#this chapter got away from me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

varpusvaras · 3 months

Text

Fox is being punished.

That has to be it. He had been a bad Commander, a bad soldier, a bad brother. All he had ever done had been mistakes, one after the other, leading up to his miserable end.

But even after that, even after his body had been broken, even after he had had to lay there, in pain and numb, slowly choking out because no matter how much he had wanted to, his lungs would not draw in another breath. The only mercy he had been granted there had been the fact that he had lost consciousness before the end had actually arrived, so he had not had to actually see it.

Fox had known when the end had come, though. There had been a flash of something, a landscape of rivers and lights he had fallen through, all the way back towards the hard ground beneath him.

Then, he had stood there, watching himself laying on that hard ground, unmoving and cold.

Fox had watched as his men had gathered around him, how they tried to find a pulse, even though Fox himself could tell it had been too late just by looking at himself. He had looked like a doll that had been played too harshly with, and then left behind, once his owner had grown bored with him.

Fox had watched as his men had gathered his body and covered it, despite the fact that he had still had his entire armor on. He had watched them carry it away.

Fox had not followed them.

He knows what happens to all the bodies already.

He did…he did not want to see himself go through it.

It is selfish of him, he knows. He should’ve followed them, should’ve watched himself burn, like all of his brothers before him, who had been fortunate enough to make it back. It shouldn’t have mattered.

He is already dead, after all.

Still, he had not followed them. Instead, he just continues to stand there, at the foot of the Temple, where he had taken his last breath.

He had thought he would see his brothers again.

He had thought that he would finally get to apologise to Thorn. He had thought that Thorn would throw his arm around his shoulders and call him stupid for thinking that he had something to apologise for.

He had thought that he would get to run to Ponds’s arms again. He had thought he would get to be held, and his older brother, always forgiving, would tell him that he still loved him, no matter what.

Fox stares at the ground, where his body had fallen.

It seems that once again, he had thought he deserved more than he was ever meant to.

— — —

Fox is being punished.

That has to be it. He is being punished for all his failures, by having him witness the same things happen over and over again, but this time, he is even more helpless than ever before.

He watches as his brothers continue to die. He watches as bolts that he could’ve warned them about hit them over and over again, because his voice doesn’t carry anymore.

He watches as his brothers continue to lose themselves, pulling the triggers of their blasters over and over again, because his hands are as much nothing as the air around them is.

He watches as the Galaxy continues to fall deeper and deeper into the darkness.

He watches it all, and he knows it is his fault.

— — —

Fox thinks about visiting Alderaan, sometimes.

He misses it. It’s weird. He misses a place that he has never been to. He misses a place that was never his home, and never would be.

He misses-

Fox pushes the thought away from his mind, frightened of the possibility of what will happen if he thinks about it, thinks about them too much. He is not tied to the laws of regular travelling of the Universe anymore, and he is afraid that if he thinks too much, the next thing he knows, he will be standing there, looking right at them.

He can’t do that.

— — —

Fox watches Bly die.

His screams don’t reach him before he is gone, and they don’t reach him after.

— — —

Fox watches Stone die.

He screams, again, even though he knows it’s pointless. He screams at him, orders him to get up, orders him not to leave Thire alone to this place.

Stone doesn’t hear him. He dies, bleeding out in front of Fox, his blood flowing through Fox’s hands, no matter how hard Fox tries to hold it all in.

— — —

Fox watches his brothers die.

He still tries, for some reason. Tries to hold them, tries to keep them from falling apart, tries to tell them they aren’t alone as they fade.

He tries, because he has to. Because he didn’t try hard enough when he still had the chance.

— — —

He thinks of Rex a lot, whenever he sits by one of his brothers during their last moments.

He thinks of Rex and the ARC Trooper in Rex’s arms and with a hole in his chest, and he sees himself holding the weapon.

Fox is being punished.

— — —

Fox watches his brothers die.

He stays with them until the end.

All of them leave Fox after.

— — —

Fox surrounds himself with his brothers.

He sits there, among them, the living and the dead. He listens to their voices, he watches their faces, he searches their eyes for recognition as they look towards him.

It never comes. They can only look towards Fox, but not at him.

Fox doesn’t know if he even wants them to see him.

He doesn’t want them to leave him.

He closes his eyes and listens to his brothers’ voices.

— — —

Fox watches Wolffe.

He follows him around as he goes across the Galaxy, and closes his eyes whenever he pulls the trigger.

Fox watches Cody.

He follows him around as he goes across the Galaxy, and holds his hand whenever he pulls the trigger.

Fox watches them destroy themselves, and all he can do is cry silent, invisible tears.

— — —

Fox watches his brothers die.

As he sits there, in a pool of blood that cannot stain him any further, he knows that he is being punished.

He can’t take it anymore.

Fox is being punished, and there is no place left for him that won’t hurt him further.

He still goes, wishing for the reprieve of a different kind of pain.

— — —

The sun is setting when Fox arrives to Alderaan.

He stands there, at the gates to the Palace, and watches the sun disappear behind the mountains and paint the sky with the colors of the warmth he can not feel anymore.

He only has enough courage to enter through the gates once the sky has begun to turn dark.

He remembers the stories Bail and Breha had told him. He remembers the terraces Bail had told him about, the ones where he would sit with Breha whenever he was back home. He remembers the halls Bail had described to him, the ones where he and Breha would dance in when they had the time, when they had a moment just for themselves to enjoy.

He remembers the corridors and hallways Breha had told him about, the ones she had grown up running through, her shoes forgotten in the haste of seeing the ships leave in the morning.

With the stories playing in his mind, he wanders through the Palace, all the way to the living rooms of the Queen and her Consort.

Fox can hear them, through the door. He recognises the low, gentle sway of Bail’s voice, and he knows the melody of Breha’s voice as she speaks.

He stands there, outside their door, and listens to them speak words he cannot make out.

Bail says something. Breha laughs.

Fox smiles. His tears don’t burn his eyes anymore.

He sits on the floor and leans against their door, and he listens.

— — —

When the morning comes, Fox hides.

He’s not hiding because he fears they will see him. He knows painfully well by now that he is invisible to the Galaxy as it is now.

No, he hides, so that he can’t see them.

So it goes. Fox hides in the halls and rooms of the Palace, living as a shadow in the house that was never his home, and he listens to the voices of the people he had once hoped would be his home.

He knows the sound of Bail’s footsteps already, and he quickly learns Breha’s as well. Sometimes, he catches a glimpse of them, and he averts his eyes, no matter how much he wants to do nothing else than just look at them.

There’s pain waiting for him in their faces, and there is pain here, where he doesn’t see them.

Fox is being punished, after all.

When the night falls, he sits by their door and listens to them talk.

Bail says something. Breha laughs.

There is silence.

Breha cries.

It’s an awful sound.

Fox thinks that it’s his fault.

— — —

Breha is not back to the Palace yet.

Fox still sits in front of their door, even though there is no conversation going on on the other side.

It’s silent, for a long while, but then there is noise.

Bail is crying.

It’s an awful sound.

Fox thinks it’s his fault, too.

After all, had he not ruined everything that Bail had worked so long for?

— — —

They have a child, now.

It’s impossible for Fox to not know that. Everyone around him is talking about her.

The little Princess of Alderaan.

Fox knows that they always wanted children. They talked about it often. So often, that sometimes, when Fox had been foolish enough for a moment, he had imagined a little girl himself, a little girl with dark eyes and dark hair, with a toothy smile and bright laugh.

A little girl, just for them.

He’s happy for them. He really is. He knows how much they wanted to have a child. A little girl, just for them.

Fox had always known that he had been nothing more than a pawn on the board of war.

Somehow, there is still a new pain to be found, from the realisation that the Galaxy and the lives in it would continue to move forward even without him.

They have a child, now. A little girl, just for them, like it had been before Fox, and how it is now without him.

— — —

The little Princess has not been sleeping properly, lately.

Fox doesn’t know a lot about babies, but he has heard some say that it is quite normal for them to sometimes go through periods where they seem to be doing nothing more than cry, day and night.

The little Princess has certainly been doing that for the past week.

Her cries always start the same. First as a few hiccups, that will eventually grow to sobs, and then to loud, demanding and shrill screams, that will go and and on, before she grows tired, and her little voice becomes hoarse, until she has the energy to just whimper.

Fox hates the sound. He hates every second of every part of it.

There is a need inside of him. A need that tells him that he must stand up, that he must walk through the door, that he must take the child and soothe her until she stops crying, that he must do so until she is happy again.

He wonders if this was what the Prime felt like when he had been given his son.

The little Princess cries. Fox listens to it, his teeth drawing blood that will not flow from his lip as he bites down on it, in order to keep himself composed. Breha and Bail sound both exhausted, as far as Fox can hear through the door, but still, they carry on, trying their best to soothe their daughter, as she continues to cry.

Eventually, a silence falls.

It draws on, far longer than it has in many days.

Fox listens to it for a while, until it becomes simply too much. For a week, he has been holding himself together, and now, during a moment of peace, he has run out of any patience he had still had left.

He stands, and moves into the rooms on the other side of the door.

He moves slowly and quietly through the dark living room. It feels appropriate, still, even though he makes no sound anymore for anyone to hear. He glances at the marks of a long life together, a life that he was just a small, brief moment in, and makes his way to the bedroom.

Fox does hesitate for a long moment before he actually steps in. It feels like he is intruding, no matter how many times there had been promises, promises of this place, promises for his place exactly here. After all, those promises had never been able to come through, all because of Fox himself. There is no place for him here, anymore.

Bail and Breha are both asleep. Fox can see them lay on the bed, turned towards each other in their slumber. Breha is curled against Bail, and Bail is curled around her, his back to Fox, like he is protecting her.

Fox finally looks at them properly, now that they have their eyes closed.

He feels like a stranger, stumbling upon a picture of a perfect life. It has been a while since he has wished for anything else than the final mercy of true death be granted upon him, but now, there is a longing for a life inside of him, burning him cold.

He stands there and he longs, longs for two things he cannot have at the same time.

Fox is being punished.

There is a small, dim light on at the nightstand on the other side of the bed, and next to it, is a small cot.

Fox tiptoes around the bed, and he slowly, so slowly and carefully, makes his way to the cot and looks in.

She is sleeping there, the little Princess of Alderaan. She has a round face and small body, and tiny arms and legs with even tinier hands and feet.

There is a tuft of brown hair on top of her head.

Fox has a feeling that if her eyes were open, he would see that they were also dark.

A little girl, with dark eyes and brown hair.

A little girl, just for them.

There she is, just like Fox had imagined her.

There she is, now that Fox is not.

She makes little sounds when she sleeps. Tiny gasps and soft sniffles, and even tinier whines every now and then as she shifts around a bit, her eyelids fluttering for a second before she settles back down.

Fox cannot look away.

He stands there, looking at her, at her round cheeks and tiny nose, at the tiny shadows her little eyelashes are casting on her skin, at the way her hair is longer at her forehead and curls ever so slightly towards the left side of her head.

She whines a little, then again, a little louder. Breha shifts a little on the bed behind Fox.

She needs her rest.

Fox knows it doesn’t matter, but he hums.

There hadn’t been any songs for them when Fox had been little. No lullabies or nursery rhymes. The only songs that had been sung to them had been the endless melodies of the ocean and its waves, and the songs of war, of bravery and brotherhood.

None of them are suitable to be sung to a little Princess in the dead of the night, to lull her back to sleep.

It’s a good thing, then, that she cannot hear him.

Still, despite all of this, Fox hums the song to her, the song of his brothers and their hearts. He hums the song over and over again, with his voice that cannot tire anymore, as it is as soundless as it was eternal.

The whines stop. She squirms around a bit, before she settles again, and stays there for the rest of the night.

Fox flees when the morning comes and he hears Bail awaken.

— — —

Now that Fox has given a part of himself, he cannot take it back anymore.

He goes in the next night, stands there next to the cot and looks at the little Princess, and he hums the song for her. She sleeps through night after night.

Fox knows he is only deluding himself in thinking he is actually helping in any way.

He still leaves every morning.

— — —

Babies grow fast.

Fox notices it all by himself without anyone having to tell him. She seems to get bigger after every week.

Leia. The little Princess. A little girl, just for them.

She is five months now, Fox had heard Breha mention it the day before.

Fox realises that she must’ve been born right after the Rise of the Empire.

It feels like it has been a lot longer than that.

— — —

Fox hums. Leia had fallen asleep an hour ago, so it was still early into the night. Bail and Breha were also in the bed already, trying to catch as much sleep as they could.

Fox had really thought they were asleep.

Until he hears a quiet, choked sob.

Bail pushes himself up instantly at the sound. Even though Fox could disappear instantly from where he stood, his mind had stopped working for a moment right then, and it’s already too late when the thought to do so finally crosses him.

“Breha?” Bail murmurs.

Breha doesn’t answer instantly. Fox hears her draw in a deep breath that comes out accompanied by another sob.

“I-” She says, and tries to breathe in deep again, but her voice just wavers more when she speaks after it. “I miss him. I miss him so much. He was supposed to be here.”

“I know”, Bail says. “I know. I miss him too.”

Breha buries her face into Bail’s chest and cries.

“He was supposed to be here”, she sobs, digging a hot, burning blade of pain deeper into Fox’s chest with every noise. “He was supposed to be here, with us.”

It takes Fox a moment to realise that they are talking about him.

He looks Bail in the eyes properly for the first time since before his death.

They are full of tears, already making their way down his face, steadily and quietly as he holds Breha through her cries, steadfast and strong as always.

Fox remembers how much he loves them again.

He wants so badly to reach for them in that moment, he wants so badly for them to see him, to hear him, like he is still there.

But he is not there.

He continues humming, through his own, quiet and weightless tears, and Leia sleeps through the night.

— — —

Fox stays when the morning comes.

He cannot look away from them anymore, either. So he watches as they dress themselves and then dress Leia, and he follows them when they walk out of the Palace and through the gardens, down the hill and to a smaller garden, away from the main one at the central courtyard.

Fox didn’t remember either of them ever mentioning it to him. They had both talked so much about all the plants and flowers of the Palace in detail when Fox had asked, in wonder of having living things in such abundance all around, even indoors.

The little garden looks new, as Fox takes a better look at it. The stones around the flowerbeds have no weather to them yet, and the ground on which the flowers themselves stand is dark and loose and looks like it has just been placed there.

There are young trees at the center of the garden, their blooming branches arching over white stones in the middle.

It takes a Fox a moment to realise that it’s a grave.

There are some petals that have fallen on the stone in the middle. Bail sweeps them away, before resting his hand on top of the stone.

“Good morning, our love”, he says, and with air that he doesn’t need to breathe stuck inside his throat, Fox reads the writing on the stone.

Where he lives now is in our hearts

Eternal, everlasting

Like love

Fox Organa

Remembered and lived by his wife, husband and daughter

Oh.

Fox had thought- he had thought-

Breha takes Leia’s little hand to hers, and she presses both it and her own hand on top of the stone as well.

“Good morning, love”, she says. “Say good morning, Buir.”

Leia is five months old. Fox knows that she is too young to know how to speak yet.

Still, she babbles happily, her little fingers curling against the stone, and Fox-

Fox stands beside his own grave and cries.

— — —

He looks at Leia that night as she sleeps. He looks at her round cheeks and tiny nose, her dark hair and tiny hands and feet, the way her chin is shaped and the way her mouth curves.

He looks at her, and hums a song for her, to their little Princess. To their little girl, a little girl who is just for them.

Fox sits on the edge of the bed once Bail and Breha are both asleep, and he feels like he somehow belongs, even though he is not there.

— — —

Leia is six months old.

She is still rather small, as far as Fox has understood, but Bail and Breha are not worried by that. Fox trusts that they have a good reason.

He is sitting on his spot on the edge of the bed, humming the song, as Leia suddenly scrunches her face, looking very much like she is about to cry.

Fox stands up in a hurry and leans over the cot.

“Shhh”, he hushes. “Shhh, it’s alright, it’s alright.”

He only realises that he is trying for nothing, like all the times before, after he has already said the words.

Indeed, Leia does open her eyes, her face still scrunched up and her mouth drawn tightly, and she blinks rapidly, and-

She looks up, her dark eyes locking in on Fox’s.

Fox freezes.

No. No, she is not looking at him, he reminds himself. She cannot see him, since he is not actually there-

Leia’s face relaxes as she continues staring at him. Her mouth goes lax for a moment, and then it curls into a toothy smile, and she reaches her hands towards him.

Fox cannot help it. Readying himself for inevitable disappointment, he reaches his hand into the cot.

Leia’s hands reach for his. First they don’t seem to be able to grasp on anything, but then, all of a sudden, they curl around Fox’s thumb. It feels like there is static between them, as a layer on Fox’s skin, but he can still feel the pressure and a hint of warmth through it.

Leia looks at him, and smiles.

Fox smiles back, wavering and on the edge of tears yet again, but he smiles back at her.

“That’s right”, he says. “It’s alright. Buir is here.”

Leia falls back asleep that night holding onto Fox’s hand.

— — —

There are limits to what Fox can do.

He cannot lift Leia up properly. He can put his hands under her and lift her maybe half an inch for a second or maybe two, at max. The static feeling is always there whenever she touches him, but Fox can let her hold onto him, and he can lightly brush her head to soothe her. Leia giggles every time Fox runs his finger down the bridge of her nose.

Fox has no other option than to exist with the fact that there is one person in the whole Galaxy who can see him.

He cannot touch her as much when she is being held by someone else. He cannot pry her away from Breha or Bail, not that Fox even wants to.

Breha is holding her on her shoulder as she mixes her a bottle. Leia is a little fussy, hunger making her impatient.

Fox calls to her, and when Leia looks up at him, he sticks his tongue out at her.

The fussiness and the hunger are completely forgotten. Leia laughs and clumsily claps her hands together. She shrieks out a louder laugh as Fox does it again.

Breha turns, and looks around the room. There is still a bang of loss in Fox’s chest as her eyes pass right by him.

“Something caught your eye?” Breha asks. She is smiling as she looks at Leia, and Fox loves her immensely.

— — —

Bail stands next to Fox at Leia’s cot.

Fox had always leaned against him whenever they had stood this close to each other. It had been a habit, born from the fact that Fox had always run cold while Bail had always run warm.

Fox misses that warmth.

Bail looks at Leia, who stares right back at him.

“The last time I checked”, Bail says slowly. “It was way past the bedtime for little Princesses.”

Leia only grins at Bail, who looks extremely dejected. Fox cannot help but laugh a little.

Leia’s eyes move to Fox, and she laughs back at him.

Bail frowns, and turns to look. For a moment, it feels like he is looking straight at Fox, but his eyes never stop searching.

Fox wants to just lean forward and fall against him.

He stays put, until Bail’s eyes turn away.

— — —

Leia stands up against the couch.

Carefully, she lets go of it. She looks at Breha, who is sitting just a few meters away from them, and then she looks at Fox, who is sitting on the couch.

Fox smiles at her.

“Go on”, he says. “Go on, Leili’ika, you can do it.”

“Come on”, Breha says, extending her arms towards Leia. “Come on, you can do it!”

Leia takes one, hesitant step away from the couch. Then another, and another, until she has made it to Breha, who catches her in a hug.

“There you go!” Breha laughs, and kisses Leia’s cheeks. “There you go, I knew you could do it!”

Leia giggles, and then looks over at Fox.

Fox claps his hands.

“Good job!” He says. Breha puts Leia back down, and Leia turns around, and makes her way towards him with small, wavering steps. She grabs at the couch right in front of Fox, and looks up at him, with a wide, toothy smile.

Fox glances at Breha.

Breha is looking at Leia, but slowly, her eyes move up, following Leia’s gaze.

She doesn’t see him, but she keeps looking, almost like she is expecting to see something there.

She is not smiling anymore. Fox swallows, and turns to look back at Leia.

Leia is still smiling, and Fox quickly smiles back at her.

“Good job”, he says again, and runs his thumb over her cheek. “Good job, Leia.”

Leia giggles again. Breha is still looking when Fox looks back at her.

— — —

“Sometimes, it just…” Breha trails off. “....it just seems like she’s really seeing something we’re not.”

“I know”, Bail says. “But…she always looks happy, correct?”

Breha nods.

“Yes”, she answers, and then pauses. “...do you think it’s because of…”

Bail takes her hand into his.

“Maybe”, he says, almost whispering. “Maybe. Though I…I cannot imagine what she is seeing. I’ve never heard of anything like this. Obi-Wan or Master Yoda could know, perhaps, but…”

He cuts himself off, and shakes his head.

“It’s too dangerous”, he says.

Fox stares at his hands as he listens to them speak, his mind trying to catch up with what had just been said.

They aren't all gone. The Jedi are not all gone.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is alive.

— — —

Fox goes to see Kenobi that night, after Leia has fallen asleep.

It’s the middle of the day there, with two suns blaring down on the desert. Fox finds Kenobi easily enough.

He looks like he has aged several years in just a span of one.

Fox cannot blame him.

He watches Kenobi for a while, looking for any sign that he can see Fox.

When none come, Fox steps closer.

“General?” He calls. “General Kenobi?”

Nothing.

Fox tries not to feel disappointed.

There’s a strange feeling then, like he is being watched. Fox turns around.

No one around him is looking at him.

— — —

Fox goes to visit Cody after.

He watches as Cody cleans his blaster, just like he always does. He looks like he usually does as well, with his helmet off, and his brows creased in a gentle, concentrated frown.

Fox wonders what Cody would do, if Fox could tell him that Kenobi is alive.

Perhaps it’s for the best that he can’t.

Fox returns to Alderaan, and sits on the edge of the bed. Leia makes a sound, and he hums her song to her to settle her back to sleep.

— — —

Kids are fast.

Much faster than they have any right to be. Leia especially, because she is still tiny.

“Leia!” Bail calls after her, as she speeds off. “Leia, slow down!”

Fox can move a lot faster than anyone else. In less than a blink of an eye, he is in front of her, and she hastily slows herself down to a stop.

“You heard your papa”, Fox says. “Slow down.”

Leia has the gall to pout at him.

Bail has now caught up to her as well, and he scoops her up.

“What are you pouting at?” He asks her, tickling her stomach lightly.

Leia laughs.

“Buir!” She giggles, which makes Bail stop immediately.

He looks at Leia, looking a bit confused for a moment, and then glances towards the small garden.

“Do you want to go see Buir?” He asks her.

Leia turns to look back at Fox.

“Buir”, she says.

Bail doesn’t notice her looking, because he just nods, and starts to make his way towards the garden. Fox decides it’s for the best if he follows them.

Bail puts her back down on the ground in front of the grave.

“There we go”, he murmurs. “Say hello to Buir.”

Leia frowns at the stone, and then looks at Fox.

“Buir”, she says. She sounds rather confused now.

Bail looks at her, and then up, straight at Fox but straight past him.

Fox makes himself smile at Leia.

“It’s okay”, he says. He brushes his hand across the top of her head. “It’s okay, Leili’ika. Buir is right here.”

Leia looks at him, and then reaches her hand.

“Buir”, she says.

Fox lets her grab onto his hand. He watches as Bail looks at him, still straight past him, with a lost look full of grief in his eyes.

Once again, Fox wishes nothing more than to be able to speak to him, make him see, make him hear him, so Fox could tell him that he is right there.

But he cannot.

Because even when Fox has found his place, even when Fox has found happiness, even when Fox has found a home, even when he has been granted a reason to be here.

Even then, Fox is being punished.

#this DEFINITELY got away from me #so this is part 1/chapter 1!#part 2/chapter 2 coming tomorrow #I need a break from crying while writing okay #anyway: have force ghost fox and baby leia who is the only one who can see him #enjoy #Force Ghost Fox #sw #tcw #Star Writing #my writing #my fics #Commander Fox #Leia Organa #Bail Organa #Breha Organa #bail/breha/fox

175 notes · View notes

kingtomura · 4 months

Text

like do you really mean to tell me the main antagonist who grew with the story will only get a damn two page send off? After all the foreshadowing and hints at reconstruction? Even shirakumo/Kurogiri said he has to join his friends so does that mean nothing?? And Tenko never even gets a chance???

this is so fucking depressing I need some time away

#mha 423 #mha spoilers #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki #I cared too much and I feel like crap #chapter got me feeling so bad I might take up hiking or something as a hobby to get away from the pain

150 notes · View notes

blenselche · 30 days

Text

always bugged me that charlie lost her stripes

#we're one chapter away from firnn stuff finally hhhh #merge hc #vanlife au #finnferntress #finntress #huntress wizard #finn mertens #charlie adventure time #adventure time charlie #adventure time #my husband says my colorblindness rly got away from me on this one sorry about that #he wasnt around to balance things for me

109 notes · View notes

reds-skull · 9 months

Text

Me: damn I feel like painting Soap rn

Me an hour later: but what if I completely fuck him up tho

(inspired by this painting by Zack Zdrale)

#call of duty modern warfare 2 #cod mw2 #cod soap #john soap mactavish #cod fanart #call of duty modern warfare #call of duty #body horror #ok serious note this was originally for like feeling out the vibes of yet another au Im thinking about #it kinda got away from me but I like it #dont ask why he doesnt have a shirt on #'face melting off' isnt an activity you should do with a shirt is my excuse #the patterns on the right side of his face are loosly based on the muscular system #bc I had to reference it for my uni work today and thought 'what if...'#BLOOD||HUNGER #<now that i started posting chapters im going back to tag everything related to the fic

199 notes · View notes

astrobei · 2 years

Text

for @quinnick: kiss prompt #4 - lips barely touching

The car is out of gas. Will is about ten seconds away from maybe-dying (again). Mike Wheeler has been abnormally quiet today.

At least of late, one of those things is more abnormal than the others.

The car is always out of gas. Will doesn’t know when the last time they’d filled it up was, but he does know that it’s not his problem trying to figure it out. That’s Hopper’s deal. Or his mom’s, maybe. Or Nancy’s, or Jonathan’s, or–

Whatever! The point is that the car is out of gas, Mike and Will are stranded at the currently closed general store, and they’re probably about to die.

Again.

“Mike,” Will tries, for maybe the hundredth time. “It’s not your fault, okay, it could’ve happened to anyone–”

“Yeah,” Mike grumbles miserably, as they round the corner, from aisle four – cleaning supplies and household items – into aisle five – canned goods. Most of the shelves are empty, turned over. Mike picks up a can of pickled green beans, pulls a face, and puts it back on the shelf. “But it didn’t happen to anyone. It happened to me.”

Will takes a long, deep breath in through his nose. God forbid Mike Wheeler ever let anything go. “You didn’t know,” he huffs anyway. “It’s not your fault.” The store is dark, which is great for being able to roll your eyes without Mike seeing. Will’s flashlight sputters, briefly, the bright circle of light flickering in and out of view. He smacks it against his palm once, twice, and it steadies. “Seriously,” Will adds, as Mike slows to a stop in front of him. “Stop beating yourself up. So we have to wait for a ride. Big deal.”

Mike turns around to face him. His expression is mostly unreadable in the dark, but Will’s flashlight catches the edge of it – worried, a little guilty. “Yeah,” Mike says softly. “Except there are things everywhere and waiting for a ride is just– we’re sitting ducks here, okay,” Mike frowns. “I don’t like it. It feels like tempting fate.”

“Well, the simple fact of my existence feels like tempting fate sometimes,” Will jokes. It works, for a split second – Mike’s furrowed brows smooth out into something halfway amused, and he makes a noise that might be a laugh.

“Not funny,” Mike says anyway. His lips twitch.

“You laughed!” Will insists, smiling. His voice carries down through the hallway in a vibrant echo. “I know you did!”

“Shut up,” Mike whispers, looking away. “Would it kill you to keep your voice down?”

It might. Somewhere in the back of Will’s mind, he’s vaguely aware that they’re not safe here, out in the open, and that the whole point of them coming inside instead of waiting in the parking lot was to hunker down until Jonathan and Nancy could get another car here to pick them up. And also, preferably, get some gas.

Somewhere significantly closer in Will’s mind, though, is the knowledge that this is the most Mike has said – and the closest he’s come to laughing – since the car had stalled on the way from the cabin to the general store ten minutes ago, and Mike had just barely had time to pull into the abandoned parking lot before it had stopped altogether. He knows Mike doesn’t like this – being caught off-guard, out in the open. Even minute changes in the plan – which you’d think they’d all be more prepared for, considering the way things have been going lately – get Mike a little keyed up.

And the sorry, borderline pathetic part is this: despite it all, despite the ever-present threat of danger, and the impending sense of doom that’s been hanging over their heads for what seems like forever, Will feels vaguely pleased with himself anyway, seeing Mike hold back a smile instead of forcing one on his face.

So yeah, it might kill him, if he kept his voice down. That’s okay. Will thinks it would be worth it, sometimes – the danger and the doom and everything else – to hear Mike laugh.

God, what’s wrong with him? That’s embarrassing. That’s so embarrassing.

He shakes the thought off. “Whatever,” Will says instead, praying the cover of darkness is hiding the blush that’s rapidly rising to his cheeks. He angles the flashlight away from them anyway, just in case, and Mike’s face falls back into silhouette. “You know I’m right. You’re doomed just by being here with me.”

Mike shakes his head. “You know I don’t think of you like that.”

Will frowns. “Like what?”

“Like– like a bad luck charm,” Mike waves his hands around. “Or whatever.”

“I didn’t say bad luck charm,” Will exclaims. “Ouch! Stop putting words into my mouth.”

Mike grins. “Would you rather have, uh,” he picks up the nearest can to him, something small and vaguely gray, “tinned sardines in your mouth? Tinned sardines in water? Oh, gross. Never mind, actually.”

“I would rather not,” Will decides, even though the shelves are so bare that they might have to suck it up and take home the tinned sardines in water after all. “Would you like some, uh. Tuna?”

“I guess we know why there’s so much fish,” Mike sighs, leaning heavily against an empty shelf. “Nobody wanted it.”

“You mean the ten people outside of our circle of friends that are still left in Hawkins? Yeah,” Will scoffs, then sets the can back down with a soft clink. “I guess not.”

Neither of them say anything for a moment. It’s quiet in the store, the room dark and lit faintly by Will’s flashlight and the display in the corner. It lights Mike up a faint blue, catches the edges of his jaw and where his hair is curling softly over the hood of his jacket.

Will’s flashlight sputters again.

When it comes back on this time, it’s more faint than it was before. It’s dark in here, Will realizes, a bit belatedly. Like, really dark.

He takes a deep breath and shuffles closer to Mike, just a little, like the shape of his body all leaned against the empty shelves is a grounding force. Mike gives him a look that Will can’t quite decipher in the dark.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Will breathes out. The proximity is helping, a little. “Just– waiting for our ride.”

Mike leans in a bit closer too, places an arm under Will’s elbow. It’s a light touch, nothing forceful, but the semblance of support is there. “You sure? You look a little pale.”

Sometimes, Will hates how well Mike knows him. He doesn’t get antsy in the same way Mike does in situations like these, but he’d be lying if he said they didn’t affect him at all. It should be expected by now, the automatic fight or flight.

For some cruel reason, it still isn’t. “You can’t even see me,” he says, but lets himself lean into the touch anyway.

“I can see enough,” Mike says easily. “Do you want to sit down?”

Will shakes his head. The only thing worse than waiting out in the open is sitting out in the open. At least when you’re standing, you can run. “No. I’m fine.”

Will can’t see Mike either, but he’d be willing to bet real money – that he doesn’t have – that he can tell exactly what Mike’s expression looks like. The pause grows, swells and swells and swells, until Will is sure Mike is going to say something–

There’s a clattering outside.

Instantly, Mike’s hand tightens its grip on Will’s elbow. “Did you hear that?”

“Yes,” Will hisses, twisting around to try and see through the windows. “Of course I heard that, Mike.”

“Do you think that’s–”

“No idea,” Will whispers. With no small amount of reluctance, he tugs his arm out of Mike’s grip. He misses the warmth of it almost instantaneously, and the tugging in his stomach is only amplified by the way Mike automatically leans in behind him, places a hand on his back to replace the absent touch, like it was never gone at all. Will swallows, and flicks the flashlight off. “Now be quiet.”

“The windows are boarded up,” Mike says, decidedly not being quiet. Will wonders where the Mike Wheeler of fifteen minutes ago went – the one that was sulking and fidgeting in silence the whole way down the first aid aisle. “They’re boarded up, so nothing can get in. Right?”

“We got in,” Will points out, which Mike seems to realize at approximately the same second he does. It’s getting a little hard to think, with Mike so close to him.

Will really wishes Mike would pull his hand away.

“Right,” Mike whispers, breath ghosting gently over the back of Will’s neck. “Okay. That’s fine. That’s fine.”

Fine, Will thinks. That’s one word for it.

Another clattering. It’s closer this time.

Will freezes.

Jonathan and Nancy are probably about ten minutes out. Twenty if they had to go back to the Wheelers’ for the other car. So they’d probably be fine if they stuck it out here, because the chance of something happening across them now, in the brief period of time where they’re stuck without a ride, in a building equipped with close to nothing that could help, is small.

Small, but not nonexistent.

Will isn’t really feeling inclined to take that chance. “Come on,” he says, then spins on his heel, grabbing Mike’s hand and tugging him in the opposite direction. “Come with me.”

Mike follows easily, stumbling slightly with the sudden movement. “Wh– where are we going?”

“Just come on,” Will says, then tugs Mike around to the back of the store. He yanks open a door, and shoves him inside. “Get in.”

“Whoa,” Mike says, as Will tumbles in behind him. “Will, what–”

“Would it kill you to be quiet?”

“Sorry,” Mike says, then does, at last, fall silent.

Immediately, Will wishes he hadn’t said that. It’s dark in here – even darker than out in the front of the store – and the only noise is the faint hum of a generator, somewhere behind the walls. It’s grating and stilted. Will wonders when the last time it had been repaired was.

Plus, it’s really–

It’s really fucking dark in here.

Will lets out a long, slow exhale, and reaches out to feel for the wall beside him. His palm comes into contact with chipped paint and he follows the shape of it down, lowering himself onto the ground.

“Will?” Mike says, and Will is in half a mind to say that thing about being quiet again, but–

It’s dark. It’s really dark.

“Yeah,” he says, barely audible even to himself over the faint hum of the generator, and the louder hum – demanding, prominent, persistent – of his blood rushing through his ears. “I just– sitting. I’m sitting.”

There had at least been some light out in the front, but this storage closet might as well be a void. It smells vaguely of dust, something stale and unknown and probably untouched for who-knows-how-long. Will takes another deep breath in.

“Where?” Mike asks. “I don’t want to step on you.”

Will cracks a smile. “Here,” he says, and holds a hand up in the air. “Right here.”

There’s a quiet shuffling sound as Mike moves closer, and then Will feels fingertips brushing against his. Mike latches on immediately, gripping tighter onto his hand and sits down in front of him.

Will still can’t see anything – he can’t see anything – but he can feel Mike’s presence like it’s a tangible thing.

Mike could let go of Will’s hand now. Now that he’s found him.

He doesn’t, though.

“Hey,” Mike says, then there’s another faint shuffling noise. “Where are we?”

“Storage closet.”

“Huh. How did you know it was here?”

Will cracks another smile, despite himself. “My mom worked here, remember? For, like, years.”

“Right,” Mike laughs, and then he’s moving closer, knees bumping against knees in the dark. “I forgot. It doesn’t feel like the same place.”

“Tell me about it,” Will sighs. He’s probably breathing in dust and debris and soot and all sorts of gross stuff, but he can’t find it in himself to care. He presses his knees against Mike’s a little harder, just because he can.

“I remember,” Mike starts, readjusting his grip on Will’s hand – fingers interlocked, a firmer grip – “she’d give me free candy from the front counter. Whenever I came in with my parents, I mean. My mom was so confused about why I kept asking to tag along to Melvald’s with her.”

“That’s not fair,” Will laughs. “She never let me have any candy.”

“You were a menace all hopped up on sugar,” Mike points out. “I knew how to behave myself.”

That’s a damn lie, and they both know it. “Liar,” Will says quietly, leaning his head back against the wall. “You’re such a liar.”

“Maybe so,” Mike hums. “But I’m still the one who got free candy, so–”

“Mike!” Will shoves lightly at his knee, and Mike’s answering laugh fills the small space instantaneously. It’s loud – too loud, because they’re supposed to be hiding, goddamnit – but the nagging little voice at the back of Will’s head is vanquished almost as quickly as it came. “Shut up.”

Mike, as always, ignores him. “Why don’t we turn on a light?”

“The fuse is probably blown,” Will responds. “If there’s even a light in this stupid closet.”

“I mean this, idiot,” Mike says, and then clicks the flashlight back on. The batteries must be dying, because it flickers to life weakly, steadying out into a dim yellow-white. “Obviously.”

“Don’t waste the batteries,” Will says at once, trying to grab for it. “Come on, Mike–”

“Jonathan and Nancy will be here any minute and then we can go put in new batteries,” Mike says, holding it easily out of reach. “No point sitting in the dark, right?”

“Mike,” Will tries to protest, but it’s useless. Mike’s made up his mind.

Slowly, and a little far away, Will realizes what Mike is trying to do. He’s not being subtle about it, but subtlety has never been Mike Wheeler’s strong suit. He’s always been exuberant, quick and spontaneous with his actions, and this is no different. Sitting up close, closer than would be strictly necessary in any other situation. Turning the light on, despite the dying batteries. Telling Will about coming here as a kid, all those years ago. Making him laugh. Diffusing the tension.

Jesus, and he’s still holding Will’s hand.

A wave of affection washes over him, sudden and overwhelming enough for Will to feel borderline nauseous.

This isn’t fair. This isn’t fair. Mike can’t just sit here and touch their knees together and hold Will’s hand, and–

“Look,” Mike is saying, and then he’s holding the flashlight under his chin and grinning. “Don’t I look freaky?”

In all honesty, Mike looks fucking hilarious. The direct light casts long shadows across the dips of his cheekbones, the shapes of his eyelashes distorting wildly as he blinks. “No,” Will snorts, rolling his eyes. “You look ridiculous.”

“Really?” Mike grins, in a way that means he knows just how ridiculous he looks. “Not even a little?” He waggles his eyebrows, and the resulting effect is so comical that Will can’t help the laugh that bursts out of him, sharp and sudden and real.

“Mike,” he chides, for the millionth time. “You’re going to kill the battery.”

Mike looks way too pleased with himself. “Worth it,” he says anyway, as he sets the flashlight down. It evens out the sharp angles of his face, now that it’s farther away, lights his cheeks and nose and eyes up into something softer, more open.

Something about the steadiness of Mike’s expression is brighter than any source of light. Suddenly, it’s too much. Suddenly, it’s blinding.

God. He’s so screwed. “For what?”

“Getting you to laugh,” Mike says, simple and easy, like he’s reciting times tables instead of proceeding to turn Will’s entire world upside down on its pathetic little axis.

Will feels his lungs stutter on his next inhale. He looks away. “Don’t do that.”

The gleeful expression falters on Mike’s face. “Don’t do what?”

“Don’t,” Will says, “don’t– you’re being so– so–”

Mike looks caught somewhere between confusion and amusement. “So what?”

“So,” Will tries again, and then Mike moves closer, and the difficulty of articulating a halfway decent sentence immediately increases tenfold. “So.”

“So,” Mike echoes, shifting so the side of his thigh is pressed up against the side of Will’s. He’s being slowly backed into the corner, but the thought isn’t terrifying like it might have been five minutes ago. Suddenly, Will is overwhelmed in a completely new way. “So what?”

“Nice to me,” Will gets out. “Stop being so nice to me.”

Mike pauses, then says, incredulously and half-laughing– “What? Why?”

Bad choice of words. “You heard me,” Will says anyway, because he’s nothing if not stubborn. “You’re being too nice.”

“I should hope so,” Mike says. “I mean, you’re my friend.”

Maybe Will is imagining it, but the sentence feels unfinished. Like there’s a second half to it that Mike is keeping for himself: You’re my friend – right?

The obvious answer here is that yes, Mike is his friend. But that answer feels unfinished too, like a lie by omission. Will tries to imagine it, doing these things with anyone else – what it would be like if Dustin was holding his hand, or if it were Lucas sitting next to him this close.

The conclusion he comes to, almost immediately, is that it would be weird.

It would be really fucking weird.

That feels like– something. An admission, maybe. Because the fact of the matter is that things with Mike have always been like this, and they’ve never been like this with anyone else, and Will doesn’t think they can be like this with anyone else without it being the most unsettling thing that’s ever happened to him.

The silence, he realizes, has gone on just a second too long.

“Yeah,” he blurts out at last. “Yeah. Obviously.”

Something settles over Mike’s face. “Will–”

“Forget I said anything,” Will backpedals, a little bit desperate. “Never mind. Be as nice to me as you want.”

Mike bites down on his lower lip. It looks like he’s holding back a smile. “As nice as I want?”

Oh, no.

“Sure,” Will tries. “Do your worst.”

Mike lets out a shaky exhale. He presses in further, leans in closer until their shoulders are almost touching. “How about this?”

“That’s not nice,” Will says weakly. “That’s just an invasion of personal space.”

“Seems pretty nice to me,” Mike mutters under his breath.

Will inhales sharply. “Mike.”

“What?”

“What are you– doing,” Will whispers, stumbling over his words, just slightly, as Mike places a hand on his arm.

Mike’s gaze does not waver. “Is this okay?”

Is it okay? Will thinks his brain might be halfway to leaking out through his ears. This is–

This is–

“Yeah,” he hears himself say. “Yeah. Great.”

“Okay,” Mike whispers. He’s so close now that Will could count all the freckles spattered across his nose, if he wanted to. He could, and the thought is dizzying, dizzying – suddenly, it’s not the claustrophobia that’s making him feel like this. It can’t be, because Mike is in front of him, and he’s so close that Will could just lean forward and–

He could just–

“Mike.” And maybe he’s a bit of a broken record, but he can’t come up with any words other than his name. He clutches at Mike’s knee and meets his gaze and prays – to whatever deity allowed him to get trapped in a storage closet with Mike Wheeler two inches away from his face – that Mike Wheeler will find the courage in him somewhere to close the fucking gap.

He doesn’t, though, which is a sign that the universe must be majorly fucking with him. Not yet, anyway. Not anywhere near as fast as Will needs it to be – if this is what he thinks it is, it’s nowhere near fast enough.

In actuality, what it is is excruciating – the way Will’s heart is beating so loud that he’s sure Mike can hear it, in the proximity. The slow circles Mike is tracing over his other hand – the hand that he’s still holding. He’s so close that Will can discern the warmth emanating off him, the familiar scent of soap, can feel Mike’s eyes trained steadily on his mouth, and yet–

Either Mike is actually moving at a speed of one nanosecond per minute, or time has slowed to a near-stop around them. Mike’s grip on his hand is agonizing, caustic in all the places where they’re touching, each slow circle of Mike’s thumb against his wrist driving him slowly and steadily out of his mind. Do it, Will thinks, like maybe if he thinks it loud enough, Mike will be able to hear him. Do it, do it, do it.

Mike’s lips touch his.

The world stops moving.

It must, anyway. Or maybe it’s just that Will doesn’t think he’s breathing anymore – he doesn’t know if he can find it in him to remember how. All he’s aware of is this: Mike’s hands on his arm, his wrist. Mike’s leg under his own palm, warm and steady and pressed up against him in a smooth, unyielding line. The pressure of the wall behind him, the strands of Mike’s hair brushing against his face, and Mike’s lips – gentle, gentle, gentle, and nowhere near enough.

It’s like Mike is waiting for something. Waiting for Will, maybe.

God, okay.

Fuck it, Will thinks, from somewhere far off in his own head. Fuck it. Fuck this.

“Will,” Mike whispers, pulling back a precious few millimeters, and that’s it. That’s all Will can take.

Will lifts his hand off Mike’s leg, raises it to his wrist and tugs. Mike topples into him with a small gasp, Will falls backwards into the wall, and then they’re kissing.

God. Okay.

Mike steadies himself quickly, braces a hand on the wall behind them and leans in, firm and enthusiastic. His hand, Will notices, faintly and with no small amount of affection, is shaking. Just slightly. Will’s trapped between them again – Mike and the wall – but this time he can’t find it in himself to care even the slightest bit. As if there’s anywhere he’d want to go that wasn’t here, as if he’d want to be somewhere without Mike’s hand carding through his hair, or without his lips moving softly against Will’s own, or the noise he makes when Will presses forward, too fast, too eager, too betrayed by his own fluttering pulse – something like a laugh, trapped deep in his chest.

Suddenly, it’s not enough. It’s not enough. It’s–

“Mike? Will?”

Shit.

In a flash, Mike pulls away, wide-eyed and pink-cheeked and breathing like he’s just run a marathon.

Shit.

“Yeah,” Mike calls, voice cracking just slightly on the syllable. “We’re in here!”

Shit.

“So,” Will says, aiming for nonchalance. He fails immediately. His voice cracks too. Great. “That–”

Don’t freak out, he thinks. Please don’t freak out.

Mike, to his credit, is not freaking out.

“Yeah,” Mike says, voice a little high-pitched but surprisingly even. He clears his throat. “Um. Yeah. You were–”

“Yeah,” Will finishes, rather lamely. He’s grinning like an idiot. He doesn’t even need to look at himself to tell. His expression is mirrored, perfectly, flawlessly, brilliantly, on Mike’s own face.

The closet door gets thrown open, and there’s a blinding, sudden light– “What the fuck,” Mike exclaims, squinting and throwing a hand up in front of his eyes. “Nancy?”

Jonathan peers around her shoulder. “What were you guys doing in here?”

Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t–

Will can’t help it. He looks at Mike, and they immediately burst into laughter.

Shit.

#hiiii quin so sorry but tumblr ate ur og ask #i did immediately memorize it tho bc i read it and i was like Oh Yes #anyways ik u asked for maybe s5 too #and idk why this is where my mind went #there are a million other s5 scenarios that i could've written #but something about byler kissing in dark closets.... haha #yeah <3 #anyways i hope u like this !!#byler #mike wheeler #will byers #fun sized fics #also fun fact for anyone who reads my fics #this was rly close to my og concept for ive come home im so cold #like the third chapter #but that story got away from me so #this isn't the Same but its similar !! kind of.#ok bye

699 notes · View notes

jaimeslanisters · 6 months

Text

the pawn in every lover’s game (part fourteen)

Aemond Targaryen x Lannister!Reader

When you’re ten, your father sends you to King’s Landing to befriend a princess and woo a prince. A lioness growing up amongst dragons is a dangerous thing indeed.

crossposted on ao3 masterlist word count: 16.1k notes: posting. so i can finally beat those death allegations... 🙏🏼 please take this extra long chapter as my apology if any of you are still around

The wedding of Aegon and Helaena Targaryen ends with as much fanfare as it had began with. Buried underneath the cheers and claps, you can still distinctly hear a choir singing a hymn, its lyrics completely muffled by the sound of revelry still reverberating within the Dragonpit. You’ve long since stopped clapping, having decided to at least save your palms some of the misery, but the rest of the room seemingly does not seem to mind the sting, the sounds of their claps shaking the room like thunder. From your vantage point, you can see how Helaena’s smile tightens and how Aegon’s eyes seem to grow increasingly more and more distressed. Their hands are squeezing each other so tight that even from your vantage point, you can see how their pale knuckles whiten even further from their tight grip on one another. They look beautiful, striking and unnatural, but all you can see when you look up at them are the ghosts of the children they used to be, dressed up and lovely but painfully unprepared.

Part of you wants to usher them off the altar, to save them just a little of the embarrassment, to shield them from the all too piercing gazes of the capitol.

A larger part of you, however, knows that this is only a taste of what they will have to face in the future. Sooner rather than later, the entirety of the realms would be looking to them for direction, for wisdom, and for strength, and they would all trace it all back to this singular moment in time. The historians, the maesters, the singers, and the storytellers would all look back to this one day, to this mere stretch of an hour, and say that this is where the tone of their reign was decided. It’s monumental. It’s historic.

It’s no wonder the Queen looks as stressed as she does. It’s a miracle you haven’t ripped your own hair out.

Just as the cheers begin to die down, you sense movement out of the corner of your eye and you turn your head in time to see Ser Criston nod to the Lord Hand, murmuring something quietly in response. In the next breath, Ser Criston moves up towards the altar, bowing his head to Aegon and Helaena as he does. Behind him, other kingsguards move up to follow behind, their white cloaks starched to perfection so they practically shine with a pale glow from the sunlight filtering in through the windows in the domed roof. They form a wall around the two Targaryens, leaving space for them to remain visible to the rest of the Dragonpit but close enough that no attackers would stand any chance of getting close enough to do damage. It’s a shockingly familiar picture, one that you’ve seen countless times before though not in recent memory.

It’s King Viserys and Queen Alicent, hand in not quite loving hand, their twin crowns perched delicately onto their heads as they stand proud before their people.

Almost.

Not quite but maybe just enough.

“The Lord Hand has an eye for the dramatics,” you murmur to Aemond, not taking your eyes away from the altar, from the show of extravagance.

Aemond hums, dropping his arm down to scoop your’s up. You hide a smile at his show of affection, however small it may be. “He was the one to insist on the coronet. Mother was the one to push for the wedding to be in the Dragonpit rather than the throne room. The throne room would be limited to only nobility and even then, only the highest echelon. Here - thousands can fit.”

You nod, glancing over your shoulder. In the very back, some people have started to move towards the wide open doors, sensing that the ceremony has ended and seeking a quick escape, but the vast majority of people stay, still clambering to catch a glimpse of the royals. The mass of the smallfolk are held at bay by a wall of City’s Watch, their cloaks forming a golden wall between the nobility and the rest of King’s Landing.

Like the curtains of a playhouse stage.

This was a performance. A beautiful lie where the actors would play their roles to perfection or fall to shambles in front of the world. Endless and endless roles and parts to play, endless scenes to perform. It would never end. It couldn’t.

Smallfolk didn’t care about who sat the Iron Throne. They didn’t care about which Lord ruled over them, didn’t care whose birthright was being taken, whose ruling right was being usurped. They cared about being fed. They cared about surviving the winter. They cared about their sons growing into old and grey men instead of dying young in a nameless field and their daughters marrying good, kind men.

They cared about their stories - their pretty little stories they could pass onto their children and their children’s children. They cared about Jonquil and her fool of a knight. They cared about Symeon Star-Eye, about Lann the Clever, about Brandon the Builder.

They would care about this - about the beautiful Targaryen maiden with emeralds in her hair and amethysts in her eyes marrying her equally beautiful brother, the yet uncrowned king. They would care about the dragon and his treasure.

They would care about the performance.

The performance was all that mattered.

“All the world’s a stage,” you murmur quietly and Aemond lets out a small noise, prompting you to tear your eyes away from the goldcloaks to peer up at him. Even as the guards begin to prompt all of the nobles to start to be ushered out of Dragonpit, to be guided through the tunnels, he looks down at you, focusing his attention solely on your words. It warms something up in you and you resist the urge to curl into him, tuck yourself into his side.

“It’s a quote,” you say, smiling slightly thinking about your little sister with her ink stained fingers. “Jeyne… She loves plays, you see. Always reading them, writing them. She used to make me and Tyshara act in them even. There’s a playwright she enjoys. It’s a quote from one of his works, I believe. She convinced me to go see it with her in Lannisport a few months ago.”

“You used to act in her plays?” He questions, gently pulling you along as the guards begin to grow a little more insistent. He walks slowly, keeping pace with you, and the two of you trail behind the rest of the wedding party, behind them but leading the rest of the nobility.

You mockingly frown at him. “What are you trying to imply, my prince? I was a once-in-a-generation talent. Joy still talks about my turn as a knight, a queen, and as a lady in a lake. In the same play.”

“Really?” Aemond says flatly, raising his eyebrow. “I remember a lady always finding my hiding spot in the library and somehow always being surprised to find me. You stopped being convincing after the first few times.”

You tilt your head up to hold your chin high even as your cheeks flare with embarrassed heat. “It worked, didn’t it? Seems like I was something of a leading star.”

“Your audience was a lonely ten-year-old boy and you were the prettiest girl I had ever seen, let alone the prettiest girl to ever talk to me. You could have convinced me that you were Balerion the Black Dread reborn if you had set your mind to it.”

A laugh bursts its way out of you, loud enough that Otto and Alicent turn around to peer curiously at the two of you, one smiling and the other frowning. Part of you wants to seize up at the scrutiny but a bigger part of you wants to stay in this moment and curl up in the warm glow in your chest.

Anything to distract you from the night ahead.

From all the nights ahead.

“Seems a shame I didn’t realize my skills,” you muse, pulling yourself away from the anxious thoughts that creep at the edges of your subconscious. “Then again, if ten-year-old me had known her own power, I’m afraid she might have grown drunk off of it. Who knows what she would have ended up doing?”

Aemond smiles, shaking his head slightly. “Perhaps she would have grown bold enough to woo a prince?”

You laugh again, gleefully, and this time Daeron stops in front of his mother to look back at you. You wave him off, smiling at him, but not before he grins at the two of you, so clearly pleased by the closeness you’re sharing with his brother.

The two of you settle into the silence and, once you step into tunnels leading deeper and deeper into the Dragonpit, you pull his arm closer to you as you follow the blend of goldcloaks and kingsguard. The tunnels are brighter than they were the last time you had entered these halls, when you had followed Helaena deep into the bowels of the pit itself. New lit sconces have been placed into the walls, carefully carved into the stone so they cast the light of the flames over the uneven ground. Even still, you’re careful to watch your step and keep your grip tight on Aemond’s arm, using him to balance yourself in case you misstep and stumble into a dip in the ground.

Somehow, it’s louder the deeper you go into the tunnels, the stone walls amplifying the footsteps of thousands above of you until it’s almost like there are waves crashing on the shore over your head, torrential and powerful. It reverbrates and shakes to the point that dust falls off the rocky ceiling, covering your dress with a thin layer, dulling the starched white into a yellowed shade. You’re not the only one suffering if the cries of the noblemen behind you are anything to go by and you can even feel it on your skin, feel little rocks falling into your hair.

The tunnels have never been so crowded, so full, before.

But there’s a strange emptiness in the air.

“Where did the dragons go?” You ask Aemond. As impossible as it would be, a part of you feels like you’ve snuck into the tunnels, even surrounded as you are by everyone in King’s Landing. It almost feels like you could turn a corner and run into the massive beasts that call this hill home, as if you’ll stumble onto them and have a dragon breathe flame onto you for the injury of trespassing.

Aemond tilts his head. “Dreamfyre and Sunfyre are waiting at another exit to take Helaena and Aegon to the Red Keep for a final procession in the sky. I believe Daeron has Tessarion housed somewhere near the Kingswood though she might have left if she grew bored of the cattle that they got her.”

“And Vhagar is at her roost, I assume?” You ask and Aemond spares you a small smirk.

“Why so inquisitive? Are you interested in meeting her, my lady?”

You miss your next step and only your hand curled around Aemond’s bicep keeps you upright. You right yourself fast enough but not so quick that you don’t hear his stifled laugh, a quick and quiet little thing.

Cheeks embarrassingly hot, you swallow thickly, holding back your immediate and empathetic ‘No’. It is a poorly kept secret that you aren’t fond of the Targaryens’ sigil and Aemond would love the chance to push and prod at this side of you. You weren’t hateful or even open about your aversion. You have just never once jumped at the chance to get close to any dragon, no matter the countless opportunities you’ve been given over the years, and you would shy away from offers to see them.

Helaena never failed to offer to bring you along with her to the Dragonpit and you would occasionally accompany her even if you would always beg off on actually going in with her. Aemond had only ever made one explicit offer, back when he was only weeks into having had claimed Vhagar, and you had been humiliatingly forceful in your denial. It was an embarrassing memory to look back on, one that you always cringed away from even thinking about. Even now, you can remember how you had stammered out a no, citing a recent newfound fear of heights and a mystery injury that had rendered you incapable of climbing up the tangled web of ropes that constituted Vhagar’s harness. You had been petrified to hurt his feelings, so soon after Driftmark, but Aemond had taken your rejection remarkably well even if he had looked insufferably amused by your poor excuses.

Yet another mark against you as an actress.

Aemond had never asked you again though he was remarkably transparent in his desire for you to meet Vhagar. He’d always announce when he was going to go see her, making sure that you were in earshot, and, once, when you were both years younger, he had made a grand show of having commissioned a large saddle of Vhagar - large enough to fit two.

His brothers, surprisingly, were less single-minded in their attempts to convince you to warm up to their sigil. Daeron, in the early years when Tessarion had been comparatively small and he would come to visit, would cheerfully invite you to come feed her with him, seemingly oblivious to the way you would grimace at the thought of seeing a dragon feast on a goat again as you had as a little girl. Aegon was, shockingly enough, the Targaryen least invested in your interest in dragons. While he was always prone to bragging about Sunfyre’s beauty, he hoarded moments with him to himself, zealously protecting his time with his dragon with such fervor that one would almost think that he was paranoid someone would steal Sunfyre out from under him.

No, your lack of fondness for the dragons the Targaryens rode was hardly a secret.

But it feels wrong to say that now.

Now, when all of your intentions had been laid bare at Aemond’s feet. Now, when you’re holding onto Aemond without nervous fear creeping up your throat, without the anxieties of wondering if he wanted you half as much as you wanted him.

No, you couldn’t say that.

“Perhaps,” you start slowly, the words dragging themselves out of you slowly, sluggishly as if your own body was rebelling against what you were about to say. “I would want to meet her. I… I imagine it’s time I see her.”

You feel a jerk on your arm and you stop short, turning to gape at Aemond. He’s completely stopped in the middle of the hallway, staring so intently at you that for a moment, you fear that your very skin will light on fire where his eyes trail on you. You’ve pulled away from him slightly, the most space between your bodies since you had stood in your place next to him during the ceremony, but your hand is still loosely gripping his arm, a tether between the two of you.

“Do you mean that, my lady?” He asks softly, as if he’s scared you’ll take it back, as if he’s nervous you’ll snatch your own words out of the air and push him away.

Around you, your guards slide to a stop behind the pair of you, a crimson wall between the two of you and the rest of the nobility approaching. There are only moments until they’ll be pressing down on your sacred space.

But you don’t look over at them. You look at him.

You feel like a ten-year-old again, sitting at your table in the library, eyes wide as you stare up at Aemond. If you try, you can almost erase the grown man in front of you and slot in a ten-year-old boy, his head wrapped in bandages, his mouth set in a determined line. He had been holding books in his arms, tight to his chest like a shield to protect himself with.

Had he been nervous? You can’t quite remember. Maybe he had been shaking. Maybe his teasing smile after had been hiding the hurt in his eyes. You can’t remember, can’t remember anything but the way it had felt as if your own stomach had dropped to the very ground at the mere idea of approaching the Queen of All Dragons.

You lick your lips, mouth dry. Despite the nerves creeping up your spine, the primal fear that threatens to settle in your bones, there’s only one answer you can give.

“Yes,” you say, voice soft and gentle, almost like a whispered promise down in these winding tunnels where dragons make their home. “Yes, I will meet her.”

Aemond Targaryen is all sharp edges and white knuckles, a dragon’s rage contained within one man. Just two days ago, he had plunged a sword through a man’s throat and stood victorious over him, had been hungry for more and for you. He was proud and lethal, fire and blood embodied.

There’s little trace of that man now.

Now, he stares at you as if this is the first time he’s ever seen you before. His gaze is almost unbearably soft, unbearably gentle. Even as children, he’s never been this open, this completely vulnerable.

Your heart clenches painfully in your chest.

A near decade since Driftmark. A near decade you’ve denied Aemond this.

You tug on his arm, beckoning Aemond to keep up, and this time, he’s dependent on you guiding him through the winding tunnels. His eyes stay on you, scanning you for any sign that you’re reluctant.

You’re not, however. More than your fear, more than your anxieties, you feel remorse creeping up your throat.

It’s an ugly, sickly feeling. You’re not used to guilt, not used to feeling sorry. You like moving people like chess pieces, the subtle art of manipulation, exercising your control and power.

But not with Aemond.

Never with Aemond.

And now, he’s caught you twice in a mere few days.

Your stomach still churns at the memory of when he had revealed that your intentions had always been plain. He had seemingly been okay with it, had seemingly appreciated that you had pursued him, but a part of you still wants to apologize for it.

Just not here.

You can feel the eyes of the nobility behind, peering through the wall of crimson cloaks that can’t quite shield you from their prying eyes. What you want to say deserves to just be his, your’s and his alone with no danger of someone stepping in and interrupting.

You already had to share him with the rest of the world. You didn’t want to have to share this too.

For just a moment’s breath, you allow yourself to lean into Aemond, pressing your side into his, resting your head on his arm. It’s only for a moment but you soak it in, trying your best to commit to memory the feel of his toned arm under your cheek, the way his body shifts to accommodate you, always aware of you as if you’re burned into his periphery, another part of him as he is to you.

You pull away, curling your hand around his arm. He doesn’t say anything but his other hand floats up, moving to cover your own, squeezing it tight.

You walk deeper into the tunnels, the crashing footsteps of King’s Landing all around you.

——————————–

The sunlight is almost unbearable after the tunnels. The sconces had done little to acclimate your eyes and when the narrow passageways open up to the bright blue cloudless sky, you reel back on instinct, turning your face away from the relentless sun. Blessedly, the ground is smoother out here, the rock having been worn down from decades of wagons and the heavy feet of dragons, and you move forward blindly before your eyes adjust.

You’re at the base of Rhaenys’ Hill, away from the grand entrance with its soaring arches and bronze doors. Here, the trees have receded, giving way to a few brick houses that line the bottom of the hill, houses that you know are large and luxurious but somehow seem so quaint in the shadow of the Dragonpit. In the distance, you can see the walls of King’s Landing, looming high over the city. From your vantage, you make out the Dragon Gate with its oversized dragon statues serving as sentinels, the golden bronze serving as a beacon to denote its location. If you turn your head west, you can just see the Old Gate though your sight of it is obscured by the massive mansions that surround it, populated by the richest merchants in the city.

Out here, in the barely fresh air, it almost feels like a world removed from the crowded Dragonpit or even the lined streets of the capital. There are no smallfolk jostling to catch a glimpse at the gilded few. There is no cheering, no screaming. There are just rows and rows of wheelhouses, servants standing at the ready next to them, such a familiar sight that it borders on the mundane. It feels, for the first time all day, normal.

It’s almost sickening.

It feels like you should have walked out to a world on fire. The buildings should have shifted, rearranged themselves to fit this new reality, but all of it is the same. It’s the King’s Landing you’ve grown up with. The King’s Landing you’ll die with.

You dig your thumbnail deep into your own palm, using the small jolt of pain to anchor yourself back into the moment, to quell your own mounting disappointment at this new bitter reality.

Aemond leads you down to the closest ring of wheelhouses, towards the gathered crowd of his family. You spare a glance over your shoulder. It’s a mass of people, all of them more finely dressed than the last, but Lannisters have always stood a head and shoulder above all the rest and that stays true even now. Jason and Tyland are tall and Tygett is even taller and, through seeing them, you can spot the smaller figures of your cousins and distant uncles surrounding them, even as deep as they are in the crowd of nobles.

“I imagine my father will come to fetch me soon enough,” you muse quietly to Aemond, eying the massive crowd that separates you from them.

Aemond spares you a look, his delicate mouth downturned. “You’re free to ride with us in our wheelhouse. There’s room to spare since I believe Princess Rhaenys will ride with her house and Grandfather has some matters to discuss with Lord Hightower in his wheelhouse.”

You hide a smile before shaking your head. “I’m a Lannister, my prince. I may live with dragons but I’m a lion and I go with the rest of the pride for now.”

“For now,” Aemond repeats and you don’t bother hiding your crooked smile now.

“For now,” you echo.

You rejoin his family by his wheelhouse and, the instant you arrive, Alicent descends upon the two of you, her hands fluttering up to brush off nonexistent dust off of Aemond’s tunic.

“You both did lovely,” Alicent praises, offering you both nervous smiles, and you instantly recognize the look in her eye, the energy that seems to pour out of her fingertips and fill the air with a cautious, staticky charge. She’s coming down from an impossible high - for all intents and purposes, she could still be riding that high, still drunk off the adrenaline.

You smile back at her, feeling a similar pulse of nervous energy coursing through your veins even as you bow your head in gratitude. “Thank you, Your Grace. I’d like to congratulate you on the beautiful ceremony - all of it, every single last detail, was an absolute marvel.”

Alicent’s smile softens, losing some of that manic quality and turning into something warmer. There’s a flicker of pride on her face, that age-old feeling of success and satisfaction. It makes her look that much younger, more overeager girl desperate for a pat on the head from her septa than a Queen carrying the burden of seven kingdoms on her back.

She is young if you think about it. If your math is correct, she’s over a decade younger than your own mother and Cerelle is not even a year older than Aegon. Your stomach twists at the thought, at the age she must have been during her first pregnancies. It had been a miracle that no harm had come to Alicent or to any of her babes.

Your mind flashes to Helaena, to the fact that now that she was wedded and soon to be bedded, her first child would come soon enough. That familiar, tell-tale nausea of anxiety begins to creep up your throat and you swallow it down thickly, trying desperately to bury it deep within you, alongside all the other anxieties that haunt your every move. Helaena is older than her mother had been. Helaena is stong - healthy.

You forcibly drag your focus back onto Alicent, just in time to see her bow her head in gratitude, pulling away from Aemond to give the two of you some space. As soon as she moves, however, Daeron takes her place, beaming brightly. His hair is slightly messier than it had been earlier, some of the delicate braids knocked askew as if he had run his hand through the tresses, but all of it only serves to give him a boyish charm. He’s still otherworldly, still more beautiful than anyone has any right to be, but he’s unmistakably human, unmistakably a boy.

It warms you right up and you smile more easily at him, part of you wishing you could reach out and muss up his curls even further. Boy that he is, and as close to adulthood as he is, something in his rosy cheeks and his bright eyes reminds you of Joy, of your little sister with her own rosy cheeks and bright eyes.

“I think you were right, Aemond,” Daeron says, grinning. “All of it went smoothly. Maybe the sun is a blessing for Valyrian weddings? Keep them warm and all of that.”

“As smoothly as it could,” Aemond drawls, seemingly unaffected by the warmth that his brother seems to exhibit like a little sun of his own. You suppose he’s rather used to it, having had him for years before little Daeron had been shipped off to Oldtown. You imagine he was even freer in his affection and kindness as a little boy but somehow, it’s impossible to imagine Daeron being any more sweet. “Helaena and Aegon will need every blessing the Gods see fit to give them.”

You snort, completely unladylike to the point you can feel the ghost pain of your childhood septa rapping you on the knuckles with her ruler. Neither prince seems to mind so you barrel forward. “If an entire day of prayers solely devoted to their union can’t conjure up some goodwill and luck, I pray the sun will do the trick.”

Daeron laughs. “I bet everyone else in the city is also praying for them too. They all want their future princes and princesses to be healthy - especially the heir. I’m sure they’re praying for them as they prayed for Mother and Father.”

You hide a smile but Aemond makes no such effort, looking supremely amused by his younger brother’s guileless treason. Daeron says it as if it’s a settled fact, a law of nature - not the most dangerous dispute to threaten House Targaryen since perhaps Maegor the Cruel. In a way, you suppose it is.

Aegon Targaryen is the true heir to the Iron Throne. He may not be a named heir but calling something by a different name did not change the facts, could not shift the foundations that all of Westeros was built upon.

It is not treason to see the truth.

No one has ever said it so plainly and with such clear language though. You wonder if Daeron even has it in him to be duplicitous, to weave lies in with the truth until it was interchangeable in the same way his grandfather could.

No, you think as you look him over. He’s far too gentle for it, far too chivalrous. He’s the son of Alicent Hightower or, at least, the son of the gentle girl she must have been before the throne turned her into the woman she had to be.

“If the Gods see to bless them, then they will be blessed,” you say in as sincere a voice you can muster. You sound so devout that even the High Septon could not find fault with you but, judging from the tremble of Aemond’s arm tucked into your’s from his suppressing his laughter, you’ve failed with at least one person.

Daeron smiles at you, smaller than his previous grins but all the more sincere. “You’re right, my lady.”

“She rarely isn’t,” Aemond says, sounding entirely too smug to be praising you. “With the exception of her evaluation of her own acting skills.”

You scowl, immediately losing whatever minimal glow you had earned through your holy act. “I was ten and it clearly worked.”

“You used to act?” Daeron asks, looking like a child who’s just been handed a new toy.

You flush. “I didn’t. He’s poking fun.”

At the same time, Aemond says, “She used to. She was terrible but she has improved.”

Daeron laughs gleefully, his amethyst eyes flashing with unbridled joy. “My lady, I had no idea you were a thespian.”

“My sister,” you say, rather than explaining your storied past with acting with regards to Aemond in particular. “She fancies herself a would-be playwright. She’s always scribbling away on any scrap piece of parchment she can find.”

The youngest Targaryen prince tilts his head in response. “Is she good? Have you read her plays?”

You smile slightly. “I tried my best to read them when I was home, my prince, but she guards them more zealously than some dragons guard their treasure.” Aemond snorts quietly next to you, clearly amused by your little barb, and Daeron’s gaze turns all that fonder at his older brother’s obvious satisfaction. “I’m afraid the only writing of Jeyne’s I’ve read in recent memory is her letters,” you finish, sighing slightly.

It certainly hadn’t been due to lack of effort. You had cajoled, attempted bribery, even tried to (unconvincingly) threaten her. Short of locking her in her room, you had no way of getting the opportunity to read Jeyne’s plays. When the two of you were younger, you could hardly go a day without her shoving sheets of parchment in your face, staining your dress sleeves with the ink on her fingers with the way she would tug on them to beg you to read them over. When you had returned home, you had been the one chasing her down, begging for even a morsel of her thoughts.

Just another way that your world has shifted in a way you’re never going to get back.

“I’m sure she’s a great talent,” Daeron says, cheerful and amiable. He’s so sincere that you imagine even the High Septon could find no fault with him though you are certain he would try.

“Like the rest of her sisters, my Jeyne is a rare talent,” your father’s voice cuts through the din and you start slightly, turning to the source. Behind your father, you can see your uncle speaking with Lord Otto and the Queen, Tygett and Tygett’s own father and uncles at his side.

You bow your head at your father in greeting and, next to you, Aemond and Daeron do the same, Aemond deeper than his brother. This doesn’t pass Jason’s keen eyes and his gaze turns sharper, more mischievous boy than a High Lord, and you fight the urge to bury your head in your hands.

Your father will always have his fun.

“Prince Aemond,” Jason says, his voice high and lofty, and Aemond straightens next to you, his normal rigid posture even stiffer. Your father’s eyes sharpen at the shift, looking distinctly leonine, and even Daeron looks absolutely delighted by the turn of events. “I didn’t get the chance to congratulate you directly but House Lannister would like to extend our thanks for honoring my daughter as you have.”

Aemond bows his head again. “She brings herself honor, my lord. I was only given the opportunity to bring the rest of the capital’s attention to it.”

Jason laughs, so clearly amused, and you bite your lip to stop yourself from saying something. Knowing your father, it would only make this game he’s playing all that more fun. “The rest of the capital? After the tourney, I’m afraid the rest of the kingdoms are all too aware of my daughter’s honor now. On my way to the Dragonpit, I could hear some songs being sung through the walls of my wheelhouse. My uncle’s granddaughters were enraptured - they’re already asking their fathers to bring some bards back to Lannisport so they can share the songs with the other members of House Lannister.”

A thrill crawls its way up your spine. You certainly haven’t heard any songs - not that you would have had the chance to hear them - and you had known that the bards would do as they always do and write their songs. The pretty little story that the tourney had provided them with had been too good, too perfect, for them to resist.

But it actually happening is something else entirely.

You don’t dare look up at Aemond now, not when you’re certain it’d be impossible to hide from his amethyst eye, and the sight of your father’s increasingly amused face makes you want to crawl into your own skin to hide so you stay quiet, praying that the conversation will end.

Daeron, however, has no such qualms.

“Really?” He exclaims, so audibly delighted that you look over at him without even thinking. He’s brightened up entirely, grinning so wide that one would think that the bards were writing their songs about him. “Are they any good?”

Jason laughs, similarly pleased to have found someone to play along with his charade. “I’m no great expert on songs, my prince. You’ll have to ask my cousins for an educated opinion.”

Daeron laughs. “Perhaps a bard or two will sing a song at the wedding feast.”

“Perhaps not,” you intervene, sniffing delicately, unable to hold back your tongue. Next to you, Aemond snorts quietly. “This is Helaena’s wedding. Not mine. The singers should stick to the classics rather than trying out any new material on everyone.”

“Give it time, sweetling,” Jason teases and his voice has taken a softer tone, his smile just that much warmer. “Soon you and your dragon prince’s songs will be the classics. You’ll be begging for them to play new songs then.”

You sigh, rolling your eyes, and, against your own better judgment, you glance up at Aemond in hopes of finding an ally in this battle with your father and his unexpected ally Daeron. Predictably, he looks horribly amused as if this was all a big game to him, a show being put on for him. But he’s not just amused. There’s a shine to his eye, a gleam of something that isn’t just barely concealed laughter.

It’s warming. It’s gentle. It’s intoxicating.

You quickly look away, suddenly all too aware of the consequences of looking at him here, in front of your own father.

The thought of providing Jason Lannister with that much ammunition is almost too much to bear.

“We’ll have time to continue this at the feast,” Jason finally says, shedding the skin of a teasing young boy and donning his high lord costume. “In fact… Your Queen Mother and I have planned a tea for tomorrow. Just a simple meeting. Nothing to be concerned about.”

Nothing to be concerned about? You could almost laugh out loud. There would be nothing simple about a tea with the Queen - not one following a declaration of intents. Your father and Alicent would sit down and discuss joining their two houses, probing politely at the bones of a bethoral contract without overplaying their hand. If they were even feeling particularly productive, they could likely even hammer out the larger details of one - questions about your dowry, bridal payments, properties to inherit and divide. Knowing your father, he would be sure to push trade contracts that would heavily favor House Lannister, maybe try to slide in a chance for another marriage contract for Jeyne or Joy.

Tomorrow would be a starting point. It would be the first move to lay down the foundation on which your and Aemond’s futures would be built on top of.

Your mouth dries in anticipation.

“Yes,” you echo, letting a small smile slip on your face. “We have a tea tomorrow. There will be much to discuss.”

Your father smiles, pleased by your easy obedience, and Daeron grins, delighted by another chance to tease and poke at his brother.

But Aemond…

When you tilt your head up to look at Aemond, that gentle warmth has fled from his sole eye. There’s a curve to his lips still but it isn’t amusement or laughter.

No.

This is him moving with you, him responding on sheer instinct alone to the gnawing ambition that lays claim to your peripheries, pushing and pushing inwards until you can see nothing else.

This is him seeing your hunger.

And this is his answering your call.

——————————–

Sometime after the wheelhouse’s easy travel on smooth dirt roads gives way to the familiar bumping and jostling of the cobblestone roads of King’s Landing, you hear the roar of a dragon.

It’s like a shot in the dark, so loud and invasive that it slices through your father and uncle’s easy conversation without remorse, and you freeze for a moment, primal urge overtaking any rational thought.

Don’t move. You can’t be seen if you don’t move.

The impulse leaves you quick enough and you’re left with just a fading sense of embarrassment as you turn to one of the many windows that line House Lannister’s grandest wheelhouse. Sliding one open, you peer up to the sky in time to see a golden shine break apart the endless blue.

Sunfyre. Beautiful and peerless.

You frown slightly as you look up at his shape gliding delicately through the air, more graceful than any beast of that size had any right to be. You couldn’t hear the telltale sound of Dreamfyre’s wings beating loud and clear or see her blue scales glinting in the sun. There was no sign of Helaena’s companion which meant that there was only place that the girl herself could be.

Helaena and Aegon were riding together.

The thought makes you slide the window shut and you slump back in your seat, worrying your bottom lip with your teeth. Aegon was notoriously possessive of his dragon - all of his rings were styled after Sunfyre, obnoxiously ostentatious things, and most of his clothes were embroidered with metallic thread in an attempt to capture even a sliver of his beauty. Since reaching adulthood, he had forced the Dragonpit keepers to swear off approaching Sunfyre even to feed the dragon, preferring to do the gruesome task himself. If you’re being honest, you doubt there’s even another relationship in his life that would come close to his uncomplicated and free passion towards his own personal sigil.

And now Helaena had invaded that sacred space.

Even just a week ago, you would have gambled everything on Aegon preferring to be bathed in fire rather than allowing any of his siblings to ride alongside him on his one treasure. He coveted Sunfyre something fierce, more possessive of him than he was of anything else.

Yet Helaena was with him.

You’re not sure what it means.

Aegon loves his sister - you know that as surely as you know that you love his sister - but he didn’t love his sister and that maybe mattered more now. Aegon and Helaena would be no Jaehaerys the Conciliator and Good Queen Alysanne whose love for each other only dimmed in comparison to their love for the realm.

But maybe they could be something better. Something more than their parents with their glacial relationship. Something more stable than their grandparents and their infamous Quarrels.

You sigh, pushing the thought out of your mind. There would be plenty of time in the future to worry and fuss about Helaena and Aegon’s relationship and how the realm would view it. There would be plenty of time to plan how you would twist Westeros into cherishing it. You had enough to worry about for today.

Namely the feast.

“I wonder how Queen Alicent will outdo herself tonight,” you muse out loud, drawing your father and uncle’s attention to yourself. “She’s guarded her plans rather zealously.”

Tyland snorts quietly. “It’s certainly been a grand expense. Lord Beesbury has not stopped fussing about the cost of this and that to anyone who will listen even though the Hightowers are paying for most of it from their own coffers. You’d think the expenses are coming straight from his own purse with the way he goes on about it.”

You hum, letting a mischievous smile slip on your face. “Lord Beesbury, may the Gods forgive me for saying so, much prefers the sound of his voice rather than putting forth any meaningful solutions. He’s never been fond of the Queen and he’s even less fond of her children. It’s a miracle that the Lord Hand managed to loosen his grip on the purse of the Targaryens to fund even the tourney.”

Your uncle nods in agreement, tapping his fingers against his thigh. “He’s Lord of Honeyholt. They’re always getting the castoffs of House Hightower and old Lyman is no exception to the animosity his House has nursed for centuries now. I sometimes wonder if he’s really so fond of Princess Rhaenyra as he likes to say he is or if he just hates the alternative. He himself has a daughter older than his heir and you don’t see him pushing her first in his line of succession.”

Jason shakes his head, looking genuinely annoyed. “They should have retired Lord Beesbury years ago. He’s senile in his old age. It’s a miracle he doesn’t crumble into dust whenever he bumps against something.”

You blink, somewhat caught off guard by your father’s frustration. “Is he really that old?” You prompt, eager to coax more of his true thoughts out of him.

“He was old when they placed him on the small council, sweetling,” Jason scoffs. “He’s even older now.”

Tyland grins at his brother, looking absolutely tickled by his twin’s simmering anger. “You’ve never gotten over the fact that King Viserys snubbed Uncle Stafford for him.”

“More that he snubbed you,” Jason shoots back. “Master of Coin should be yours. You’re a Lannister - who knows gold better than us?”

You nod slowly. “If King Viserys was smart, he’d offer you, Uncle Tyland, Master of Coin and offer Master of Ships to Corlys Velaryon if not his brother. Bring the Velaryons back to the fold. Everyone knows that they’ve split from Princess Rhaenyra.”

“If,” Tyland murmurs, raising an eyebrow, and you stifle a laugh. “Besides… The Queen and her father hold the throne now, truly, and they might be hard-pressed to convince the Velaryons to come to their side. I don’t doubt that the Sea Snake still harbors a grudge for King Viserys passing over Lady Laena for Alicent Hightower.”

“The Sea Snake,” you say without thinking. “Not Princess Rhaenys. She’s a Velaryon and, like Queen Alicent, she holds her House’s power while her husband fights an endless war in the Stepstones.”

Jason leans forward slightly, quirking up a brow. “Since when have you been so close to Princess Rhaenys?”

“I’m not,” you reply. “But I’m not a Hightower or a Targaryen and that seems to count for something in her eyes. She clearly wants to foster a connection where her husband did not if she accepted the role of the Crone. Moreover to the point, I believe she’s… Fond of me.”

“Fond?” Tyland now questions you.

You shrug, flashing a smile. “Fond. Like a lady and her pet. I imagine she’d be surprised to find anything in my head that wasn’t revolving around Aemond or Helaena.”

Jason hums, leaning back in his seat. He starts drumming his fingers against his thigh, eerily echoing his brother perfectly. “Princess Rhaenys always liked to think that she was cleverer than everyone around her by far. She never did quite live up to her own expectations.”

She is clever, you muse, keeping your thoughts to yourself. But she’s too stubborn to approach allies - not when she can wait for them to approach her. She harbors the same grudge that her husband does towards the Hightowers. She can’t move past what Rhaenyra and Daemon did to her children. She’s isolated herself in a war where she’ll need allies to survive.

She would need to pick a side eventually if only to keep herself and her granddaughters afloat.

The only question was which side would snap her up first.

“The key to the throne is through the Velaryons, through Princess Rhaenys,” you say quietly. Jason tilts his head at you but Tyland nods at you, immediately understanding. “Securing her means securing her husband’s fleet and bringing two dragons with her.”

“Two?” Jason asks.

You nod, thinking of bared teeth and sharp purple eyes narrowed in your direction. “Lady Baela,” you say slowly, mulling over your words before you say them. “I do not believe she’s… as dedicated to Princess Rhaenyra’s claim as people think. She resents her for the shame she brought upon her mother by marrying Prince Daemon so fast.”

“Prince Daemon is her father,” Tyland says, more out of prompting you to continue with your logic rather than truly reminding you.

You tilt your head, playing with your sleeves slightly as you ponder what to say. “She’s loyal to her sister before anything else. I think… she may be more loyal to House Velaryon than to House Targaryen. Surely, that would mean something to her father.”

Jason snorts. “Prince Daemon deflowered the Realm’s Delight. He took a second wife and shamed Rhea Royce before a fall saved her from that humiliation. There are even more stories about him that would make your ears bleed, sweetling. He covets the throne. Always has. I doubt even his daughter could sway him from a lifelong dream being so close to his grasp.”

“Perhaps he does not need to be swayed,” Tyland murmurs. “A mad dog is only dangerous if it’s off its leash.”

“He is not a dog,” you reply. “He’s a dragon and those are rather hard to leash. If his own brother could not do it, I doubt we’d have much luck even with his daughter.”

“Then what do you suggest?” Your uncle asks and the look in his eye gives you pause for the first time in this conversation. He’s searching you, looking into you. He knows what your answer would be but he wants to draw it out of you, wants you to admit it to him, to your father. He wants your resolve to be firm. “How would you manage Daemon Targaryen?”

Silence hangs in the wheelhouse. Outside, you can hear the constant hum of people, the sound of hooves hitting the cobblestones, the shouted orders of City’s Watch.

Inside, you stare down at your uncle.

“I wouldn’t manage him,” you finally say, your voice steady. “I would kill him.”

Tyland’s eyes glint with something and you don’t dare look away, not even with your father looking at you with the same inquisitive stare. “And Rhaenyra Targaryen?”

Your breath catches in your throat and Helaena flashes in your mind. Helaena who had nothing in common with her sister but everything in common with who she had once been to Alicent Hightower.

“If I must,” you finally respond. “If I need to.”

“You’ll be kin by the time this would be necessary,” Jason finally says and your eyes swing to look at him. “She’d be your sister by law. He’d be your uncle by law.”

“No one is as accursed as the kinslayer,” you say on instinct, the phrase coming to you as easily as breathing. This time, you see Aemond. You see Aemond and dusty books and can hear you whisper about Brandon the Breaker and the night’s king. “There are kinslayers in every line,” you finally say, echoing your childish self. “What’s one more?”

“There are septons who would demand your tongue for that, little one,” Tyland muses, smiling all the while.

You shrug. “They’re not in here, are they?”

“Even if there was,” Jason starts, still peering at you as if he’s never seen you before. “I can’t imagine they’d have much sway on you.”

“Septons can be useful,” you reply, thinking of the High Septon with his clear gray eyes, with his rainbow crown. “I believe in them, I do, but I value my family, mine, over any of their words.”

“Your family is a mite larger than just lions,” Jason says, no question in his voice.

You meet his green eyes head-on, straightening up. “You sent me here,” you remind him, feeling that years-long grudge, that childish anger you could never quite free yourself from, rear its ugly head. “You told me to find a space for myself in the royal family. I did. I have. You cannot fault me for its consequences. Lannisters protect their own - at all costs and damn the consequences. I just have more to protect now than I did at ten.”

Jason looks at you, his eyes looking all over you as if he’ll find the answer written somewhere on your body. Maybe he’s searching, you muse almost fancifully, for the little girl he had sent away, the little girl he had damned to the capitol with its endless hate and its even more endless schemes. Maybe he’s wondering who this stranger that took her place is, this stranger that sends her sister off to freeze in the North, who wears a crown of bloody flowers like a prize, who walks amongst dragons.

You can’t miss her now, you almost want to say out of sheer spite. Not now when you didn’t want her then. You bite the inside of your cheek, knowing that’s more than unfair. It would just be cruel. Vicious.

It doesn’t make the desire to say it go away, doesn’t stop the anger from bubbling underneath your skin.

Finally, Jason smiles. That same old friendly smile that always disarmed your resentment, took away its teeth to make it into something docile. It’s the same smile that had coaxed you into the Sunset Sea after him, the same one he would give you the few times he had allowed you to crawl onto his lap during the summer storms.

You wish it didn’t work just as well now as it had back then.

“Hear me roar,” he says, grinning at you like you’re sharing a funny joke.

You simply nod, not wanting to speak anymore.

——————————–

None of the chaos of the earlier week of feasting seems to compare to the maelstrom that has gripped the halls of the Red Keep now. It feels impossible to move without having to elbow at least five of your cousins out of the way and not even your father and uncle forming a small retinue around you seems to clear your path any.

Perhaps I should have taken Aemond up on his offer you grumble in your head, eying the crowded hall outside the throne room with disdain. At least with the royal family, you doubt you would have had to wade through what seems like every single noble family in Westeros.

Up ahead, towards the entrance of the throne room, you can see the poor servant in charge of informing Ser Harrold of the next family to enter so that the Lord Commander can announce it. He looks harried and stressed, seconds from pulling his own hair out with his bare hands and you feel a flash of pity for him. Aside from the major houses, sure to be announced first, the minor lords must be haranguing him to be bumped up the list, to inflate their own self-importance by calling their name closer to the high lords.

It’d be a pointless exercise - you doubt people listen to the names if they’re not a major house and even then, you doubt most would care if it’s not their high lord being called.

You watch the servant for a few beats longer, fighting the urge to laugh when he gets shoved back by a lord only for the lord to realize that that was the man in charge of the procession. You’re so engrossed in observing that you miss the first whisper of your name. It takes a few more times but you finally register it and you turn slightly to see Jocata standing next to you, her big green eyes peering up at you anxiously.

You furrow your brows slightly as you look at her, more baffled than annoyed. Aside from the final day of the tourney, when she had complimented your crown blood and all, she has practically hidden herself from your sight, trembling like a leaf when your gaze did fall on her. You had silently resigned yourself to having soured that relationship for good but now she’s here, standing in front of you looking as if she would rather be anywhere than there.

“My lady,” she starts, her voice trembling as she takes a deep inhale to steel herself.

“You’re my cousin,” you interject before she can say her next bit, frowning slightly. “There’s no need to stand on etiquette between the two of us.”

Her lip shakes and you distantly wonder if she’d have a better go of it if you looked away or closed your eyes. She says your name weakly, shyly, as if she’s trying it out for the first time in her life and not having had used it for the eternity of your relationship with her. “I just wanted to… I ran away last time and it wasn’t right and I… I wanted to congratulate you on your crown… and apologize again for my role in Ser Victor’s favor.”

It’s a credit to her that she doesn’t burst into tears but she does look dangerously close to it, her pale cheeks a brighter red than either of your two dresses. You smile at her, trying your very best to put her at ease. “Just see to it that men don’t take further advantage of your innocence, Jocasta,” you warn. “It’ll only get more and more difficult the older that you get.”

Jocasta sniffles, nodding her head, looking distinctly like a scolded puppy. “I understand. I won’t… I won’t fall for it again. But I wanted to offer you a true apology. Not… Not what I had tried to do.”

She’s too soft to be a Lannister you think without any malice or anger as you look at her. She’s kind, gentle, sweet - all the markings of a lady and none of the characteristics of the house she called her own. With any luck, her husband would be a knight, a true knight who could uphold his vows and honor and cherish his lady wife. You somehow doubt her father would prioritize that, likely more concerned with increasing his own wealth as the third son of a second son, far removed from the main line and its heir, but you hope for it regardless.

“Of course Jocasta,” you finally say, reaching out to squeeze her hand, and she blinks at you before a small hesitant smile lights up her face.

“I prayed for Prince Aemond in the melee,” she whispers as if it's a secret she’s confessing. “I went to the sept and I lit a candle for him at the Warrior statue. I lit one for you too in front of the Maiden. Not because I knew you were going to the Maiden in the wedding party b-but just because I thought she should bless you regardless.”

Your breath hitches, caught off guard, and, wildly, you remember your fervent prayers that day, remember perfectly how much you had wished you had been able to light a candle for Aemond at the Warrior’s feet. Sweet Jocasta had. She had lit one for him and you.

You squeeze her hand again. “Thank you,” you murmur, wishing you could say more without tripping over your own words.

Jocasta just gives you another smile before she pulls away, walking beyond you to seek refuge among her sisters and brothers and cousins. You stare at the spot she had been occupying, turning the feeling of gratitude over and over in your mind, trying your best to force it to solidify into something you can do. Something you could reward her with for her good nature, for her gentle soul.

A good marriage is the only thing you can think of. Perhaps even an offer to serve in the royal court as a lady in waiting for you and Helaena. She could better her odds here, away from Lannisport where only lions roamed, but it would be dangerous here. She was too soft for the cesspit that formed King’s Landing and the Red Keep. The snakes in the court would eat her alive, and would strive to take advantage of her at every turn. Her Lannister name would protect her - some - but she’d still be subject to the court politics that haunted everything around her.

You bite your lip, moving forward on instinct when your father and uncle step closer and closer to the entrance to the throne room. There wouldn’t be much time to debate this or any time at all. Your cousins were scheduled to leave in the next couple of days. They’d possibly be delayed a few days if your father formalized a betrothal contract with the Targaryens but he could hold that card close to his chest. Cerelle’s marriage with Cregan Stark was sure to break soon and the announcement of a royal engagement could prove loud enough to drown out the whispers around that.

You wouldn’t be surprised if Cerelle’s new role as Lady Stark would be talked about tonight. If she was riding out to gather her new husband’s bannermen for him, more than a few of those lords would let any allies in the South know about the shock of a Stark lord taking a Southern wife for the first time in their long history and that wife being a Lannister of all things. Her letter couldn’t have possibly beaten all that gossip and could have very possibly been delayed if everything had happened as fast as she had said it had.

A part of you that isn’t preoccupied with whirling plans and ideas childishly longs for the next raven to be carrying a letter for you; that with it Cerelle will either castigate you or soothe your guilt. Either way, you want to hear her voice, read her words. You miss your oldest sister with a fierceness you haven’t felt in years. It had been different all the times before - you had always been secure in knowing that she was safe in Casterly Rock with your other sisters and your mother. Now, she’s in the frozen North, married to a man no one in your family has ever met before, far from your grasp and she would be for the foreseeable future.

Suddenly it feels like there’s no time at all. No time with Jocasta. No time with Cerelle. No time for anything. Everything is speeding up more than it had ever before, threatening to leave you in the lurch.

That familiar tight ball of pain begins to bear down on your chest, crushing your lungs and your heart under its weight, and it’s only the gentle call of that poor, harried servant that knocks you out of it.

When you come back to it, you’re standing right by the door of the throne room, positioned to the right of your father while your uncle occupies his left. Ser Harrold looks over at you and, as is customary with him, he spares you that little smile that you know has always been meant more for your mother than it has ever been meant for you.

You smile back though, completely instinctual, reminding yourself that this is the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Who cares if he only likes you because you were the walking mirror image of Johanna Westerling, born looking more like your mother than any trueborn Lannister had any right to be? What mattered was that he liked you.

He looks over at your father and the warmth that he had held in his eyes for you slips away when he looks at Lord Lannister, replacing it with the stern face of one of the greatest knights in the realm.

He nods at Jason and your father nods and you take a deep, settling breath.

“House Lannister, with their lord, Jason Lannister. Lord Paramount of the West and Master of Casterly Rock.” Ser Harrold booms, loud and thunderous, and the endless chatter of the throne room, of all the lords and ladies of the regions that had gone before the Westerlands, ends and a silence settles across the room.

Your house moves as one.

The throne room is an impossible marvel, burning sconces of different colored flames illuminating the tables, mini suns lighting the room and making the banners and the tapestries glow with an otherworldly gleam.

Making House Lannister glow.

Underneath the flickering fires, the veins of gold within your dress glitter endlessly, the delicate rubies and emeralds woven within gleaming with a vengeance. Your bust and corset are covered with this, armorlike if not for the fact that it's molded perfectly to your body, tailored so perfectly that it clings like a second skin. The jewels stop at your waist, giving way to the crimson velvet that forms the skirt and train of your gown but the tendrils of gold continue, swirling and spinning in careful spirals down your body and skirt.

It is by far the most expensive thing you’ve ever worn, more expensive, you’d wager, than all the gowns and jewels some houses could bear to afford. It was the most extravagant show of wealth at this wedding - it would be obnoxious if it wasn’t so Lannister. Showing off your riches came as easy to you as breathing. Lann the Clever had won the Rock from the Casterlys and that made this your right.

Your father leads the procession to the royal table, somehow even more confidence in his step than ever before. He’s secured a grand prize, after all; a prince for his daughter. He walks like it too, smugness radiating from his every pore, as proud as he’s ever been. One would think that he was the one all but set to marry into the royal family.

When your family arrives at the foot of the Iron Throne, you all bow deep. When you rise, you look over in instinct at Aemond’s seat. Dimly, you recognize Daeron sitting in Helaena’s old seat, accommodating the shift to have Helaena and Aegon sitting together in the center, but he’s almost blurred in your periphery as you stare at Aemond.

He’s changed from his warrior outfit into a tunic more fit for a feast - fit for a prince. The black velvet is fitted to his chest perfectly, emphasizing his slender build to the point your mouth dries. Embossed on his chest, three dragons twist and curl around each other, each so distinct that you immediately recognize them as the dragons that conquered Westeros, and your lips tug up into a smile when you recognize the familiar shape of Vhagar front and center. Some of his long hair is braided up away from his face, the braids like a pattern against his scalp, but the majority falls like a sheet around his face. He’s so far removed from what he had been wearing earlier - a nobleman now rather than the living manifestation of a god. Even like this though, even without wearing the robes of the Warrior, he’s still undeniable, still holy and sanctified.

Your body lights up again, deep in your core and spreading out into your chest, and you feel the sudden desire to pray at his own altar, to prostrate yourself in front of him, to kneel and worship.

Your mouth runs even drier and you snap yourself back into focus, suddenly feeling too warm inside the throne room. You feel a hot desire for the cool air of the gardens or even the chill of the library and you bite your lip to pull yourself away from it, to settle in the now. It’s only then that you notice Aemond’s hot stare, the way he looks at you as if the entirety of his world has shrunk down to just you. That increasingly familiar heat is back in his eyes and he looks at you as he had when he had been covered in the blood of Victor Florent, when he had licked the sugar off a candied lemon.

He looks at you as if he wants nothing more than to devour you whole.

That gnawing hunger in your core, that burning flame, glows that much brighter, that much hotter, and you snap your eyes away from him, taking in a shaky deep breath.

You settle your gaze on Aegon and Helaena, sitting together directly in the shadow of the throne. They’ve changed as well, matching in velvet green and shining golden. You wouldn’t be surprised if the seamstresses had used the same bolts of fabric to make their clothes. It’s meant to present an image of unity, of harmony, but they look nauseatingly similar. Dressed like this, the scant year gap between the two of them vanishes entirely, leaving them as mirror images of each other, as alike as Jason and Tyland.

Your stomach twists but you force a smile anyways, meeting Helaena’s eyes. She’s plainly ignoring your father’s introduction of the gift House Lannister is presenting (three golden dragon statues with rubies for eyes), putting less of an effort than even blearily eyed Aegon, but she’s plastered a bland smile on her face to at least attempt the veneer of an interested party. The moment she registers that it’s you looking at her, however, her entire face brightens up and she sits up straighter in her seat, her fake smile melting away into something softer, more genuine.

You smile at her almost girlish expression. She almost looks like her old self, the sweet girl who had let you read to her in the shade of old trees. She looks like that little girl wearing a costume, too big in certain places, too tight in others, but it’s undeniably her. Maybe your fears were unfounded. Maybe your anxieties didn’t need to ruin every waking moment. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

Your father finishes the presentation with a final vow to always be faithful to the crown and Alicent smiles gracefully, nodding and plainly deferring to Aegon to accept his oath. Aegon, for his part, doesn’t seem wholly aware of what’s happening, only jerking to attention when his mother leans closer to him, her smile placid as if she wasn’t driving the point of her elbow into his ribs. He jolts straight up, clearing his throat instinctually, eyes looking skyward as if he’s trying to remember a script he’s forgotten.

“As the first son of King Viserys, first of his name,” Aegon says slowly, trying the words out carefully like he’s learning them as he goes. “I am grateful… and appreciative of your loyalty to House Targaryen and… vow to return your faith. I- We look forward to only deepening and strengthening our bond and alliance.” He meanders his way through the sentence, clearly lost and struggling to remember, but when he finishes, there’s a quick flash of boyish pride on his face when he realizes he hasn’t messed up and he looks so much like the boy he must have been before even you had arrived to the capital and you feel an unfamiliar warm glow towards him.

You’re not used to feeling cozy towards Aegon - amused, yes. Annoyed, most definitely. But this is something new and your own confusion at your feelings must show on your face since Aemond looks supremely amused. You quickly move your sleeve up to cover your mouth, trying to play off your aborted laugh like a sneeze or a cough, but, judging from the way your uncle shoots you a reproachful look, you haven’t really succeeded.

Your father gives one final nod to Prince Aegon and, when he turns to face the rest of your house to be led to your seats, he meets your eyes. For a moment, in all the colors of light, he almost doesn’t look real with all the shades cutting across his sharp features. He doesn’t look like your father, doesn’t look like Jason Lannister. He looks like something else - almost like a painting with the colors smeared across it.

He looks proud, fierce. He’s won a windfall for House Lannister. You’ve won a windfall for House Lannister. He must already taste the iron in his mouth, must already dream of a daughter of your’s marrying into the house of the dragon, his blood sitting the throne itself.

And it’s all owed to you.

Your blood thrums with success, strong and vicious, and a part of you wants to hiss that truth to your father. Tell the Lord Paramount of the West that it was his daughter, his third daughter, the daughter he sent away, that brought this bounty to their house. Not him. You.

Jason nods at you, a smile flickering on his face, and you bow your head in response, only looking up once he’s passed you. You meet Aemond’s eye once more and he tilts his head at you, asking a question without words.

I’m fine.

He shifts in his seat, straightening up slightly, and you bite the inside of your cheek to hold back a grin when you realize if you made even the slight move to suggest it, he’d leave the royal table to follow you like a shadow to ensure your comfort and safety. You give him a small smile as assurance before taking your leave, following the rest of your house to be directed to your seats.

Unlike the feasts before, the seating isn’t strictly by houses. While your uncle is directed a few seats down from you, next to Lord Ormund, and your father settles into a seat next to Lord Celtigar, clapping the younger lord firmly on his shoulder, a maid directs you towards a seat nestled between Baela and Lady Floris Baratheon. You idly wonder how long it took the Queen to arrange this seating - who she must have consulted and what patterns she must have seen. You wonder if Aemond told her about your attempts to form some relationship with Baela Targaryen or if she had seen it for herself at the melee.

The moment you sit, eying the spread of food already laid out for you to enjoy, Lady Floris turns to you, a pretty smile on her face. “Lady Lannister,” she greets, leaning closer than she should, close enough that you can see the dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose and the kaleidoscope of colors in her eyes. “I just wanted to personally congratulate you on your crowns - oh, what an honor! I heard the songs the bards were playing near the Dragonpit - they were so, so lovely! I hope you’ll forgive me for saying this but I hadn’t known Prince Aemond was so handsome and he looked so beautiful crowning you.”

You smile awkwardly, slightly caught off guard by her overly effusive praise. She’s not all that much younger than you, closer in age to you than you were to Jocasta, but she’s so free in her manners that you wouldn’t be surprised if she was nearer in age to Jeyne. It seems half a miracle that such a sweet girl would come from the stormy house of Lord Borros, that such a frivolous girl could be the daughter of a high lord.

“I thank you, Lady Floris. I’m afraid I haven’t gotten to listen to the songs myself but it seems I will have to soon enough,” you reply, bowing your head in thanks, and she beams prettily. Everything she does is pretty - from the way she smiles to the way she reaches for her goblet of wine. Everyone around you seems to notice and you hold back a laugh at the way Floris seems to glow under everyone’s attention. You doubt there’s much of it to go around in Storm’s End - you can’t imagine a lovely girl like her thriving in the dark and dread of the tempests that haunt her home even if the Baratheons are nearly as prolifically virile as the Lannisters. It’s almost impossible to imagine it - even more impossible to imagine that she is one of the Four Storms, that her fights with her sister can and do grow to the point of infamy.

She giggles, her pale cheeks a bright red, and you drop your gaze slightly to the nearly empty goblet in her hand before looking back at her flushed face. You look slightly behind her, further down the table, to see her father laughing loudly as he snatches a carafe away from a servant to keep for himself.

As pretty as she is, it seems Lord Borros left his mark on his daughter after all.

She gives you one final big smile, slightly lopsided now that you look at her more carefully, before turning to talk to the enraptured son of House Reyne sitting at her side.

“She’s had two of them so far,” Baela murmurs, leaning slightly closer to you. Her white curls hang loose today and it tickles on the back of your hand when she moves closer and her hair sways over to you. “I’m afraid she might be a bit of a lightweight.”

You stifle your snort of laughter. “I’m sure she hasn’t had much to eat either - I only had some lemon cakes to make sure I didn’t keel over during the ceremony. I doubt she did much better.”

Baela snorts, reaching for her own goblet of wine in response. “I imagine it’s her first time being out in the court. Easy to get caught up in the splendor of it all.”

You tilt your head, reaching for a candied strawberry to pop in your mouth. “Royal weddings are usually the first time most ladies are brought to the court.”

“There hasn’t been one for years,” she responds immediately before pausing. Something darkens in her eyes, a flicker of old anger or regret, before she shakes her head, trying to clear it from her mind. “At least, none like this one.”

You bite down on the strawberry, enjoying the crunch of the crystalized sugar followed by the sweetness of the fruit. As you chew, you look over Baela carefully. She’s occupied herself with a tart, listlessly picking at it as she glares down at her plate.

The last royal wedding had been her father and Princess Rhaenyra. A rushed affair by all accounts - both in the time after her mother’s death and in the actual ceremony itself. There had been no traditional wedding - at least, no traditional wedding in the light of the Seven. No feasts. No tourney. If what you had heard when it had happened was true, they had had a Valyrian wedding on Dragonstone and that had been it.

You had little knowledge of what went into a Valyrian wedding - Aemond had briefly told you the details of it when the news had first broke but he had been uncharacteristically reticent to share information with you. He had explained there was meant to be a mixing of blood, to symbolize the different bloodlines coming together to become one, in the presence of fire to represent the strength that it would bring. He hadn’t given you much detail after that and you, admittedly, had not pressed him for it.

To be fair, he might have been sore over you debating out loud whether or not mixing the blood was necessary when the bloodlines were one and the same.

There hadn’t been tell of who had attended the wedding. Only that it had been attended by a maester who had confirmed its legitimacy to both the crown and the Citadel and a handful of guests.

You had never stopped to consider whether or not Baela had been there, if she had been there with her sister and with the Strong boys. You try to imagine what it must have been like to watch your father remarry, the tears not even dried from your mother’s funeral, and something in you trembles with rage and, alarmingly enough, sympathy.

Sympathy you didn’t care to feel, not when you can still remember the way Aemond had flinched when the maester had stitched his face back together, stitch by agonizing stitch.

Baela still harbors a grudge over it, bad enough that the memory of it would still send her into a dark mood years later. Another chink in the armor of House Targaryen, in the armor of Rhaenyra and Daemon Targaryen.

Another place you can dig your fingers in and pull and pull and pull until it is an impossible gap to close.

“I doubt there will be more weddings like this for quite some time,” you muse, Baela looking up from her plate to meet your eyes. “No other prince is even betrothed.”

Baela snorts inelegantly. “Not as much time as you’re trying to pretend there will be. The Queen might be better off leaving these decorations up to save some time for the servants for the next one.”

You smile despite yourself. “I wouldn’t dare presume to tell the Queen what to do.”

“You might not but I would,” she responds with the typical brash confidence you’ve come to expect from her. Only her eyes twinkling tell you that she’s teasing. “Might as well tell the guests not to go home. Save us all some trouble.”

“My older sisters are yet to be married,” you remind her, thinking of Tyshara with her letters of love and Cerelle with her new wolf husband.

Baela’s eyes flash and she tilts her head, looking as if she’s caught you out on a lie, and you realize it half a second before she opens her mouth. “I’ve heard a rumor that’s come down from the North. Something about the first southern Lady of Winterfell.”

Something in you seizes for a moment and you can’t think about the fact that Baela is watching you for any reaction or that the intense focus on your house will only increase from here.

You can only think about the fact that Cerelle Lannister doesn’t exist anymore. She’s Cerelle Stark now - both in the eyes of the gods and the court.

You smile on instinct, forcing it easily. “I was wondering when that would spread.”

Baela cocks an eyebrow. “So it is true then?”

Your heart beats hard in your chest, so loud in your ears it’s a miracle she cannot hear, but you nod. You let your smile grow wider and force yourself to relax in your seat. “Lord Cregan Stark heard about my sister and grew curious about the girl who was set to be the Lady of Casterly Rock if there was no boy born to us. He sent her a letter, hoping to bond over their duties, and it grew from there. When Lord Bennard caught wind, he invited her North in hopes of swaying House Lannister to his claim but my father sent her with his blessing. I’m sure you can understand why they couldn’t have a large wedding with us there, not with Bennard Stark refusing to give Lord Cregan what is rightfully his. After the matter of succession is settled in the North, we plan to travel to Winterfell to pay our respects to the new and the rightful Lord and Lady.”

A lie. A very practiced lie. It’s one you’ve mulled over for weeks now, testing the weight of it. It had been Cerelle’s idea, back when the two of you had approached your father and uncle with your plan. A love story, Cerelle had said, would make the idea of a rushed wedding go down easily. Gossip loves a story and, above all, they loved a love story. Your uncle had helped hammer out the details and all of you had agreed on the finished version. Even back in Casterly Rock, your mother and Tyshara had been coached on what to say when questions undoubtedly drifted their way.

For weeks, you’ve stressed about whether or not this flimsy story would be believed, if people would honestly think that Cregan Stark had fallen for your sister through letters. You’ve stayed up wondering if you should have pushed for this certain detail to be added or rallied for that aspect to be changed.

You never once considered if some people simply wouldn’t care.

Baela shrugs after you finish your short speech, looking as if you’ve just commented on the strawberry you just ate or how Floris Baratheon seems to be leaning in closer and closer to you once she realizes you’re gossiping. “Interesting that House Lannister would be so invested in the matters of succession of other houses.”

Your smile grows sharp. “House Lannister just likes to ensure that the correct people receive what is theirs by law.”

She gets that now familiar glint in her eye, that vicious gleam that you’ve seen in Aemond’s. For all that she’s aligned herself with her mother’s Velaryon side, she’s still a Targaryen, still a dragon. You half expect her to lash out but instead, she visibly takes a deep breath, looking down at her plate again and taking another stubborn bite.

You eye her for a moment, taking in her stiff back and her tight grip on her fork, before you sigh slightly, turning back to focus on your own food.

You think you’ll be doomed to sit in silence through the rest of the introductions, through however many courses Alicent has arranged, up until you’re free to leave your seat and find Aemond and Helaena, but then Floris drags you into a conversation about Storm’s End, her goblet thankfully refilled with water from a watchful servant. She tells you about her sisters, the three she has, and she’s absolutely delighted when you tell her you have four.

“You have me beat, my lady,” she giggles, swaying into you. You shift slightly in your seat, accommodating her so she’s pressing more into your chest rather than your shoulder, and she slides closer, nearly leaning on you entirely. You glance over her head towards the royal table, just in time to see Daeron laughing uproariously at you while Aemond hides his smirk behind his own drink. You’re so busy making a face at them that you almost miss her next words entirely. “Maybe the gods will bless my family with another daughter soon. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough or another sister.”

You glance down at her, your eyes roaming over her reddened cheeks and her half-lidded eyes. She’s still smiling, just barely as if she’s not wholly aware that she is. “Not a boy, my lady?” You ask, unable to stop yourself from bringing your arm up to wrap around her shoulders. It’s a small show of comfort, a little affection, and it embarrasses you slightly to do so in public - especially to a girl you’ve only just met. A quick look around, however, reveals that Floris Baratheon is hardly the only drunk at the feast and that most likely she’s not even the drunkest. Her own father has only gotten louder and louder, singing bawdy songs over the hum of the crowd, and you can spot your father laughing at Lord Celtigar as the poor man spills wine all over himself. Tyland and Ormund are speaking to each other in low tones, their heads bowed together as if they’re sharing a secret for only the two of them. Everywhere you look, people are deep deep in their cups and this is still only the beginning of the night.

You shudder to think what it means for the rest of the night.

Floris doesn’t respond after a moment and you glance down at her, praying that she hasn’t fallen asleep on you, but instead, you just see her playing with her goblet, swirling it gently in her hand.

“My lady?” You prompt again and Floris heaves a sigh before dragging herself up in her seat, pulling away from you.

She frowns, the first time you’ve seen a smile drop from her face. “Maybe I’ll be lucky enough for another sister,” she repeats again, not meeting your eyes. You stare at her a little longer, trying to puzzle out her meaning.

House Baratheon didn’t have an heir - at least, no boy had been born to them as of yet. Only four daughters, nearly as precarious a place as House Lannister had been, but your house had had a key advantage. You had the blood of the Andals coursing through your veins. The lordship would have gone to Cerelle before it ever would have gone to your uncle. That rule had been what had allowed for Queen Leila to rule, protect her inheritance, and choose a husband of her picking. Joffrey Lydden had only earned the title of King of the Rock through her and, even then, he had had to change his name to hers. There was a precedent of strength through the maternal line in House Lannister.

Not so in House Baratheon though, to be fair, there wasn’t much of a precedent in anything for that house. It was scarcely over a century old, formed the same year that Aegon began his conquest. They had Andal blood, yes, but also Valyrian and First Men. It’d be much harder for them to force Cassandra Baratheon, their current heir as it all stands, through to the lordship without being able to use Andal law as a major precedent. This crisis would be the first true one yet. A boy was a necessity or else their house could very well crumble.

But Floris wants a sister.

You eye her for a moment longer, wishing you could probe her for more, but as soon as you open your mouth to ask her, Lord Otto Hightower calls the hall to attention.

You straighten up and even Floris next to you pulls herself up to her full height, the sound of the Lord Hand’s voice nearly enough to sober herself. On your other side, you can feel Baela shifting, settling her attention towards the throne.

Just like during the opening feast, Otto Hightower stands in the shadow of the Iron Throne but now, Aegon and Helaena stand on either side of them, mirrors of each other. You’ve never seen much of a resemblance between the Lord Hand and his grandchildren but now, with the three of them standing side by side, you can catch echoes of him in the pair of them. Aegon is purely Alicent, a perfect copy if not for his Targaryen coloring, but it’s Helaena who bears the greatest resemblance. She’s always been pretty, always been soft around the edges, but here, next to her maternal grandfather, she’s almost handsome in a certain way. In the same way that Otto Hightower demands respect, Helaena demands worship.

“The crown would like once more to thank all the great and noble lords of Westeros for coming to celebrate this union of King Viserys and Queen Alicent’s children,” he booms, his voice loud and strong. The room claps, a few of the drunker occupants cheering loudly, and Otto raises his hands, calling for quiet. “The crown’s strength comes from its people, from you, my lords, and from the power of House Targaryen itself, from its dragons, from its allies. As we look to the future, Prince Aegon and Princess Helaena will serve as leaders, as examples, as pillars to guide the crown to even greater heights. They will help to usher in a power not seen since the days of the Conqueror himself.”

The throne room cheers again, loud and raucous, and, even as you clap, you look around. Otto Hightower’s words are chosen carefully, vague enough that to take umbrage over them would be an extreme overreaction, but directed and pointed enough that his message is clear to those who care to listen. Most are applauding, completely buying into the words of the Lord Hand, but there are a few who look more thoughtful, more suspicious. Lyman Beesbury looks as if he’s sucked a lemon, his weathered face pinched and scornful, while Lord Grover Tully nods firmly in agreement.

Rhaenys Targaryen sits, surrounded by Baratheons and Tyrells and some of your Lannister cousins, looking to all the world as if she’s working out a puzzle, trying to make a piece fit where it ought not go. You can almost see her weighing her options, mentally calculating between the two claimants and what power they bring, calculating what Rhaenyra or Aegon would bring to the realm and, more importantly, what they would bring to her and her own.

Remember your children you want to whisper in her ear. Remember how Laena screamed in pain by herself, half a world away from you. Remember how Laenor must have fought in his final moments before they burned him in his childhood home.

You can hear Baela’s clapping slow next to you and, when you tear your stare away from Rhaenys, you meet her own blazing amethyst gaze. She doesn’t bother to hide the question in her eyes, doesn’t bother to disguise her naked curiosity. You know that there’s no answer you can give her - not one that would satisfy her by any means - so instead, you give her a smile.

Her gaze hardens like flint and you wonder if this will be where she snaps, where the Rogue Prince’s impulsive nature will take over, but her own common sense takes control and she simply looks away, back to the Iron Throne.

You eye her for a moment longer, brushing your gaze over her tense frame, before returning your own gaze back to the three figures standing at the royal table.

When the clapping slows and there’s a lull in the noise, Helaena claps her hands, the sound soft but still striking enough to call attention back to her before it can turn elsewhere. You straighten up even taller in your seat, focusing completely on her. She’s been worrying over this since she told you a few days ago and you bite your lip.

Helaena takes a deep breath, looking visibly anxious to your familiar eyes, before clasping her hands together to hold against her chest. “In thanks for all the warmth the people have provided, Aegon and I would like to gift the leftovers from this feast to the poorest in this city.”

Aegon nods beside her, waiting for the applause to die down again. “We’d also like to provide more funds to the poorhouses in Flea Bottom so they can share in some of the plenty.”

He stands there awkwardly for a second, clearly unaware of what to do once he finishes his part, but, when the crowd begins to clap and cheer for him too, he straightens up, a small smile creeping on his face. You release a breath in relief when their small speech is over and it’s clear that the room is pleased by their show of charity. It had been the Queen’s idea - both the gift itself and the actual presentation of it - but you had helped Helaena practice. She had rehearsed it over and over again until you’re sure you could say her part in your sleep.

But it had all gone according to plan. You can feel one of the countless knots of anxiety inside you loosen and vanish but it gives you no relief, not when there are countless other knots to unravel within you.

There’s a beat where Aegon and Helaena look at each other, both of them caught in the moment staring each other down. It would look romantic if you didn’t recognize it for what it was - reluctance.

Then Aegon, drawing on strength from who knows where, holds up his hand for his sister, bowing his head as he does. Helaena only waits a breath before taking it and, together, the two of them walk around the royal table, beginning the slow march down to the empty space that had been cleared for dance. When they pass Aemond, your stare lingers on him.

He’s watching his siblings go, stone-faced and looking to all the world as if he was sitting a normal dinner and not the wedding feasts for his siblings. His eye tracks Aegon and Helaena as they walk and when they reach the center of the room and turn to each other, a flicker of something flashes on his face. It vanishes quickly, as if it had never been there, but it had been there.

Regret? Pity?

For all his talk of doing what he must for his family, you imagine even he would chafe at this duty. Even he would resist. Talk is easy. A lifetime tied to his sister with more than just blood is not.

You watch him, greedily taking in every single minute twitch of his face. For once, he doesn’t seem to sense your gaze. He’s completely lost in watching his siblings, his eye solely focused on them, and you know without looking when the dance begins. More than the soft gasp from Floris, more than the songs of the bards growing louder and more pitched, you can tell from the way he shifts in his seat, pitching forward as if it’ll give him a better view. His hair falls over his shoulders, falling around his face as if a curtain to protect him, but it doesn’t hide his complete concentration.

He would pull them away if he could. He would try to save them from this pain.

If he could.

Your breath hitches and you look away, following his gaze to see Helaena and Aegon.

They’re closer than they had been at the opening feast, their chests pressed up against each other in a show of intimacy. They’re clinging to each other, their heads bowed together as if they’re whispering to one another. It looks romantic. It should work.

But it doesn’t. It almost can’t. It’s the closest Helaena has ever been to anyone else - closer than even you have been to her in years but it fits her all wrong. It’s like trying to fit into a dress made for someone years younger, trying to shove your foot into one meant for a child. She holds Aegon as if she’s never held him before - never held him so close to her, so intimately. You wonder if she’s ever held anyone like that and somehow you doubt it.

She’s never been allowed it, never been given the opportunity to desire it out of anyone but her brother.

Not even with you - never been allowed to, had maybe never even considered.

A hot flame of resentment and jealousy begins to burn through your chest, burning and painful and agonizing. Why Aegon? Why her?

None of it has ever been about fair, about what was just, but now more than ever, you want to break something. Somehow this dance, this close of a dance, feels more a finality than even the wedding had been. This is everything put into motion. This is the first show of the performance that the two of them will have to give every day for the rest of their lives. You had told yourself you could manage it. You had told yourself that you could swallow back the bile and work with the pieces they’ve given you.

And you can. You will. You’ll bear it and relish the weight of the burden because of the power it gives you.

But as you watch the two of them, spinning round and round on the dance floor, it’s hard to remember that horrible truth about yourself - not with the pain swirling inside your chest.

#aemond targaryen x reader #aemond x reader #aemond x you #i MEANT it when i said that grrm himself couldn't stop me from finishing this fic #ok bedding next chapter fr i got carried away bc im the biggest yapper i know #love you guys

143 notes · View notes