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Rhaenyra watched quietly from the frame of the door as Laenor put the boys to bed, sweetly kissing their faces and tucking them in. It was their nursery, across the room she shared with her husband. They didn’t share it with other children, hadn’t ever shared it with the Queen’s children.
Alicent wouldn’t let them, and Rhaenyra wouldn’t ever say yes to such a suggestion.
“Did you say your prayers?” he sat between the boys.
Luke and Jace nodded together, hairs in a mess and eyes heavy.
“And did you wash your mouths?”
They both nodded together.
“Any last question?” Laenor offered.
He always offered to answer one last question every night for them, since her oldest got into a bit of a phase asking why things were the way they were. To shorten the interrogating sessions, he would let them ask a single thing remaining in their mind before bed.
Jace shook his head, but Lucerys sat right up.
“Father, why is my hair different?” he asked.
Rhaenyra stood still, tense.
The boys weren’t Laenor’s. Not in the sense people claimed their children were theirs, they weren’t the heirs of his body.
But they were his.
They had his energy, his personality… the sweetness and light way he carried himself, and he might be a bad husband - in all honesty, he was no husband at all, if not in just name - but he was an amazing father. And loved the boys.
But they were different.
And people saw it.
Rhaenyra feared the day her boys would see it. Maybe they already had.
“Do you remember when the Maester showed you an experiment with salt water?” he asked, surprising her.
What did that have to do with the question?
“Yes.”
Jace sat up, now curious with their talk, and Luke gestured with his hands.
“He took a pan with salt water,” her oldest son explained. “And he let us taste it.”
“And it was salty, wasn’t it?” he asked. “Very salty.”
“Very salty,” Jace agreed.
Laenor nodded slowly, patient with their explanation.
“And what did he do next?”
“He put it over the fire,” Luke told him. “And boiled the water in front of us. He said we should see it, because then we would know nothing was put in the water.”
Rhaenyra cradled her growing belly, the child in her heavy as it approached birth.
Maybe this time, it would be a girl.
Visenya.
Maybe this time she would have hair like hers, and people would stop whispering. They could say she just took after her mother with her skin. She had seen it happen before.
“He let us taste the water,” her second boy told him. “And the less water the pot had, the saltier it was.”
“And when the water was all boiled, what was left?” Laenor asked.
“Salt,” Jace told him, proud.
A smart boy, her son. They both were very smart and so sweet.
Laenor laughed a little.
“Exactly. And that little bit of salt was what made the water salty,” he told them. “Now, Luke. You asked me why your hair is different? As in, different than mine and your mothers?”
Her son nodded, and Laenor pushed the sleeve of his shirt up.
“You see how my skin is dark?” he asked. “And your mother’s skin is very light?”
The boys confirmed, listening attentively, and he took Luke’s arm, running his fingers over it.
“Well, the gods saw that your skins were like your mother’s,” he told them. “And they thought that they should use my colour too. So, like the water and the salt, they concentrated my colour…” he brought his hands together. “And put it on your hair.”
He touched Luke’s dark locks, fingers running over them.
“But because I have a lot of skin,” he showed his arm, and then pointed to himself. “And you only have a little bit of hair,” he touched Jace’s hair. “It looks darker. So you have a little bit of me and of your mother on you.”
Rhaenyra smiled a bit, amused.
It all sounded like some good bullshit, but she would ever say that aloud.
If her boys believe it, she would act like it was the highest of truths.
“Do you understand now?” Laenor asked.
“Yes,” the two agreed.
She could see her husband’s shoulders relaxing.
“Alright, now to bed,” he decided, kissing their foreheads. “Have good dreams. I love you.”
“I love you,” the boys called back.
She moved away from the door before he stood, walking through their chambers. If there was a thing she didn’t miss was being so big she had to waddle in her walk.
“May I offer help?” he called behind her.
She wasn’t even halfway to their bed.
Rhaenyra nearly glared at him, but let him take her arm.
“That was a tricky question,” he mumbled. “Do you think I answered it alright?”
“As alright as possible for a child,” she sighed. “They’ll begin to ask questions again soon.”
Laenor sighed.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” he decided.
She sat on their bed, and he helped her take off her robe.
“How are your feet?” he asked.
“Killing me,” she grunted. “Everything is killing me.”
He just smiled.
Laenor was her friend.
Sometimes, Rhaenyra felt like he was her only friend. Those were hard days.
“Lay down,” he told her. “Give me them.”
She didn’t protest.
They were past the awkward bits of their relationship, after so many years.
Rhaenyra and Laenor had an agreement, that he could take his lovers, and she could take hers, though she only truly had one of them. When Jace came along, Laenor embraced him proudly and became a father without even thinking twice; they never had to talk about it, he never asked her questions, and they were as much of a family as they could be.
When she closed her eyes on the nights he slept by her side, she could sometimes pretend he was someone else, that the hands that touched her belly were the ones that created it.
That he was the husband she wished she had and not the one she had to settle with.
“Rhaenyra?” he called softly, thumbs kneading the soft bits of her swollen foot.
She opened her eyes, not even realising she had closed them.
His face was soft, and worried, and the tenderness in his eyes was painted with a bit of sadness.
“Last night,” he spoke gently, “When I came to bed.”
She swallowed, looking at him, trying to put together what his question could be about.
It was rare that they came to bed together. Sometimes Rhaenyra was asleep when Laenor arrived, and sometimes he was asleep when she slipped under their covers.
“You were weeping,” he whispered. “Crying in your sleep.”
It dawned on her, finally.
A dream, of a time that never came.
She was kidnapping a septon, so he would marry her to the husband she wanted to have, taking a dragon egg to warm in the cradle with the child they would share.
“You were calling…” he started to speak.
“Don’t say his name,” she interrupted him.
Laenor stopped, quiet, and his hand stopped massaging and rubbing her foot.
“You miss him,” he stated.
Of fucking course she missed him.
It still didn’t give him the right of bringing him up.
“I miss my mother,” she pulled her feet from him, sitting and pushing her feet into her slippers again. “You miss Joffrey. What is the difference?”
Her throat hurt, and her eyes burned, and she steeled herself, trying to stand up.
Pregnancy always made her sensitive. Anything could make her cry.
“Your mother and Joffrey are dead,” Laenor said simply “Daemon isn’t.”
She growled, finally on her feet, and strode away from him.
“Don’t say his name,” she hissed again, walking away from him in her best efforts to keep what was left of her dignity.
Laenor followed her, a hand coming to rest on her back, and she couldn’t escape him fast enough.
“Rhaenyra, please,” she pleaded. “It’s late. You need your rest.”
She snapped, turning to him.
“All these years, what did I ask of you?” she nearly growled, eyes hurting with unshed tears.
Her husband pulled back a little, looking away from her.
“Don’t speak of him,” he whispered. “Don’t say his name. Don’t bring him up.”
Her lower lip trembled, and she swallowed down, trying not to cry, trying not to weep again.
“Do not speak of him,” she repeated. “And I don’t care what you hear when I weep at night, I don’t care what you think I need, we do not… we…”
She breathed in, not wanting to sob mid-word. Didn’t he understand the pain it caused her, to look back in those years and see that she could almost have what she most wanted, what she most wished for, and didn’t?
“You love him,” Laenor insisted. “And it doesn’t matter how much passed, it doesn’t matter how much you try to bury it, you still love him, and you will still love him.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she argued back.
Speaking of love wasn’t going to make her any happier. Indeed, it was going to hurt and sting more, because while she was here, trying to live her life with a husband who was only a friend, finding a man to warm her bed and pretend to be loved the way she knew she could be, he was away. He was across the narrow sea, with a wife he loved and who loved him and daughters of his body.
“I’m just saying, you can have him,” he told her, calm as ever, because Laenor was almost always too calm. “Maybe we can talk with him, we can settle on some sort of deal, and you can be happy even if you are stuck in this marriage with me.”
Rhaenyra shook her head at his words
“And I’m sure your sister is going to love this little deal you are suggesting,” she hissed at him.
Laenor stopped and looked down, sighing, as if that only now had crossed his mind.
She rubbed a hand on her face, tired. Exhausted.
“Get out,” she decided, moving away from him.
Rhaenyra didn’t want to be touched, didn’t want to even hear his voice right now.
“Get out of here,” she walked away from him. “Get out. I don’t want you on my bed today, I don’t want to see you.”
He looked confused as she did. It wasn’t something she did, kick him out. Maybe other wives did, but their problems were never between one another, they never needed more space than they already gave each other.
“Get out,” she pushed his shoulder. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“And where will I sleep?” he asked, confused.
“With your man, with the children, I don’t care!” she walked away from him, eyes not blurry from the tears she didn’t let herself shed. “Just leave. I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to hear you, I don’t want to smell you tonight!”
She heard steps and then a door opening and closing, and didn’t quite care to see which way he had taken as she walked to her bed again, throat now knotted and body too tired to fight the sadness that overcame her.
Rhaenyra wept into her pillow, trying to muffle her cries, so the boys wouldn’t hear her.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t matter.
She cried herself to sleep, anyway. In the morning, those feelings would be buried again, and she would move on, the way she had done before. The way she always did.