#oopsie helaena might be a bit ooc but its an au so i do what i want

[hoeplessl0nging]

A Mother's Lament

Helaena takes revenge into her own hands. [2.3k words]

inspired by this post from @sleepwalker-02-artist , i don't normally write these little prompts but something took over and i couldn't not write a little oneshot. || cross-posted on ao3

The air was thin, up so high. High enough her hair was kissed by cotton clouds. The wind was near deafening and cold, yet it quieted the rage in her blood, blew the tears from cheeks and dried her eyes. The steel on her shoulders, silver, shining steel, heavy like death, heavy like the grief nestled under her chest and in her belly, it pushed against her lungs, it hurt when she took a breath. Yet what was the pain other than a motivation?

High over the rivers, green grass and blue waters, carved like an angry god had taken a knife to the lands. How much blood has tainted the water of the trident? Helaena had found herself wondering. Much, certainly, though there would still be more to come.

The woman sniffed and violet eyes grazed the skies again. He had to be here, somewhere. Far below her, near several miles below, a brown dragon flew, surveying the lands, as if searching for something, or perhaps someone. Helaena sighed, it was not the dragon nor rider she was searching for. Absentmindedly, she pulled the reins and whispered to Dreamfyre, an order to fly high and steer clear of the other enemy rider. It was not the conflict she was after.

The pressure on her lungs returned with another breath, the chainmail clinked as she shifted her weight in the saddle. She squinted and felt that familiar burning rage and blue grief, flowing like waves, a thundering storm inside of her. Lightning struck each of her nerves and violet eyes searched through the sky and clouds for a bloom of crimson.

'Twas no revenge, no eye for an eye, nor son for son. It was blood. It was death for the sake of it, that sweet boy she had carried, had birthed, had cherished did not deserve that. That man, that monster, who had held the blade to her throat. The other that had held her precious daughter. The one responsible for it would die. Be it today, or tomorrow. He'd not survive the week. He'd not live long enough to harm another.

"Choose. Choose!" He had screamed, the other jeered almost gleefully. The edge of his knife had kissed her throat.

Too close, too loud, too much. Not her boys, not her girl, not her. "Choose!" The rat-catcher and the sellsword had cried, Helaena remembered crying. Tears salting the stone of the castle. Had it always thirsted for blood as so? Death, death, death, the crow faced god cloaked in shadow cawed, hauntingly.

"Stop, stop," she had shouted. "Stop!" Yet they did not, not until the sellsword had deemed her overcome by grief, mad enough, weak enough to drop the blade from her neck.

Her limbs had felt weightless, boneless, a flop of fabric and skin on the stone floor. He had moved to threaten the squalling babe in the cradle. "Take me, kill me. Not him, not my son, don't you touch him! Not any of them, please, not my Maelor!"

The sellsword had laughed, yet it sounded more like a howl. A feral dog. A blood thirsty hound. "You have named one, then."

Violet eyes had stared on in horror. Her throat had ached - had she been screaming? Why had no one come? Where were the guards? Where was her mother? Or her brothers or her husband?

More tears had bubbled in her eyes, blurring her vision. Her lips wobbled and throat bobbed. Helaena remembered the back of her hand, reached out desperately, as if she could summon the foul blade from the sellsword's hand with some unknowable power. Yet it did not happen.

If she had strained her ears, there was a high howl that sounded like Shrykos. A croaky caterwaul of Morghul. The deep, haunting, angry bellow of Dreamfyre. She could still hear their calls now, along with the crying children.

Death was never pretty, in the few deaths she had been forced to watch, she had always looked away. A delicate lady with delicate sensibilities, a gentle and good woman, she had been told. Quiet and prone to melancholy, but good, a clement Queen, her mother had said as she'd laid her crown upon her head and kissed her cheeks.

She had made Aegon and the war council agree send their half sister terms of peace, she had made them all agree to leave Rhaenyra's title and let the woman and her kin keep Dragonstone, yet what had she received in turn? Death.

The gods had warned her, she had warned them all, ever since she could speak, from the moment she could process more than grief. Yet no one listened, they never did. Close an eye, a dance, a war, the death of the dragons.

Each divine message wrapped in riddles and the visions covered in a haze like layers of chiffon, faces and features warped into unrecognisable humanoid blobs. The death of her son, slaughtered like an animal, by some foul, cruel butcher and rat-catcher.

Not her Maelor, though. Not the babe, not the one that foul creature had tricked into her not her sweet daughter either, brave little Jaehaera, stony-faced and catatonic at the sight before her, frozen as she had been since the rat-catcher had threatened what the sellsword -a man so callously named as Blood- would do to the little girl if she did not hurry and make her choice. An eye for an eye, a son for a son. Debts never paid and twisted.

Yet the look in the little girl's eyes was as if the whole earth had shattered. Helaena couldn't find it within her to bring up his face inside of her memory, not when he was smiling an laughing, not when he had died scared and screaming. Face so cruelly contorted by fear. His little body, those little lilac eyes, lifeless and everything, so so red. Four namedays old. Bloody and haunted. Her first, her boy, named for the Old King, only he would now never grow old, spiders would find their homes where her eldest son had once been.

Perhaps once upon a time, they had taken her warnings. Perhaps it would have been peace. Perhaps if the rot had been cut off before it touched the entire tree. Before the blood seeped into the water and found it's way into the wine. Before the flies feasted upon them all, before crows and buzzards picked their bones dry. She had warned them. Yet the seeds of war had long been sewn, crime unpunished and far from forgotten.

Hadn't her mother and half-sister found peace before Viserys had died? Put down their poisons before it tainted the roots anymore. The woman bit the inside of her cheek, hard enough to draw blood. The taste of iron filled her mouth as the liquid kissed her tongue.

It was foolish to believe that it was enough to stop the ever-growing rot. To expect the scorpion wouldn't sting. It was all the thing knew how to do, all her half-sister's attack dog knew how to do. No matter how gently one handled a creature, it would still bite. But the scorpion had stung the wrong frog, for whilst the grief had confined her, melancholy and guilt twisting her mind into a prison, it had put her upon the window ledge more than once swaying and staring down at the long drop, the spikes at the bottom of the pit.

The anger had found her a way to break free. Anger, righteous and shrewd and vicious, burning like wildfire in her belly. A dragon. A monster taking over where she had once been human, ready to avenge her son, her people, her Hightower uncles and cousins, the families of her ladies and the soldiers that had died for their cause, the smallfolk that starved along with them and suffered at their hands. The lost Shrykos. For her living children, for Jaehaera and Maelor, for her mother and brothers.

Daemon Targaryen would befall the fate of all mad, rabid dogs. The frog would drown the scorpion before it could sting again. She'd cut as many of the rotted limbs from the tree as she could, herself, or she'd die trying.

The beat of Dreamfyre's wings was as soothing as it could be. Like the drums of war. Sure and steady, like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Like Sunfyre glimmering gold and platinum and rose, like the light of the Hightower, like the will of the gods. The wingbeats were thumps of a thunderous heart. A lilting lullaby from the only other creature who truly understood her pain, her fury - who knew her better than anyone else did and likely ever would. A gentle giant and an apt listener-. Dreamfyre was certain, she'd ne'er fail her, heart and soul and strength and innocence, grief and mourning. Dreamfyre knew it all. She is as much me as I am myself. She thought.

Her mouth grew dry as the dot in the distance drew ever closer. Dreamfyre rose higher and higher, the air growing thinner and colder. The red dragon and rider had not spotted them yet, and if the gods had woven the tapestry of fate in her favour, he would not until it was too late. Jaehaerys was dead. She was not.

He was dead. She was not, yet a part of her had died with him, a hole in her heart and an aching web of guilt that made it almost impossible to look at Maelor and Jaehaera, unable to meet her mother's gaze nor stomach being in the same room as her brothers for longer than a moment. Would he have grown to look like them? Aegon's messy waves, Aemond's eyes? Daeron's mannerisms? Would he still have her smile? Maybe the gods could reveal it, in another dream.

Another dream, an omen, a wish, a warning - If she lived long enough to dream again. Fire for fire, blood for blood. Like the fear that haunted her mind. Like the words and riddles whispered by some ancient power. Like their house words. Helaena took another breath, deep and slow. There was a change in the air. It smelt of sulphur and fire and rot. A shadow of a beast as large as her own appeared in the distance. Red and lanky, fierce and unfathomable. Near the size of Vhagar and mighty.

Another breath, perhaps soon to be her last. The weight of the shining silver pauldrons unfamiliar and frightening, yet it kept her grounded. A hand rubbed the pale blue and violet and silver scales, they were hot like a fire, warming and electric against the cold.

The deep green of the singular jewel around her neck. The blade at her hip, unused and untainted. Steel shiny and fresh forged and sharp The golden dragon she had stitched herself marked the hem of the blue-green-black tunic beneath the silver ringmail. Blooming gold and yellow like a bruise. The gods caressed her face, cloud-forged fingers raking through her hair, smoothing braids and tangling through the rest that draped loosely over her back and flowed behind her.

Dreamfyre unleashed a low croon, a growl deep and haunting. Musical, tragic like the songs, tragic like the saints. Fingers dug into the tangle of leather reins and rope, "Gentle mother, font of mercy."

The dragon crooned again as if she was singing along with her. Blood thumped in her ears. Dreamfyre's sapphire spines twisted in the winds, sky and silver membranes like the sails on a ship. Seven hells hath no fury like a mother protecting her children, nor the Fourteen Flames mimic the song of vengeance, cold like ice, burning like fire inside of her heart. Aegon had taken care of the rats, and soon enough, the White Worm would be dead too. She'd show Daemon the true meaning of their house words. Fire for fire, blood for blood.

As her violet eyes befell the form of Caraxes, soaring over the Riverlands, crimson and copper. Flown far enough from where he had split from the skinny brown dragon's side. She strained her eyes to glare at the form of black leather and onyx armour. If this was to be her death, so be it. A fall from the sky, to spikes or to earth, burned like her husband had been, it didn't matter. So long as he was gone. Until he faced punishment for the death he ordered.

Helaena called out in Valyrian, leather and chainmail covered chest pressed into the front of the saddle and reins bound tight around her hands. Strands of silver-gold-moonglow hair flying free of the braids she had woven that very morning. The same braids her mother had taught her all those years ago.

Dreamfyre dove. Soaring swiftly despite her size, the scream of the wind in her ears and against the dragon's mighty wings. As they drew closer, faster and faster and faster. If this was the day of her death, she'd face it with a stiff lip. No return, no return, no reason. She had come this far. Regardless, fear coiled in her belly like a viper ready to strike. Death would always be scary, a stranger, a crow cloaked in shadows with leathery wings like a bat, claws like a dragon and the shape of a tall, thin man lingered in the dark corners of her vision, the Stranger - ready to lead them to the world beyond.

She was not ready to face Jaehaerys. The little boy whose body was butchered and head hacked off by a half-blunt blade - Helaena didn't think she could ever be.. Yet, at the very least, the gods would pass their judgment upon his killers. Pass judgement upon Daemon Targaryen and his band of rabid hounds and scorpions. Death, death! The Stranger crowed through the wind.

The Mother's hymn found its way past her lips and into the wind. Flies and spiders and birds. She pleaded for the Warrior's strength, for the Maiden's goodness and the Father's justice. Fire in her blood, rage belly and thunder in her heart, the gods whispered something soft into her ear. Not a riddle, not a vision nor prophesy. Dreamfyre roared. Fire reigned o'er the back of the crimson beast, mighty dragons of blue and red danced.