#anyway helaegond laughed their ass off and gossiped about bethany giving daeron eyes for the rest of alicent and daerons flight

[lullaebies]

Hey! I just love that green kids filled and I was wondering if you are willing to do another one (no pressure). Maybe one where they visit Oldtown to see Daeron before the Dance. Bonus if they get Alicent on a dragon🤭.

Daeron runs down spiralling staircases when he is told of his family’s arrival.

“You’ll break your legs before you’ll get to see them, you dimwit!” Lyonel chases him down with more cautionary steps. Ormund’s eldest has a critical tone that only has the audacity to bring forth to a prince, but Daeron is used to his friend and cousin. He trusts him more than that, he knows; when Lyonel wants to steal another bottle of wine from the kitchens, he’ll ask Daeron to be his partner-in-crime again. 

“A good luck’s wish, breaking a leg, is it not?” He yells back, jumping over several stairs in excitement. 

“No! Your brothers would have to carry you up to your rooms!” Lyonel retorts, scurrying to catch up with him. They reach the entrance hall in a few long strides, and Daeron looks back at the panting heir of the Hightower.

“They wouldn’t have to do a thing. You, however…” he trails off with a smirk. Lyonel does not seem amused, catching up with his breath. 

“You lay in your own bed. Break your skull during this visit, I’m not carrying you up the stairs.” 

“Clearly,” Bethany, Lyonel’s sister, chimes in, looking at her brother’s gasping form. The skirts of her teal dress twirled by Daeron’s feet as she came to stand by them. “Worry not. I would.”

Daeron laughs. “Why thank you, Bethany,” he says softly, as the doors to the Hightower open. Lord Ormund enters in with the royal entourage that Daeron had waited on for weeks. His eyes brighten as he sees his mother auburn curls, accompanied by the flock of silver-haired kin. The first barrage of hugs is of little ones; Aegon and Helaena’s twins spring forward hand in hand, jumping hard on the marble of Hightower’s hall.

“Jaehaerys, Jaehaera!” Alicent and Helaena exclaim at the same time as the twins' heads bump against his knees. Positively charmed, Daeron takes them both in his arms, glad to see their big eyes twinkling the same as his. 

“Long time no see, dear nephew and niece,” Daeron had come for Maelor’s birth feast, but he hasn’t seen either of them since; he gives them both kisses on the crown of their head. They are like little worms in his arms, but none would expect Helaena’s babes to be any different, and their sweet excitement is all the more endearing. 

“I want to see Tessie,” Jaehaerys demands almost immediately, grabbing his face. He and Jaehaera very much liked Tessarion upon first seeing her. He’s not surprised.

“Tessa,” Jaehaera corrects. The twins never reached an agreement on what’s the proper nickname for his dragon. Still, he brightens at their excitement. He has no doubt Lord Ormund is chuckling about him there, with Alicent and Aemond, and Helaena smiles his way while she speaks with maids about sleepy Maelor, who had been dozing against her chest.

Hence, it is Aegon who comes forward to him first. “Don’t let it get to your head, they say the same for Sunfyre nearly every day.” 

“For Sunfyre or Tessarion, I wouldn’t say it is unwarranted,” Daeron answers. Aegon cracks a smile, the cynical mask breaking off. “Am I right?”

“It would be a miracle to catch you in a mistake, brat.”

Daeron is very thankful to Bethany, who opens her arms to take the twins as if on cue. Daeron puts Jaehaera in her hold, and gives Jaehaerys to a surprised Lyonel. He’ll manage. He goes to hug his brother. By the time he lets go, the rest of his family surrounds them both. 

Alicent, Aemond, and Helaena and even who he now recognizes to be Ser Criston stand around him. Lord Ormund presents him with prideful eyes. “Your boy has turned into a fine man, Your Grace.”

“My Daeron,” Alicent says, and comes forward. There is the attempt to reach his forehead, but on her tiptoes she only reaches his cheek with her kiss. “It is so good to be home. I had known you’ll thrive here, with such fine company,” she tells him, looking at Lyonel and Bethany. “Should I relieve you of the children, dear cousins?”

Lyonel, who had his jade amulet nearly ripped from his neck by Jaehaerys, looks at her as if he'd seen salvation itself. Bethany, on the other hand, let Jaehaera hide between her auburn locks happily. “I could hardly let go. Daeron has always maintained that Princess Helaena is a good mother, but it is very easy to see with this sweet princess in my arms.”

“You’re too kind,” Helaena tells her, patting Maelor’s head. She glances at Daeron with twinkling eyes. “But I think you have your own talent in it, Lady Bethany.” 

Aegon wrestles with his son to come back into his hands after some pointed looks from both Alicent and Aemond. Jaehaerys latches onto his father’s chains instead, pulling. “I wanna see Tessie!” 

“Ouch!” Aegon exclaims. “Twerp, relax!”

Aemond snorts under his breath at the scene, and comes forward to give him half a hug. He had been looking him up and down for a while. “We should listen to our nephew. I haven’t seen you fly for long, little brother. Surely you’ve only improved?”

“We’ve only just arrived to set out again, Aemond,” Alicent interjects.“It must be another carriage ride away to Daeron’s dragon, is it not?” She asks Lord Ormund, perhaps hoping he’d be as enthusiastic about it as her. His mother is rather anxious around dragons, preferring to be a far away spectator rather than come up close as it is. But if she thought she’ll find comfort in Lord Ormund’s answer, she is sorely mistaken.

“Quite the opposite, your Grace. The cobalt beast made its nest on the top of the Hightower,” Lord Ormund says. “We suspect she likes the beacon’s fire.” “Tessie!” Jaehaerys grabs onto Aegon’s hair, standing excitedly on his hands. Aegon yelps, and Helaena laughs some; all while Jaehaera stares at him. She is curled up against Bethany, but her big violet eyes are locked on him. 

“To Tessa!.” She demands, and he as well as all around them realize there is little choice. Daeron grins.

Little choice, but a fortunate pick of it, if you ask him.

“My nephew and niece’s requests come first,” Daeron says. “We should show you the beauty of the city from above.”

—

Tessarion is sleeping on the top of the shelter of the beacon. It is like a strange oven she curls against, while her very own blue flames warm the surface she lays on from below. The sky dragon den that is the top of the Hightower has become a personal spot for him. Not many people are brave enough to come to it. Daeron had long had to take over lighting the beacon, but Lord Ormund had told him that it’s fine. 

“It is an exchange, as far as I’m concerned. Take this on as your duty, and do not neglect it. Light this city brightly with dragonfire. In return, you could earn yourself more than just discipline and humility; but also the love and pride of all that watch you come back, day after day.”

“I don’t think we should interrupt Tessarion, Daeron,” mother says as she comes out to what feels like the top of the world. Bethany and Lyonel went with their father to their duties, and now he and his family are all alone to explore. Alicent’s hands had been taken by the twins, who had done nothing less than drag her with them. Both of the children squeal when they hear Tessarion snore, little smoke coming from her snout as she does. Alicent pales further. “Be quiet, sweeties, we must mind… those who are asleep.”

Aegon snorts, while Aemond watches the dancing blue fire with some interest. Helaena had been introducing wide-eyed Maelor to the sea, minding Tessarion as much as she’d mind a spider. There’s a pretty sea to Oldtown, but there is so much else he wanted them to see.

“She won’t be roused unless you give her reason to, mother,” Daeron says, and comes to rest against the stone safety rails. “Come over here. You can see the Starry Sept from here,” he points out the dome-shaped building. Alicent steps forward beside him, squinting at the black marble building, as well as the seven-pointed star carved into it.  

“It’s quite far away, but the view of the Honeywine running by it is lovely,” Alicent says, trying to calm by him. He appreciates her attempt.

“It is,” he agrees. Aemond and Aegon help lift the twins so they could see themselves. “And there’s the Citadel,” he then continues to point at a giant building in the heart of the city. He looks at the twins. “Those statues there are of sphinxes. Riddling monsters, with faces of men and bodies of beasts.”

The twins balk at that, big gasps coming from little mouths.

“You are trying to scare them, Daeron?” Aegon asks, readjusting his hold on Jaehaera.

“The opposite! Those who learn at the Citadel seek to beat any riddle, and defeat any sphinx like that,” Daeron explains, cheeks reddening. He refuses to add that he goes there a few times a week; now that the explanation left his mouth, he feels rather embarrassed. “I wanted them to know they’re always safe here…”

“They know it,” Helaena says softly, and looks down at baby Maelor. “Right?”

The boy babbles some in response. Both twins offer interpretations, but the rest of them can only laugh.”

“You have a dragon about you,” Aemond says, his gloved hand brushing through Jaehaerys’s locks. “No need for anything else for protection.”

Daeron brings a hand to the back of his neck, trying to ignore his  embarrassment. “I would like to have some wit about me, still,” he says.

“We didn’t hear about your crashing onto farmlands with Tessarion since, so I say you are gaining your brain,” Aegon answers. Daeron flushes fully red.

“It was one time!” 

A crackle from Tessarion comes, and they all look back. She woke up, shaking her head as she did. The twins exclaim at her moving. Alicent keeps herself behind Daeron, a hand on his shoulder as the dragon hops down to their platform.

“She grew quite a bit,” Aemond notes as Tessarion approaches. “Flights would have to be easier now.”

“You should show yourself better than before, Daeron,” Helaena says. Her voice is absent minded, but entirely purposeful. “Mother couldn’t see the Sept properly. Perhaps you should take her closer?”

“Helaena,” Alicent exclaims. “I am not—”

“No, she’s right,” Aegon eggs her own. “You should go see the sept, Mother.”

Alicent looks at Aemond, who likewise seems to have no mercy. “We’ve come by carriage for you, Mother.”

It feels like old dinners, where they all banded together to annoy mother again. Ormund’s family had become a second family to him, but this nostalgic feeling takes over, and he feels just as right here; something he had been worrying the distance between them all would’ve taken away from him.

Tessarion comes by their side, sniffing the lot of them. Daeron thinks she knows just as well that these are all kin, when the little twins reach out to her scales and his siblings surround her. Daeron holds out a hand to his anxious mother, offering. Alicent used to hold his hand everyday, and he missed the security of her warm palm taking him to see the world. Whenever he had been scared, she made sure to hold him until it went away.

He has grown and changed, and has the mind to know he should return the favor. Filial piety is a grace described in every book, but he would like to repay his debt to his mother specifically. I’d like to offer you the same thing.

“Mother, have faith in me?” he asks.

Alicent looks between his siblings, nephews and niece, and the dragon, before her brown eyes land back on him. 

“I have too much of it,” she answers, and takes his hand. “The Seven help me.”

Oldtown shines brightly, from above the skies. Perhaps the people below could hear the Queen yell at the initial take-off, and certainly someone heard the laughter that followed from the princes and princesses on the top of the tower, but as the sun shone down on them all there had been a sense of pride, love, and home.