Chapter Text
Chapter One: Keeping up with the Targaryens
Maripose had been friends with Helaena since the sixth grade. She had been placed with a new foster parent. A single father with a preteen son. He had been willing to take her on where others had been hesitant given her propensity for acting out and attachment issues. Her new home was in a different borough which meant switching schools one month into the school year, not that she had had friends to leave behind at her old one.
She attended each class, sitting where the teacher told her too, writing her name on a placard because they were still in the phase of learning everyone’s name (though the friendship cliques had already formed) and saying nothing to the other classmates. Mariposa had long since given up on the idea of making friends or having a family. Her only motivation to make this new placement work was the fact that Jacques had been willing to sign her up for ballet classes.
During her second week, her Andalian teacher announced an important project, and allowed them to pick partners. Her gut twisted, she knew she wouldn’t get picked. She’d either be paired with the other weird reject in the class or work alone. Mariposa preferred the latter. Before she could stand up and approach the teacher to request going solo, a girl’s voice spoke, “Hi, I want to be partners with you.”
She looked up in dumbfounded shock at her classmate. The girl was in most of her classes, she was a weirdo with a capitol W. She always had at least one bug accessory on her, commonly sparkly butterfly clips. Today she had a red headband with black polka dots holding back her silver hair, a red top, and a skirt with polka dots, along with ladybug earrings. The purple binder she was clutching had a worm on the front.
“Why?” she asked, immediately put off by the girl’s overeagerness.
“Your name means butterfly.”
Gods, of course I’ve managed to attract the freak.
“Are you Tyroshi?”
“What?” Mariposa asked, raising a brow at her.
“Mariposa, it means butterfly in Tyroshi, and Dornish, but you don’t seem Dornish. So are you Tyroshi?”
“I’m Lyseni.” Mariposa said flatly.
“Ohhh, do you speak Lyseni?”
“Yep.”
She had had trouble in school for refusing to speak Andalian. It had been a way to cling to her mother after her death. They never failed her because she would do all her assignments in Andalian.
“That’s so cool, I speak Dornish. Anyways, do you want to be partners? I’m Helaena by the way.”
Mariposa squinted at her, while she thought Helaena was a total weirdo, other people seemed to like her, she was always talking to her seatmates. Always sitting with a crowd of people during lunch. The idea of being stuck working on a project for weeks with some overeager friendly weirdo was deeply unappealing, she also knew that Helaena was smart. She was always raising her hand to answer questions in class. Working with a smart student was objectively beneficial to her.
“Fine.”
Helaena beamed at her as she took the seat next to her, Mariposa could already feel a headache building. “Do you want to come to my house this Saturday to work on the project?”
“Are you going to feed me?” She quipped.
“Of course! We’re Reach.”
Mariposa squinted at the girl’s Valyrian features. Right…
She decided she could tolerate being acquaintances with Helaena after seeing her house and eating her mother’s cooking. The girl was rich rich, her pink bathroom had a matching pink en suite bathroom, and more importantly Mrs. Targaryen sent her home with two tupperwares of food.
Being project partners with Helaena changed her life. Helaena always waved at her when she walked into class. She pulled her into lunch groups, she included her in group work, introduced her to her other friends, one of whom invited her to her birthday party.
Helaena even organized a marine themed surprise party for her twelfth birthday. Crocheting sea urchins as a present for her. She didn’t know how Helaena knew it was her favorite creature. It resulted in Helaena’s friend group calling her Urchin as a nickname.
At some point they went from being Helaena’s friend group, to her friend group as well. People said hi in the hallway, they came over to her apartment, they invited her places. Helaena’s nauseating friendliness had changed her life.
These past couple weeks had been the longest she had gone without regularly talking to her since they were eleven.
That annoyingly cryptic message was the only information she got aside from the occasional ‘miss you’ message from Helaena until she was back in King’s Landing about two weeks later.
Helaena invited her over, ordered dumplings and bubble tea from their fusion place, immediately pulling her into her bedroom.
“You have so much explaining to do bitch.”
“I know, I know.” Helaena says, settling on to her bed.
“We barely talked for two weeks, that is neglect.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just… so much happened, it didn’t even feel real half the time. I decided it was easier to tell you in person.”
Urchin sits on the bed, Dreamfyre pads over to her, demanding pets. “Okay, so… what happened?”
Helaena sighs, “I’ve decided the best way to do this is to go through it in chronological order. Also,” she turns over the whiteboard that had been set up on a stand next to her bed, “I made a family tree so you could follow along.”
“Dear gods.” Urchin says looking at the color coded chart.
Helaena pulls out a pointer stick, a true sign of how serious this tea session was going to be, “My Dad was married to a woman named Aemma, they had my sister Rhaenyra. Aemma died of cancer and then my Dad married my Ma and had Aegon, me, Aemond, and Daeron. Also Dad has two younger brothers: Aegon, who died of cancer as a kid, and Daemon-”
“Isn’t that the creepy uncle who ran off with Rhaenyra when she was a child?”
“Yes. He married a woman named Laena and has three kids: Baela, Rhaena - they’re twins - and a son Cory.”
“How do you know his kids’ names? I thought you didn’t talk to them.”
Helaena lets out a long sigh, “we will get to that. Save questions for the end of the lecture. Also Rhaenyra married a man named Harwin and had Jace, Luke, and Joffrey.”
Urchin lets out a slight huff and takes a sip of her drink, gesturing for her to continue.
“So Dad decided to retire because of his health and was going to appoint Aegon as CEO and Rhaenyra decided to come and meet him I guess. Which you already know about. Aegon went out the night before and Ma got mad at him for it, he was hooking up with a MILF, unbeknownst to Ma.
Rhaenyra came over and then Aegon told me that the MILF he hooked up with was Rhaenyra.” Urchin lets out a gasp, "apparently she had come in the night before and they ran into each other at a bar and then didn’t share names, which is crazy.
Things are normal-ish, Dad is kind of a dick to Rhaenyra, but his normal dick level. Then the next day a blizzard starts coming in and Rhaenyra made Aegon drive her to the airport. Ma was pissed at that, they got stuck in the snow. Turns out Rhaenyra had sons she never told us about and their flight got grounded. And, as you are aware, one of her sons is Jace, Aemond’s roommate, and the guy I’ve been crushing on for a year. Jace and I ended up hanging out, despite the spicy poisoning, and lost my virginity to him, as you’re also aware.”
Urchin nods.
“We started hooking up regularly and I ran out of condoms, and I didn’t want to stop having sex with him so I went to Aegon’s room to take some of his condoms cause he’s a whore. And when I walked in I found Rhaenyra, asleep in his bed, naked.”
Urchin gasps.
“I know! He was still fucking her, after I told him not too! Anyways, I threatened to wake up Rhaenyra if he didn’t give me condoms so that was a positive. Also, my Ma came into Aegon’s room at one point and demanded he give her a blunt. She’s amazing at rolling blunts.”
“Damn.”
“So I ran out of condoms again, so I stole more condoms, and Aegon got mad and tried to fight me, and we ended up hiking through the snow to a bodega, which didn’t have enough condoms so we had to walk all the way to Costco.”
“Didn’t you pass out when you got back and called me crying the next day?”
“Yes.”
“RIP girl, you got laid later right?”
Helaena lets out a wry laugh, “about that. So things are going well. I asked Jace out, we had a date in an igloo, he made me pupusas. Um, and then on a different day Jace and Aemond beat up Aegon’s nemesis who turned out to be a pedophile. Rhaenyra put his mom in a chokehold after she called Jace a slur.”
“So much happened.”
“I’m not done. Jace and I were hooking up and Dreamfyre kept jumping on us so I kicked her out of the room. And then my Ma found her begging outside the door and went to let her in-”
“No!” Urchin gasps. “Tell me you were under the covers?”
“I was not, I was fully naked, on top of him… orgasming.”
“Oh gods.”
“My Ma was furious, kicked Jace out of the room, yelled at me, then went to yell at Jace, then Rhaenyra started yelling at her. Aegon saw the fight happening and confessed to hooking up with Rhaenyra so Ma would yell at them instead of me. Then my Dad came out.”
Urchin lets out a groan, Viserys is not a deescalator.
“He and Rhaenyra started yelling in Valyrian, so I didn’t know what he was saying, but suddenly Jace launched himself at my Dad and started beating the shit out of him. Aemond told us afterwards he called Rhaenyra a whore. Rhaenyra had to pull Jace off of him. Then Luke and Joffrey showed up, Rhaenyra had to stop them from beating Viserys too. Dad was pissed and Rhaenyra said they were gonna leave the next day.
Next day comes and its Ma’s birthday and I’m still pissed but I still go to join in on her birthday breakfast cause I’m a good daughter and Ma is making mimosas and singing along to Shania Twain. Like she’s weirdly happy and then she tells us Dad died overnight. Now, the roads were still blocked so they told us we had to put him outside and-”
“Woah woah woah, Helaena, your dad’s dead?”
“Yeah, and we had to store him outside and my nephews threw him out a window to get him outside.”
“Your dad died and you didn’t tell me?”
“Save questions until the end.”
Urchin’s mouth opened and closed in shock.
“Rhaenyra and Ma got into a massive fight, Rhaenyra and her sons leave and we don’t see them until the funeral. Except Rhaenyra called Aegon beforehand to tell him that she was pregnant.”
Urchin chokes on her bubble tea, “what?”
“Yeah apparently they had shower sex the first time, so she had been pregnant the whole time!”
“Oh my gods… wait… so he didn’t even need his condoms!”
“That’s what I said! Anyways, Aemond’s gay-”
“Huh?”
“And Daeron’s bi, and Aemond had been secretly hooking up with Luke during the blizzard and Daeron was hooking up with Joffrey.”
“Those Valyrian genes activated like a sleeper agent.”
“Aemond was scared to come out to Ma cause she’s super devout, but he decided to cause - oh by the way we realized Dad is abusive - cause Dad’s dead so he figured now was the time to be happy blah blah blah.” Helaena looks at her, “No reaction to that?”
Urchin shrugs, “I’ve known him for over ten years, I’ve kind of been waiting for you to realize it.”
“Oh. Anyways, uh turns out Aemond didn’t need to be scared cause Ma knew he was gay the whole time, she gave him and Daeron teddy bears with their pride flags.”
“Aw.”
“And Aemond was like, ‘did Dad know I was gay?’ and Ma said ‘gods no, he’s the most oblivious man I’ve met, he didn’t even realize Aegon wasn’t his son.”
“WHAT? Who’s his father?” Helaena taps Daemon’s name with her pointer stick. “DAEMON? DAEMON?”
“So when Ma and him secretly dated in high school cause she was pretending to date my Tio Criston cause he’s gay. By the way, my Uncle Gwayne and Tio Criston are gay and married and somehow me and my brothers didn’t realize that our whole lives.
My Ma got pregnant with Aegon and when my Nonno tried to get him to do the right thing Daemon hit him and keyed her car and left him.”
“Fuck.”
“So Ma needed a way to support Aegon and realized if she married my Dad, that he would just think Aegon was his so she married him.”
“That’s-”
“I’m not done.”
“What else happened?!”
“So we go to the funeral and Rhaenyra’s there with a bunch of people we don’t recognize and also Daemon.”
Urchin gasps, this is better than a soap.
“And he was playing with his son, so Aegon ran out of the room crying, then Ma kicked everyone out of the room-”
“To kill Daemon?”
“Yeah.”
“Then the rest of us were outside and people started fighting, Aegon told Rhaenyra that he was Daemon’s son. She didn’t believe him until she did the math, but she didn’t believe that Daemon would abandon him, so he was like ‘why’d he key her car?’ And she went ‘that was me’ so we all realized that my Nonno had lied to Ma and Daemon. Ma got told he was leaving her and Daemonn got told Ma was leaving him.”
“How did they react when they found out?”
“They hooked up at the funeral.”
Urchin blinks slowly, “I’m sorry what?”
Helaena plows ahead. “When they came back, Rhaenyra was missing and her sons started freaking out and Cory about her heart attack and Aegon freaked out and accidentally told everyone about the baby. And then… um, oh we had tacos…”
“Where did Rhaenyra go?”
“Oh, she went on a car ride with my Nonno and got him cross faded.”
“Nonno got crossfaded?” Urchin’s mouth hangs open in shock, “I can’t even picture what that looks like.”
“He gave my brothers jerky and car ornaments and gave me a pregnancy test because I come from a quote ‘line of fertile whores.’ And I had Jace come with me cause I couldn’t talk to you.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because I didn’t want to explain that my dad was dead!”
Urchin narrows her eyes, before deciding to let it go, for now. She lays down on the mattress, stretching, “If Nonno had known you had gone hiking for condoms he wouldn’t have bothered to get you a test.”
“It was positive.”
Urchin sits back up, “what?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“No you’re not. No you’re not.” Urchin covers her mouth, glancing down at Dreamfyre, who’s sitting in Helaena’s lap, making biscuits on her stomach like she’s prepping for a convention, purring like a motor. “Shut up, shut up, you’re pregnant?”
Helaena nods.
“You used condoms, what the fuck?”
“The first one we used was expired-”
“Condoms can expire?”
“And I guess it ripped without us noticing.”
Urchin reaches over and tentatively pokes Helaena lower abdomen, “there’s a baby in there?”
She nods again.
“Oh my gods, this is the most insane-”
“I’m not done.”
“What else happened?”
“I told my Ma I was pregnant, she said we’d worry about it after the funeral, we had dinner with Rhaenyra’s family and the next day she announced we were all going to Harrenhal, so I met Jace’s grandparents. You know the Harrenhal Castle?”
“Yeah?”
“They live in the castle. So we stayed there for two weeks. Learned I could see ghosts. We went snow tubing. Ma made up with Rhaenyra. It was mostly a fun time. Um… oh, Ma and Daemon got married.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah his twins planned out this cute ceremony, and convinced us to agree to it… they’d be excellent lawyers… or cult leaders.”
“Is… is he here now?”
“No, he’s at Driftmark. They’re having a long distance marriage right now. I think the plan’s to let Cory finish the school year and go from there. And that’s what you’ve missed on Glee.” Helaena smiles at her joke.
Urchin stares in shock, “You’re pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“So… what’s going on with you and Jace?”
“He’s finishing up his final semester at Driftmark and then going to get a job in King’s Landing after graduation.”
Urchin rubs her palms into her eyes, staring out the window for a while before turning back to her best friend, “I am never leaving you unattended again.”