A/N: First thing's first guys: Robert apologising to Helaena and their subsequent doing it? Not a declaration of love. I don't know how to explain it...it's like this familial understanding...but with sex just being a symptom of it. This is by no means a testament to their regular boning, just something born out of the heightened passions that come with such a confession. RobertxHelaena is more like...I gots your back homie, not "I will literally kill everyone else in this room just to get a view of you walking away from me cause damn" I just needed it to happen. And I did NOT want Helaena's decision about Jaime to come from something Robert does, I didn't want her to choose him just because the guy she was married to treated her badly or not. And JaimexHelaena is still...new, so bear with me as we see what happens.
I could hardly believe what I had done to Ser Jaime, or to myself.
Would I call him Jaime, now? Is he Jaime to me? It was all I could think about after I knew the taste of gold.
It reminded of me something my mother would do when I was little. She was a western woman from by the crag of not too high a nobility, and whenever i'd suffer a fall or get scared she would swirl a piece of gold jewelry -her ring, pendant, earring even, into a cup of water and have me drink it. She said that the gold would soothe me, that it would make all the bad thoughts go away and everything would feel right -was that true even now that I was kissed by the Golden Knight?
We left the Eyrie the day after next -would that be how I dated everything now? After Jaime's Kiss. How silly a maiden must I sound like? I hadn't been neither silly nor a maiden in so, so long.
Robert was too drunk, thankfully, on our last night in the Eyrie to come to my rooms again. I hadn't even thought about what his last visit meant to me, or us. Did it still mean the same thing after I shared a forbidden embrace with his Kingsguard? I couldn't deny Robert, I knew that above all else, both because my duty demanded that of me at least until I had more heirs and because he had opened his soul up enough to let me in -I didn't want to shut him out. So it was a welcome relief that as I lay in bed on my last night in the mountains I could think about how Ser Jaime's hand cupped my face and the other held me closer by the hand.
It was beautiful, he was beautiful -more majestic than a dream of him could ever be.
Now every time he helped me off my horse and my fingers stilled in his hand it meant something new, something completely foreign to me. Was this what courtship felt like? I had never been courted before. I was careful not to let me eyes linger on his smirk when we rode next to each other and didn't address him so directly or with enough familiarity to arouse any suspicion during our journey back to King's Landing, especially with all these eyes closely watching.
It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss. But what it did it mean for us now? I knew I wanted him, but did that mean i'd...have him in my bed? Whenever the thought crossed my mind I would feel myself shy at four and ten once more. I didn't know what to do -or what I wanted out of my sudden action. All I knew was that I wanted to kiss him again, it was the only sense of control I had -an enjoyable one at that. Was that what i'd reduced myself, the Queen, and my Kingsguard to? Men i'd kiss in rooms. Or perhaps Ser Jaime thinks by now that i've tested out the loyalties of the rest of the Kingsguard. As if.
Either way, I strangely could not wait to be back in the Capital if only to have more room to address my knight. My knight. Would he like me to call him such? We could speak in King's Landing -we hadn't had a real chance to speak after our kiss or during the journey. I wondered many a time as Robert lay in my bed on our way back whether Ser Jaime had a secret lover waiting for him too. Robert left me be on the journey, too, since both of us were far too exhausted to even speak to one another by the time we entered our tents -I had taken to riding out with him and Lord Arryn for larger chunks of the journey since I could no longer deny myself the sweet taste of false freedom as I rode through the country.
I could see King's Landing now, we were so close, and that meant that a decision had to be made.
I'll tell him i'm confused. I'll tell him i'm sorry. Would he fight for me? Would he fight to keep me? I want him to, i'll say yes with one word of complaint. It's so easy to say yes.
He needed to only hand my daughter to me even as my husband rushed to help me off my horse for me to know that that was a lie; I couldn't declare I was confused, I can no longer look into those green orbs and pretend like I don't dream of them doing things to me I didn't even know were possible. I wanted it, I wanted to feel. Robert got to feel all sorts of things from all sorts of people -he made that known to me, so why could I not kiss a man I had somehow tricked myself into thinking could actually care for me, truly?
My thoughts tousled, even as I walked through the Holdfast to my chambers knowing his familiar smell was right on my heels and my heart beat faster knowing that in only minutes I would be at my door.
He held my things in his hands, and he did not look at me as he sided his way into my room to set them down. Maybe coming back here was the end, maybe I had shamed him too much. He swore a vow.
Everything came to a halt when I heard the door click behind me but still felt his presence in my room. He stood by the door, apparently unsure with what to do of himself, and I looked down apologetically at the position I was only just realising I had put him in.
"I didn't-" I began, wanting -wishing, to tell him that he was not one of Robert's whores to me, he was not a toy -a plaything, left to my disposal and ordered to obey me. I was going to tell him that he didn't owe me anything, that I was a shameful Queen like I was standing on trial. But none of it left my lips, nothing could since they fell under the consuming spell he placed upon them when he rushed to me and his armour clanked against my gown.
His lips climbed atop mine and I knew then -I knew, I knew, I knew, undeniably that there was something in his blood that must weave gold within it. I should be scared that someone might walk in, I should fear that the Gods were watching and condemning me as an unfaithful wife -but I cared not. Perhaps they were watching, so I might as well have made a show of it.
His arms encased me completely and in turn I clasped both of mine on his jaw and drew them down to his neck as I felt his hands tighten around my waist. We swayed slowly together, wordlessly, as we continued our exploration and eventually through our daze I found myself against the very door that sealed the spell we were both under.
His hand drifted upwards on my front, and his now ungloved finger found its way to my chin and he broke us apart to look at me looking at him. What did any of this mean?
"I'm sure your grace must be weary from the journey." Did he sense me doubt this? Did he see it on my face? I doubt he could, for his voice hovered dangerously close to my neck before he placed a soft kiss on the place his voice infected.
"Aye...a little lightheaded." I said as I savoured the feel of those same soft lips against my neck.
He lifted his beautiful young face to look directly down at me once more. Our noses brushed along the other's while our eyes remained closed and the heat of our breath kissed the other's face in our lips' stead -it felt so good to hand over control. I'd gladly give him the reigns if it meant feeling what I could now feel.
"I take your leave, your grace. Perhaps we can continue this...discussion later." He peeled back slightly, still containing me within the dungeon his hands created on the door behind me, but far enough away to welcome a chilled breeze between us.
"You assume too much, Ser." I answered him squinting, trying to figure out what his lasting smile meant.
He took my hand in his once more, and I could finally feel his fingers for myself this time instead of in my dreams.
"It's a bad habit of mine." He answered before he was off me completely and he bowed awkwardly -which I didn't understand until I realised it was I that was blocking his way to the door.
Everything in or on me felt different, even after he left, I could still smell his hair against my fingers. My neck, my cheeks, my lips, even my hair, they all felt like they had bubbled and boiled over and they were unrecognisable to me. It felt like I was meeting again the girl I had forgone when I left Estermont. Hello, I am Helaena, have you forgotten so soon?
I stood in my room in silence and waited for King's Landing to swallow me whole once more.
I had my lunch with my surrounding ladies and the man that had kissed me standing guard in the garden -was he not yet tired of watching me? I fear he's given himself too much room to grow bored of me. After all, all men grow bored eventually.
It was the worst part of my return -the ladies who would not leave me alone. I had to watch as they walked unmarried, unburdened, and unashamed to rest their eyes on the man whose lips I had claimed for myself in a castle in the sky. Maybe it was the food, maybe it was the way I clenched and grit my teeth in a way that could challenge Stannis whenever a young lady stole yet another glance at Ser Jaime, or perhaps it was the weariness of the journey, but my meal did not sit well with me in the slightest. Nearly three moons away from a place you had barely gotten used to calling hope could do that to a woman.
I didn't think it could, though, drive me to empty the contents of my still empty stomach into my chamberpot not an hour after my meal. How high and mighty must I look. Helaena, wife of Robert Baratheon, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, bent over my chamberpot waving away my ladies in waiting as the sick stained my combed hair dangling over the scene.
It was perhaps when the third hour had passed of my incessant sickness that I heard Ser Barristan call for the Maester. When he carried me to my bed, my indignity barely allowing him to tear me off the floor, I caught myself in the mirror pale and lifeless -perhaps it was the golden kiss of death and this was my atonement somehow. I'd gladly do it again.
Pycelle asked his usual questions but with a sharpened concern to his brow that even served to worry me slightly -I was well not long ago, I was alive and kissing a knight of the Kingsguard, and now I was bedridden and the Maester's odor was enough to send me whirling into the chamber pot once more. I didn't know if I had anything more to hurl out.
Someone whispered about poison, and my heart jumped at the thought of leaving Cleora alone.
"Where is my daughter?" I murmured feverishly, and in the next moment it was my husband that had replaced the Maester and was sat by my side of the bed out of breath.
"Robert," he took my hand with a smile as my lids fought to stay open, perhaps I was weary from the journey after all.
"Your grace," Pycelle interrupted with his wild fingers waving around his face, and Robert turned to him with thunder in his voice.
"What is it?! What ails the Queen?"
"Your grace, her ladies maids ate from the same food and they are more than well, I doubt it's poison." He turned to address me now instead of my husband who now sat stumped and confused with my hand limp in his.
"My Queen, I must ask, when did you last have your moonsblood?" My moonsblood? Did he-? Does he actually-? But I haven't-? Oh, but I have.
"Not since before they arrived at the Eyrie, Grand Maester." Came out of my handmaiden and my eyes surged to hers almost in warning. Could this mean that I was...?
"Your grace, may you excuse me. I'll need to...examine the Queen." His disposition was surely improving now that I may not have been poisoned and dying under his watch, whereas Robert looked like it had only just dawned on him why there was talk of my moonsblood in his presence. He got up in near disillusion, those dark blue eyes wide with realisation, and he pressed a swift kiss to my temple that did nothing to reassure me before the door closed behind him leaving me with a smelly old man.
I felt the familiar invasiveness that I did when he last examined me in such a way, and I did not miss the sly smile on his face when he removed himself. He didn't even turn to look at me, he didn't even both turning his head to say anything to me, the Queen, the one to bear responsibility, the one whose body this belonged to. No, he merely swiftly brought a cloth to wipe at his hand and stumbled to the door to make the announcement I knew was coming for all that gathered to hear.
"The Queen is withchild!"
There it was. There was my truth. Hours ago, I was a Queen willing to kiss a beautiful young knight -it was too much, but it was still less than this. Hour ago, I was not the Queen carrying the King's potential heir. Hours ago, I was bearing the reminder to my possible lover that I still kept my bed for my husband.
I was given milk of the poppy, thankfully -if I was asleep I couldn't be sick. When I dreamt, I was laughing, and I was holding two babes in my arms while they cried and their father pushed hundreds of men off their horses to crown them. And when I woke, I felt dirtier than ever before. Why was it that every time a babe of mine wanted to make his or hers presence known in my womb they had to force me into such humiliating encounters? No doubt the Maesters and the council must think me of weak stock by now -I couldn't just peacefully let moons pass and then realise that I was withchild.
Although, what would have become of me if I had let moons pass without knowing? This was Robert's child, undeniably, of course, but what would have become of me had I taken up with Ser Jaime and then come to realise I was withchild? I'd drive myself insane, and consider a merciful death of my choice rather than risk birthing a child that had no features of both Robert and I -what would I suffer then? What would my daughter suffer if people found out that I had done something to give them cause to question their Queen's faithfulness and virtue. Was this the Gods' way of telling me that I was committing to dark a sin, too deep an offense to be granted forgiveness for later on? And yet I wondered how it could be so when it felt so right, far too right for me to deny even now as I lay with my husband on one side, my daughter on the other side, and an unborn babe inside me.
I demanded Cleora be kept near me, and so Robert had taken it upon himself to join as well. When the shock of the revelation dissipated I couldn't help but feel an annoying pride make its way through me that Jon Arryn would rejoice in this news -and relief that if this was the heir everyone was waiting for then i'd finally be free.
Who was I trying to fool? I am Queen, I will never be free. We are chained to our Kings, they might as well lock us in Dothraki widow caves to live out the rest of our days when our Kings die. No one else is allowed to touch us, whether he is dead or alive. When Robert dies, i'll be made to grieve him and take no other husband while he probably meets his Lady Lyanna in the afterlife. Even in his death, Robert will never be faithful to me.
Perhaps I was, once again, being unfair to my husband. He had wept into my shoulder and kissed me with passion and gentleness all at once -even now, he rubs my belly in calming circles and wakes every few moments to whisper that we did it again, we did it together. He deserved better than someone who thought so little of him when the mood struck her to do so.
And so I lay my hand atop his while we slept, and the gold and green didn't come to me that night.
The haunting colour, though, came well enough to me as soon as the world saw it most inconvenient to my wellness.
Pycelle had declared that, at least for now, I was to mostly keep to my bed as the babe seems to be taking a larger toll on my body than it would on most mothers. And so in Robert's usual fashion, he forwent an expected feast -which I would have been happy for him to have without me, and instead he invited his high lords of the small council to come to my rooms and congratulate my for themselves.
Jon Arryn walked in with such purpose first, and he made his way to my bed, bending his knee lowly when we reached me and kissing my hand gratefully when he rose. Even though it may have made me happy to instill some twisted pride in the man I kept confusing with a father-figure it still rode to wake the stubbornness in me when he looked at me like I had listened to what he'd told me after all. I haven't listened to a damned thing. I have done the opposite.
The other Lords followed tersely and presented me with fine service people to "help ease the journey" better. Tywin Lannister was the last to approach me, and even my cousin Stannis warmed me better than he. He didn't smile or bring his chin down from the raised dais it sat on as he congratulated me in a nearly recited manner and present me with the finest seamstress from Lannisport.
"I had sent for her to tend to my daughter in Storm's End since she will be giving birth any day now, but I assume she'll have no trouble getting her figure back."
"You're too kind, my lord." His tuft of blonde was only starting to grey and I thought it suited him well since the best gold I had known belonged to a man who had no such bitterness and ill-will for me.
And yet as my eyes danced from Lord Lannister to the familiar golden locks that I hadn't noticed stood right outside my doorway -the same doorway we had stood in just a day ago and kissed by making unspoken promises, the spell had shattered to shards of messy pieces and Jaime Lannister stood with betrayal in his eyes unnoticeable by everyone but I. I knew, I knew why.
I wasn't left alone as I was confined to my rooms, nearly a fortnight had passed and I was still only allowed to explore the contours of my room like a babe fresh out of the womb, and when I was finally given enough leave to enjoy a walk in the gardens on my own I still felt my legs shiver at both the chance I might see him and the weakness that still lined them -the weakness I would still not allow anyone to see. And yet he did not make himself known, nor did he come to me as he said he would -it made me think that all those times I would scarcely go a day without seeing him, all those times we just suddenly seemed to be there when I needed it, could they have been his doing?
When a month passed, Robert got the feast he wanted, and I still longed for the singular kiss that I so craved. All the lords and ladies danced with another -except me. They all kissed and made bawdy jokes about babymaking -except me. The bards sang and Gerion Lannister stood on a table and told tales of his travels whilst everyone listened -except me. I just watched. And I only watched one thing. Jaime, he is surely Jaime to me now. Only Jaime.
It was he, Jaime, Jaime, Jaime, who escorted me back to my chambers that night in silence -just as he had done in the Eyrie. Only this time I clung to him in weakened health and a surely unchivalrous want to be close to him, but he did not move. He was stone, pure stone, as his rigid elbow remained interlocked with mine, and by the time we reached the empty hall that lead to my chambers I could no longer stand that silence that was tearing through everything I thought I had felt with him.
If I hadn't kissed him, if I hadn't pushed myself close to him in that nursery, he would not be silent and cold to me now. What kind of a mess had I started?
I turned to him -making him turn to me in the process quite forcefully if I were to frank, and I faced him the way I hadn't been able to since the "Gods had blessed me with an heir for my King". I made my eyes bore into his to fool him into my false sense of determination at resolving this -I was so scared, still. Of what, I still had yet to find out.
"I'm sorry, I-" My eyes lost their resolve when they faced the growing emotion in his, and I cast them down in some sort of shame. Making unspoken promises you can't keep had its own kind of shame, did it not?
"I live to serve you. Isn't that right, my Queen?" He interrupted me bitterly, and his elbow dropped almost roughly from mine as he took a step back.
It was harsh, it felt harsh, but still I reached out to his armour, to the thing that made him, and tried to plea for his understanding.
"Jaime.."
"Queens can't be improper with those that serve them. You should be more careful, someone might get confused." He walked away into the dark of the hall and with his heavy steps went all the steps we had made together to give each other comfort where comfort would never endure. And still, no matter how I may have willed it, he continued walking away from me.
That was it. That was what I had to fear.
Well, well, well, well, well, how the tables have tabled.
Be sure to let me know what you think of this!