her shoulder, the practiced lift of her hip as she shifts the child’s weight; the way she presses her mouth into that fine, white-almost silver hair without thinking. She will sway a little as she walks, bare feet padding softly, already humming something tuneless and low.
It is, Alicent thinks—not for the first time–-infuriating how natural she makes it look. How Rhaenyra molds herself into something soft and gentle.
Outside of their little corner of the world, she is anything but. Rhaenyra runs her company with a kind of ruthless brilliance that makes people revere her and fear her in the same breath, that they loathe on her but adore on her uncle. A storm in her own right, presence filling every room before both of her shoes are in the door. Yet, in Helaena’s room, she’s whisper soft, never trying to take up space.
Alicent knows why. They have been in each other’s lives since middle school and there’s very little she does not know about Rhaenyra. She knows Viserys was absent in the way powerful men often are, physically there and emotionally on another planet, always thinking of the company even when outside of it, calls, meetings, planes halfway across the world before Rhaenyra was three years old, so she doesn’t even when she learned not to miss him. She’d had a father who loved her, who’d always try to be there for her for big and small reasons, but never quite on the beat, always late.
Rhaenyra’s response to that absence, at its’ core, is to overcorrect — to be there, always, to not give Helaena even the smallest chance to miss her, because missing, in Rhaenyra’s mind, is abandonment.
She loves this about her, she does. Loves it with a sharp, complicated tenderness that sits right behind her ribs. The ease. The instinct. The way Rhaenyra seems to move through motherhood as though it’s not a skill to be learned, but as simple as breathing.
If Alicent were brave enough, she’d admit to herself how she hates the way it reflects her own stiffness back at her.
She remembers her childhood; similar yet a sharp contrast to Rhaenyra’s, who’d at least known, without shadow of a doubt, and could take comfort in the fact that her father loved her – no matter how imperfectly. Otto was never absent. If anything, he was too present, building her into something polished, useful, and obedient and called it love.
Alicent had carried Helaena for nine months. She had known every ache and flutter, every measured kick; she had followed every rule, every instruction, every carefully outlined expectation. Pregnancy had been a series of boxes to tick, milestones to meet. She had been good at it. Excellent, even. Dr. Robby had praised her on it, how well she listened and how easy the pregnancy had been.
Motherhood is something else entirely.
When Alicent looks at herself now, listening to her own body react to her child’s cry with annoyance instead of instinct to calm, to nurture, she feels terror bloom in the pit of her stomach.
You’re just like him, she thinks, and means it. Distant. Controlled. Uncomfortable. Cannot even hold her right without purposefully remembering the steps.
Alicent swallows.
The floorboards creak again, announcing her presence before she even rounds the corner. Rhaenyra steps inside, steps slow as to not jostle the precious cargo in her arms. Helaena is tucked against her chest, but still not lost to sleep, one tiny fist curled stubbornly around the ear of Mr Bugs — who is not, as the name would suggest, a bunny but a small, fluffy deer with one ear permanently nicked from the one time Helaena pulled a bit too hard.
“Oh,” Rhaenyra murmurs, catching Alicent’s eyes in the dark. “You’re up. We have a visitor.”
She grins and lifts Helaena slightly, jostling her just enough to coax a sleepy whimper. “I think someone’s missed us, huh?”
Alicent doesn’t say anything – because what would she say, really, that would be true and not cruel?
Us. As if it’s mutual, evenly distributed, as if they were a single inseparable unit. As if her chest doesn’t hurt whenever Helaena’s tiny arms reach instinctively for Rhaenyra, as if her face doesn’t lit up with unbridled joy the moment Rhaenyra walks through the door, no matter the hour of day or the smell of the office on her suit
Alicent looks at her sleepy, adorable, little face and thinks sharply, a thought as ugly as it’s quick. I’m sure she missed you
Then, immediately, forces herself to stop thinking it. It’s uncharitable, unfair, and worst of all, untrue in the ways that matter.
She is glad Rhaenyra’s so good with her. Of course she is. Rhaenyra is a wonderful wife and a caring mother, handling both of them with such care Alicent sometimes wonders what she did in a previous life to deserve it.
It’s not Helaena’s fault that she loves freely, drawn to Rhaenyra like she’s the sun, not her fault her face goes slack and her eyes go starry whenever Rhaenyra calls her ladybug and kisses her sharp little nose, or that she reaches for Rhaenyra first.
Alicent loves her so much it hurts, a love so deep she could drown in it. It catches in her throat sometimes, makes her choke on nothing, especially when she watches her with Rhaenyra, when she cannot believe this is her life after all; the love of her life, radiant, and their daughter, a perfect amalgamation of both of them. Some nights she’ll stand outside of the nursery door just to hear her breathing, that soft little snore she lets out when she’s in the deepest part of sleep, just like her mother.
Rhaenyra lowers herself onto the mattress, carefully maneuvering Helaena between them, the toddler immediately turning on her side and nuzzling further into Rhaenyra’s side, back pressed into Alicent’s hip.
“She wouldn’t settle back down in the nursery.” She leans in to press a kiss to Helaena’s hair. “Wanted the big bed.”
Helaena makes a small noise that she interpets to mean agreement, and with all the strength of a toddler, tries to push herself up on her elbows, determined. She leans towards Rhaenyra’s chest with the focus of a mountain climber, little fingers gripping the fabric of her sleep shirt.
Alicent’s hand moves before her mind can talk her out of it, can overanalyze Helaena’s wishes, slipping under her ribcage to steady her, and lifts her up, Rhaenyra’s arms opening automatically to receive her.
Helaena presses her cheek to Rhaenyra’s sternum with a satisfied huff, dragging Mr Bugs so that he’s wedged under her chin, then settles bonelessly.
Alicent looks at their daughter’s face in the soft light, and thinks, not for the first time, that she’s objectively the sweetest thing Alicent has ever had the honor of seeing. Rhaenyra’s eyes, as blue and impossibly expressive, her smile, and her hair, of course — silver-blonde and fine as silk. All Targaryen.
Still, Rhaenyra insists at every doctor’s appointment, playdate, to every stranger they happen to meet in the park, to their family at gatherings — that Helaena is the spitting image of Alicent, that she wouldn’t have it any other way. Jokes she’s got Alicent’s nose, her heart, her brains – that she just gave her the hair.
Alicent never says it but selfishly, she loves that Rhaenyra sees so much of her in their daughter, even as Alicent sees Rhaenyra in her more --and loves them both for it.
As if sensing her inner turmoil, Helaena's eyes open slightly, catching Alicent's gaze, as perceptive as her mother, seemingly attuned to her mother’s moods. Her mouth curls slightly, into a smile so innocent it hurts, mouth opening slightly. She smiles back, reaching out to caress the soft little dimple in her cheek, the very same one Rhaenyra gets.
Then Helaena shifts minutely, dropping Mr Bugs, and knee bumping into Rhaenyra's stomach
“Oh come on,” Rhaenyra groans, barely awake, but still instinctively accommodating, shifting both Helaena and the plushy into preferred positions, a few inches closer to Alicent. She brings a hand to her face, rubbing at her eyes, and Alicent suddenly remembers the array of meetings and reports Rhaenyra needs to go through tomorrow. She’ll be up with the sun and hasn’t protested once.
“You can sleep,” she says, “I’ll move her back to her crib once she’s out.”
Rhaenyra hums, content, her eyes already drifting shut. “Mm. Okay. Thank you, love.”
Helaena’s breathing evens out between them, her body warm and impossibly small. Alicent traces the edges of the ceiling, and wonders how even now, surrounded by the two people she loves most in the world, she feels like an outlier in her own family, how love can be absolute, as much a fact as that the Earth orbits the Sun, and yet in the ugliest corners of the mind, feel like it’s simply not pure enough.
Alicent hesitates for a moment, then shifts carefully, turning onto her side so that she’s facing Rhaenyra. She inches closer until her forehead brushes the slope of Rhaenyra’s shoulder, her nose filled with the faint, familiar scent of her skin and shampoo. Her palm stays where it is, steady and firm, spread across the small rise of Helaena’s back.
For a moment, Helaena’s nose wrinkles, lips parting. She makes a soft, uncertain sound on the cusp of waking.
Alicent’s thumb begins to move in small, slow circles. The words are out of her mouth before she can overthink them, quiet and sure and strangely easy.
“I’ve got you, darling,” she murmurs, the endearment slipping out without effort. “Go back to sleep. Mama’s got you.”
Alicent breathes out in relief as her words seem to settle Helaena, whose face is slack with sleep once more.
Allows herself to feel the slightest sense of victory, of pride, that feels way too big for her chest.
Next to her, Rhaenyra’s head relaxes further into the pillow, one arm wrapping around both of them, pulling them closer.
Alicent closes her eyes.