Inspired by [this] post by @dvg-tvgs <33 check tags guys
Anyways whatever you do, don't think about ghost standing in the nicu ward with his premature baby tucked to his bare skin, nurses passing by giving him sympathetic looks because they've seen this play out hundreds of times before.
Don't think about ghost pressing a kiss to his little son's head and whispering "it's okay, love, you don't have to fight it. It's okay, you can go, I won't blame you." Through tears. You and him always planned to have a big baby just like he was, picking out clothes and a cradle to match.
There was no plan for this. For losing both of his family in one night. He kisses the babies head again, tucks it's head under his chin and tries to blink away the tears when he looks at the ceiling. He had promised you he wouldn't cry when he was born.
Daeron has abandoned his post in a time where you need him most. Baelor takes up the tender duty of caretaking in his stead.
link to part two
author's note: please excuse any royal faux pas or societal mistakes, still getting into the groove of writing for our handsome Right Hand Man <3
content warnings: lady/princess!Reader, R has hair (texture/color not described), Baelor down bad for Daeron’s wife (R), Daeron the Drunken living up to the name, Jena Dondarrion mention, age gap (undefined), tense familial relations, active miscarriage (R), blood mention, milk of the poppy, longing, flangst, grieving, caretaking, petnames (!), no smut but always MDNI
word count: 2.7k
You’ve been bleeding for two days.
Slowly, the Grandmaester has assured. Nothing out of the ordinary for this condition, Your Grace.
But that’s where he is wrong. Your condition is anything but ordinary- a husband should be with his wife during a miscarriage. Supporting her, being a strong leader, a tender ear.
Yet Prince Daeron remains on a binge of the local taverns, drinking his life away- while every passing minute there is life pouring out of you.
It’s been two days of Baelor hardly leaving your side. Two days of midwives and maesters and lady’s maids tiptoeing around the chair he keeps attendance in.
Two days of holding your hand, of wiping cool cloths across your sweaty brow, of watching your chest rise and fall in sleep.
You’re given drinks to ease the pain on a carefully timed rotation- Baelor has made your comfort the highest priority. There is nothing worse to him than needless suffering. Especially if it’s yours.
Even still, you are wracked with cramps and aches, pains that spasm through your muscles and leave you weak and short of breath. No amount of poultices or herbs or milk of the poppy can cut through the feeling entirely.
Baelor doesn’t know why he feels so responsible for your care. Why the need to help and be at your service is so deeply important to him, or why tending to you feels like a vocation- he cannot say for sure.
What he does know is that this vigil is a necessity.
Maekar was angry, at first.
His brother had dragged him out into the halls on the second morning of Baelor’s bedside supervision, hissing so no servants had the chance to overhear.
“It’s unseemly. It isn’t fucking proper, Baelor- you’re her uncle.”
Maekar ground his jaw back and forth, the red of his cheeks stark in comparison to the white of his beard.
“For fuck’s sake- you are the Right Hand of the King. Don’t you have better things to be doing?”
Baelor was quiet. He studied the flex of the tendons in his own hand. He’d always been good at waiting out his younger brother's anger, until the emotions lost steam and could be met with reason.
“I am tending to the wreck your son has decided to leave in his wake.”
Maekar’s mouth had dropped in shock but he’d recovered well. Stuffed the emotion down with a roll of his eyes and a bitter sigh and held out a finger, still accusing but at the beginnings of a retreat.
“You clean this mess, quietly, and I’ll see to your small court duties. After the week is through, we all will return to our stations.”
Baelor nodded. Maekar turned on his heel so quickly his doublet had flared out, and before the dust even settled, Baelor had taken up at your side again.
As it stands, you are just another mess to Maekar. And to Daeron: too much responsibility, a vessel to his pure fear of the future.
Baelor considers them fools who cannot see how inherently worthy you are.
You are worthy of Baelor’s time and attention, certainly. And of the best care the realm and royal coffers can provide.
Still, you bleed.
The midwives attend you once an hour, changing out the cotton strips and the sheets when needed.
Jena did not bleed this long.
It’s the one thought Baelor has allowed himself to ruminate upon. It emboldens him to ask questions of the Grandmaester; it keeps him focused on your care to the highest degree.
Maybe it is not fair to compare your experience to that of his late wife’s- Jena’s miscarriage happened nearly two decades ago, and it was a quick, quiet affair that Baelor only caught the tail end of when he’d returned home from dealing with a skirmish.
Her sadness hadn’t been the same as yours. The depths of your grief are wholly different- Jena already had beautiful Valarr to console her, and a healthy Matarys only a year after the lost pregnancy.
This would have been your first.
Baelor knows, your grief is different.
Mostly, it has made you quiet.
Your usual voracity for life- in clear, bright laughter that echoes off the red stones of the Keep’s hallways, in armfuls of hand-gathered flowers from the gardens, in easy smiles and gentle touches- has been drained from you.
There is something pale and distant now to the way you speak. Even your silences are weighty and troubled.
This, of all things, is to be expected. Baelor does not know when you will return to yourself- only that he wishes to be there when it happens, and to usher in your healing as much as he is allowed.
The weather is most gloomy today. A ceaseless drizzle of rain casts the skies grey and swathes the whole castle in damp air.
Even with the clouds, there is a weak beam of light arching from your bedroom window. It crests over the edge of the dragon-red covers, glinting off the decorative pillows and ending where Baelor’s boots rest on the floor.
He is at your bedside, again. In the same chair that held his form from sunrise to sunset yesterday. It is high-backed and cushioned well enough, though Baelor could feel the strain in his back and shoulders upon leaving your side for bed last night.
If Baelor had his most secret wishes fulfilled, he would have spent the night on a floor pallet just to be near, should you have needed him. But that would have been much too bold a statement, and things are tenuous enough as they stand with the rest of his relatives.
So Baelor sits at your side and stares unseeing at the parchment in his hands. It is a log account of trade ships that looks rather important, if someone were to look over his shoulder.
He is trying to maintain the appearance of duty that is most comfortable for everyone to accept. In truth, his current duty lies in living for every breath you are taking.
You’ve been sleeping since he arrived before dawn. The Grandmaster gave report that your night was spent fitfully and low-spirited.
Baelor thinks he can see the strain in your expression, even while you sleep. There is a furrow to your brow, an unsettled turn to the corner of your lips.
You share this in common with your husband. Rest often cannot be found, even in dreaming.
Your eyes flutter open an hour before noon.
The first face you make is a wince, one of pain- Baelor’s parchment hits the floor without another glance as he leans in.
“H- hurts.” The word falls flatly from your mouth. Your lip twists again, as do your hands into the bedsheets.
Baelor places his palm over the tight fist of your left hand. He is not thinking of how this would look, should any servants enter- he is only thinking of you. Of taking away that awful, animal haze in your eyes.
“Tell me,” he soothes. In the same voice he uses for spooked mares. “Tell me where it hurts.”
“M-” Another word split by the lance of a gasp, your left hand unfurling beneath Baelor’s touch as your other drifts to carefully rest at your midsection beneath the blankets. “-my stomach. The worst.”
Baelor nods. He coasts his thumb against the pulse of your wrist’s heartbeat. It is agony to touch you, it is agony to not touch you, it is agony to see you this way.
“Stay here,” he instructs, feeling foolish as soon as he’s said it- as if you could defy any orders right now.
Your eyes stay on Baelor as he rises, as he crosses to the fireplace at the far wall of your room. He can feel your gaze as intense as the sun on the back of his neck as he kneels at the brick.
There are embers still burning low in the middle of all the firewood; Baelor uses a prong to roll a few of them closer, then guides them into the short-handled bronze warming pan.
He takes a thick strip of muslin from a nearby table and wraps the pan so the heat will permeate but not burn, then returns to your side.
The painful pinch of your face eases some when Baelor folds the heated bundle to your stomach, buffeting and smoothing the blankets and covers around to hold it in place.
You blink up at Baelor from amongst your cradle of pillows. In a shadow of your former tone, your whisper comes-
“I’m sorry, Your Grace.”
Baelor shakes his head even before your apology is finished.
“Sorry? For what?”
Your fingers tangle in the sheets again.
“I lost an heir. A child of the Crown. But- I will be better. A better wife, better at my duties- I will get Daeron to… to love me.”
Sadness fills the well of Baelor’s chest. How heavy the crown must feel on your young head, even in the midst of so much grief.
There’s a lurch that cannot be ignored- Baelor picks up your nearest hand and encloses it in both of his, rings kissing coolly at your skin.
The godswood will hear his footfalls, later, for the overstep he willingly commits now.
“Dear heart. You need not worry about anything besides your health- the most important thing for the Crown is that you become well again.”
Your gaze drops to the fold of your hands together against the stark red of the covers. Baelor continues, still gentle-
“And my nephew cares for you. Very much. He happens to have… regrettable issues with responsibility. He will return, and I will support you in whatever hand you deem necessary to deal him.”
It is not a lie- Daeron is besotted with you.
He sticks to your side at parties and councils, trails after you in the halls like a lost puppy, and is a decent husband when he puts his mind to it. When he isn’t avoiding his emotions and shirking his commitments by drowning in ale or sleeping in ditches.
“I do not judge him harshly,” you murmur. Too forgiving, too kind. “I know how difficult a loss this is to weather.”
Baelor closes his eyes against the absolute goodness of your nature, then looks back to you with quiet intention.
“You must know, my lady, that you are not at fault for this. The maesters have estimated one in every four pregnancies come to a premature end. No one should cause you to feel any guilt- least of all yourself.”
There is an overwhelming gratefulness brimming along with your tears; Baelor looks away again before it is irreparably scorched onto his soul.
His thumb strokes over your wrist. He needs to say it, because you should hear it from someone, so he does.
“This was not caused by anything you did. Or anything you could have done differently. Your time will come again.”
Beneath Baelor’s fingertip, your pulse ticks when you ask- “Are you sure?”
You sound so vulnerable. It does not help that your hair is undone, free of the royal uptwists and jeweled hairpins that your lady’s maids are so fond of dressing you in. It’s flowing loose over your pillow, framing a face that now appears much younger than its years.
It is most becoming. Baelor fears it will be his undoing.
He shifts in his seat. Clears his throat. Tells a story to try and put some distance between you and the truth of his soul.
“My late wife, Jena, had a loss such as this. And by next spring, she had Matarys. The occurrence of such miracles are more common than one would think.”
Hope seems to crumple you, brave face cracking along with your voice.
Longing lays your questioning plain. “Really? And Matarys, he was- he was healthy? At birth?”
Baelor smiles at the recollection. “The babe was so sturdy, our Grandmaester at the time thought the Princess was blessed with twins. But it was just Matarys, and his thighs as round as a honeyloaf each.”
There is a tremulous wet laugh that breaks through your tears, and Baelor feels something within take flight at the sound.
He asks if you might stomach some food, and at the wrinkle of your nose, turns to the bedside table where a pot of tea has been left to strengthen.
The leaves of Lady’s Mantle are meant to stopper any bleeding- though Baelor is not sure it is working as intended. Regardless, it will be a small comfort to see you take down any sort of sustenance.
He realizes halfway in turning with cup in hand that weak as you are, you will need help- his help- to drink.
Baelor slips his hand behind your head and nearly jolts at the warmth of it, at the feeling of your neck and hair and the stick of sweat at your skin. He aids in lifting your head, then holds the cup to your lips while you drink.
By the time you finish the breath is ragged in Baelor’s throat, which he attempts to cover with another clear of his throat and busying himself with returning the cup to its table.
Your eyes are on his again, worry creasing a line between your brows.
“You likely should not be here, Your Grace. I’m sure Prince Maekar had some harsh words for you. If I am the cause of any strife-”
“No,” Baelor interrupts. Smooth and velvet even through the temper that flares at the thought of you having overheard his brother’s fit. “Not in the slightest. His visit this morning was one of well-wishing and the extension of a most generous offer to take over my courtly duties while I am here.”
Your eyebrow arches severely and with much skepticism.
Baelor smiles, fond at seeing such a familiar expression, one that speaks to the natural state of your fiery personality at any time other than sickbed.
“Trust me, sweetling,” Baelor says, the epithet escaping before he can stifle it. “It is in the realm’s best interest that someone is watching over you.”
There is a hint of a smile around your eyes even as they grow heavy with exhaustion. “It is hard to complain when I am in such good company. I consider myself lucky indeed.”
Your hand nearest Baelor is resting on an embroidered black dragon. He waits as your breathing evens out, watching the light twitch of your fingers against the covers.
And then a murmur from your lips just before sleep pulls you under.
“Thank you, Baelor.”
His name, stripped of its title, is startlingly intimate.
Baelor cannot bear to look at the serenity of your face for a few minutes, gaze fixed still on the threads of a dragon under your palm. He gains courage enough to stretch out the back of his hand to your temple, feeling for a fever but gratefully finding only skin dewed with sweat.
Baelor wonders at many things, in the quiet that lapses after you fall into the land of the dreaming.
He wonders if more milk of the poppy would be appropriate on your waking. He wonders at your kindness that seems to have no bounds. He wonders if Daeron would care to know that it is his uncle tending your bedside.
Baelor does not let his wonderings linger on his feelings towards you- not for any real length of time. The overwhelm of duty, care, and love that he feels for his nephew’s wife does not sit easily at the council of his thoughts.
I would find a way to give her the world, if she asked. I would give her a child.
When this thought crawls up the back of his neck like gooseflesh Baelor leans down to retrieve the scattered parchment from the floor.
He rests it in his lap once more and stares, unseeing, at the scratch of ship logs. He listens to your breathing and awaits the next entry of servants who wish to bring you back to health nearly as much as him.
Baelor keeps vigil, the best he knows how.
afterword: thank you so much for reading! reblogs are never required but much appreciated <3
miyeong gets pregnant for a third time about 3 years after nayoon is born. she’s super excited to have another child. poppy is reluctant, considering her age, but she’s admittedly excited, too.
celine pretends to be excited. she does a pretty good job of it for her family’s sake. but she’s too terrified of dying too early in this child’s life, even with their extended lifespan, to be truly happy about this news. she finds her family right now to be perfect, with their three daughters and their two daughters-in-law and their wonderful grandchildren. she doesn’t really want another child.
but she knows that once this baby is born, her tune will certainly change. she knows that the first time she holds this baby in her arms, she’ll love it as much as she loved her three daughters before them.
she never gets the chance to find out.
two months after miyeong discovers her pregnancy, she miscarries.
poppy and miyeong are absolutely SHATTERED. they were already starting to think of names for the baby, especially ones that were similar to rumi’s, because hayun and nayoon’s names are similar.
celine is devastated. far moreso than she would’ve expected herself to be. she feels immense guilt about losing the baby, because she feels it’s her fault. that her not wanting this child is what ultimately caused them to lose it, and the universe, in some sort of sick and twisted way, was just fulfilling her desire to not have another. worse yet, now that it’s gone, she realizes just how much she actually DID want it.
it takes her a while to admit her guilty conscience about this to her wives, who she wants to let grieve and, in miyeongs case, physically recover. they reassure her that its not her fault, and that those fears are perfectly understandable to have.
they never do end up having another child after that.
Okay it’s like 2 AM. But Percy and Annabeth struggle to have a baby for a long time. Mortal fertility doctors say there’s nothing wrong and so they know it’s the gods. More specifically, it’s Hera being a petty bitch. They make offerings to Demeter and Dionysus hoping that blessings from the other fertility gods will help offset Hera’s doings. Annabeth gets pregnant, but Hera is still the goddess of child birth, so she miscarries. After that they stop trying for awhile. It’s too painful. They focus on the demigod kids they foster instead.
After awhile, Annabeth gets pregnant again. They haven’t made any more offerings, but Percy wonders if Mr. D still remembers all that Diet Coke and gold. In any case, they’re holding their breath, making lots of offerings, including to Hera. They don’t tell anyone until it’s unavoidable because she’s showing. They don’t look at baby name books or have a baby shower or anything, too afraid of getting attached, of facing that loss and pain again.
But apparently Hera’s found her compassion, because Annabeth gives birth to a healthy baby girl—Annabeth’s spitting image, except for her sea green eyes and the freckles on her cheeks. She’s their little miracle, and the day she is born they burn so many offerings for Hera, it’s a little ridiculous. And some for Dionysus and Demeter, just to be safe.
(What they don’t know: Dionysus has a soft spot for that kid Peter Johnson, and is always down to pick a fight. He never really got along with his step-mom anyway.)
my best friend and her baby are dying please pray for them please please please pray for them she’s only twenty-six years old she has so much life left to live and her baby hasn’t even been born and they’re gonna die
Hey I remember you saying that Leshy and I’m so sorry but I forgot her name was going to the fertility doctor I’m dying to know what happened
Sorry if I’m being rude
Umm… it didn’t go as planned…
No! You’re not rude for asking! To be honest, this idea had been tossing about in my mind for since I started working with this pair! Thank you for offering an opportunity to dust off an old wip 💕
