❈ 𝔅𝔞𝔯𝔯𝔢𝔫
❊ Summary: After multiple miscarriages, you think you've finally done your duties as a wife until you give birth to a stillborn. The loss haunts your marriage as a result. ❊ CWs: Miscarriages, descriptions of childbirth, stillborn baby, and fertility issues. ❊ Content: Angst, grief, struggles with providing an heir, misunderstood causes for pregnancy issues, medieval medicine, hurt/comfort, fempov, use of she/her pronouns, reader's house is unspecified, reader's appearance is unspecified, some canon divergence as Baelor is alive and well ❊ Pairings: Wife!Reader x Husband!Valarr ❊ Word Count: ~2k total
❊ AN: As angst without a happy ending hurts my soul, I might write a continuation of this where you finally get your baby, but we'll have to see LMAO. Anyways, love Valarr and his ten seconds of screentime per episode. Someone get him vaccinated asap, thank you, much love.
You should have known better than to get excited.
This had not been your first time being with child. In fact, you had lost count of how many times a maester had confirmed your condition. Conversely, maybe your mind decided it was better to forget each mark of failure on your behalf.
It was an endless cycle. You'd discover you were carrying, and before the quickening could even think of coming, the pains would begin. Pains meant for labor, for welcomed babes, for moons down the line, took hold.
You knew what it meant after a while.
You knew to expect blood to be trickling down your legs. Clots would escape, and the red would stain everything within reach.
Noblewomen lost children all the time. It did not make you special, different, or more important than any of them. It was just the way of the world. No medicine or procedure could be followed to prevent such an event except for exceptional rest and care.
Still, it saddened you. These had been your creations, things that would have grown into beings with the right amount of time, and your body had killed them. Annihilated their existence before you could begin to show.
Your womb just wouldn't hold. It was a fragile villain that you were forced to house, and it tortured you, taking offense at every gentle attempt to sow seed there. No matter how cautious you were, none of them ever lasted.
These ruins weighed on you. There was a secret part of your heart that was sorrowful, raw with wounds that you couldn't name. If you thought about them too much, your head would stuff with cotton and the need to cry, so you tried not to remember any of it. To tuck the memories away somewhere in the back of your mind to collect fine dust.
You never fully forgot, but the despair lifted when you came to be with child and stayed with child.
Your body grew, shifted, changed with the beautifully hard symptoms of pregnancy. You never spoke aloud your wonder at the developments, and neither did Valarr, but you shared ideas for names with the softness of sunlight. Your husband perpetually gazed at you with something warm, and it filled you with pride.
This was your purpose. You'd been selected to marry Prince Baelor's eldest son, to provide heirs to the primary line of succession, and you were doing it. There was no early spotting in your smallclothes or cramps crawling up from your lower stomach to take root in every nook of your joints.
There was only bliss, rest, and a blossoming joy you did not ever want to rid yourself of.
This was your reward, your proper apology to the realm. You would be a mother to a child with kind Valarr's blood who would cry, and their weeping would be music.
You promised your swollen belly to never yell, to never be cruel, to love them in any form they would take. You'd cherish a son or a daughter equally; health would be optimal but you wouldn't forsake them for any disfigurement or simplemindedness. You'd love them purely for breathing.
Yet, when you pushed the babe out of you with the encouragement of the wet nurses, there had been nothing. There was no weeping, screaming, or relieved laughter from the women surrounding you. It was just the rhythm of your heartbeat in your ears.
The midwife had wrapped the tiny figure in white linen with a pitying look that told you what you feared. What you knew.
Still, you'd elected to hold the child. Perchance your acceptance stemmed from muting shock or a desperate hope that when you'd cradle them, they'd wake up with a shriek, and you'd finally done it.
Of course, that's not what happened.
Your son—a boy with the faintest nest of wet hair—looked to be asleep. His lips were a plummy shade, but his skin was pale. You thought to pretend for an instance. However, your eyes were pooling with tears, and your vision danced until you could barely see his face at all.
The funeral had been a solemn affair.
He'd been burned under the eyes of his kin like all Targaryens were.
You'd worried you'd panic at the sight of the fire. Perhaps vomit all over the hem of your skirts, or collapse down into the grassy ground. You didn't. You just stood there, unable to feel the tips of your fingers or toes as the smoke filled the air and your lungs.
Baelor had taken the time to express his condolences. His face had been kind, his voice low and steady, but all you felt was shame. That was his grandson, the continuation of his line, and you'd thrown it away. You'd only been able to nod with a close-lipped smile in the face of his amenability.
Following the burial, you scarcely saw your husband.
Whether he was avoiding you, you were avoiding him, or it was something in between, you couldn't quite say.
Isolation suited you nicely. You took meals that tasted like sand in the solitude of your personal apartments, and dismissed handmaidens to wash yourself during your baths. You practically lived in your separate chambers. Sleep eluded you frequently, heaviness weighing down on your limbs while your mind stayed restless.
You were content to wallow away in solitude. Your ladies-in-waiting, on the other hand, tried to convince you with deferential faces to distract yourself with something substantial. Even so, embroidery didn't appeal to you, nor did reading or instruments.
You didn't want to do anything.
You just wanted to... well, you wanted to do absolutely nothing.
Nonetheless, after much benign insistence from the women of your court, you'd elected to take a walk in the garden. It was a sculpted, lush sight to behold, with clean air carrying pollen like floral perfume. The bright tranquility made your chest feel tight.
The black of your gown contrasted the vibrant petals and greenery lining the stone path. It was painfully peaceful, and after a long stroll, you sat on a bench surrounded by silver sage and wild roses. It didn't clear your mind, but it lightened the fog so that you could breathe easier.
No one was around to disturb you. Thus, when footfall approached and increased in volume, you noticed it immediately.
Valarr came around the corner. He was put together, like he typically was, hair being brushed by the serene breeze cutting through the leaves and over the bushes. His mismatched eyes fell upon yours, and while you were surprised, it was clear he had expected to see you here.
It well may be he was even looking for you. The thought made your stomach vaguely churn.
"Hello," you greeted quietly.
"Hello," he replied. His voice matched your volume, like a soothing hum, a hand gesturing to the empty space beside you, "May I sit?"
As if you could refuse him anything. Your husband had been far too generous and understanding of each of your bodily disasters for you to shun him away, let alone regarding such a dull request.
Valarr sat down next to you with straight posture. There was a small space left between you, and there was a woodsy scent that clung to his skin like a layer of fragrance.
"I have not seen you in some time," the prince stated.
There was no point in lying. You just agreed, "Yes. I've been taking time to heal."
The word was numb in your mouth. You hadn't moved on from that summer's night, and if you were still for long enough, you swore you could feel the weight of your son in your arms. You picked at your nailbeds to counteract it, ankles recrossing.
"Have you?" Valarr queried, "Healed?"
You spared him a glance; the silver streak in his hair made you feel a bit dizzy. The answer was obvious. Truthfully, you thought he'd ask why won't you come to our chambers or have you been eating enough. He possibly did, just packaged subtly, laced in the three words he chose to speak.
Briefly, you had the urge to lie, but his soft-spoken manner convinced you better of it.
"Barely. I find myself chasing after slumber, although it is faster, and it leaves me desolate," you admitted gingerly.
Valarr huffed, "I'm the same."
His mouth opened as if to continue, but you beat him to it. Your nail dug into a cuticle hard enough to nearly draw blood.
"I'm sorry. My greatest service to the realm is to provide you with children, yet it never comes to fruition. I do– I cannot tell you why,” you elaborate. It sounds somewhat like begging, a plea for forgiveness.
Some whispered it was divine intervention that stole your son’s air and rid the rest before formation. Others blamed you, some physical limitation that prevented a living child.
None said it to your face, but you heard it. Gossip was insidious, the court swimming with self-interest that yipped at the chance to slander another, and a princess was no exception. Whispers ran through the walls like rats.
Valarr’s face contorted, “My love–“
“I should have already given you children. We keep trying, and it’s interrupted by my shortcomings. I wish he’d lived, I do–“
Your husband’s hand moved to grasp yours. It prevented more bumbling justification from leaking over your teeth, and your gaze met his. His face was serious with its rigidity, similar to the expression one made when head pain was piercing at their temples.
“Enough of that,” he said, strict and unyielding like a dagger. It made you feel small; Valarr invariably spoke in a measured way, never raising his voice to the point of sharpness.
“Listen to me: you have done nothing wrong. You may not believe it, but I do. I do,” he gripped your hand tighter, looking into your eyes with such earnestness it threatened to terrify you, “Our son’s death was not the consequence of any sin, mistake, or carelessness of yours. I do not know why it happened, but these losses are no fault of yours.”
His unbridled sincerity made you choke up, blinking rapidly to try and gather your senses, “We… the realm…”
Valarr cut you off firmly, “We will have children one day, when the time is right. I know it.”
"But how do you know?" you asked. Tearfulness grasped the edges, fearfully holding taut.
Your husband grew quiescent, staring at you with something of a fractured expression. It caused him to look older, woefully uncertain in a way that made you feel unusually seen.
"... I don't," he eventually confessed, and his voice frayed at the end, "I just pray it does."
You were frankly surprised at the discovery. Valarr never mentioned praying to the Seven about your pregnancies. How long he’d done so, or when he first began, you could not begin to imagine.
Just the epiphany moved your very soul.
Your husband's hand stayed as an anchor to reality. It was oddly comforting to have the knowledge that he was as lost and unbalanced as you when it came to this matter, to this grief that threatened to sink beneath your feet and swallow you both whole.
You squeezed his palm weakly, voice wet, “I'd like to join you the next time you go to the sept."
Valarr's smile was a crescent that painted him handsomely.
Silence overtook the conversation. It was comfortable, like the wind after a violent storm, caressing the length of your spine with a featherlight weight.
A bird sang overhead somewhere nearby. It filled your ears like heated honey, and you held your husband's hand far beyond the point at which you felt safe enough to let go.
