Chapter Text
When the water in the tub became lukewarm, Aelinor finally rose and stepped out of it to wrap herself into a fragrant towel. Her handmaidens clucked disapprovingly but they had long ago learned that no matter how much they insisted that it was their duty, their lady preferred to bathe on her own, needing help only with her back. Even her long hair, she washed on her own.
Tonight, she took an extra time to brush her hair out and apply the ointments that would make her skin smoother and sweet smelling. To don one of her favourite gowns, one that hugged her slender frame quite favourably. Of course, she knew that Aerys would not notice if she chose to wear a sackcloth. But it made her feel more confident, like a man-at-arms who felt better when he had made sure that his weapons were in their best state. Truly, beauty was one of the very few weapons a woman had.
Surely he'd understand that they could not go on like this? She had barely seen twenty-five namedays; he had seen two more. They could not live in chastity for the rest of their lives? She had been wed to him in order to produce children, strengthen the dynasty, especially now, with Lyselle's repeated miscarriages. He was one of the kindest people she knew – surely he would not want to deprive her of motherhood?
She looked at the notched candle. It was long past the hour everyone in the Red Keep slept, save for those couples who were too busy with each other and Aerys who was preoccupied with his books. Aelinor had long ago dismissed her servants and now rose from her chair. Without looking at the bed that she slept alone in, the very one that she had killed her babe in, she went out the door, down long winded hallways, down a short flight of stairs. Another hallway. A spacious solar. For a moment, she hesitated. A voice in her head told her that it was all in vain but still she went.
There was a faint light squeezing from under Aerys' door. Aelinor raised her hand, knocked, and then immediately entered without waiting for a reply. As she expected, he looked up from the book he now placed on his bedcover. "Aelinor," he said. "Why are you here?"
She forced herself to smile. "Why not? Am I not your wife?"
She could tell that he knew where this was going on. His heavy sigh enraged her but she kept herself under control. If she started arguing with him, she could hardly expect to have any success in seducing him, right? Silently, she sat next to him on the bed and placed a hand over his arm. He flinched, although he didn't quite look away.
Aelinor looked around. She hadn't been in his bedchamber for years. Everything was the same – the bare walls, the threadbare carpet, the shelves overflowing with books. A maester would have felt completely at ease here.
"Once, I liked to come to your bedchamber and choose a book among yours, although I couldn't quite read yet," she said, trying to ease him off with the memory of their childhood.
When she looked at him, she saw that she had succeeded: he was smiling. "Yes," he said. "I remember."
But then his smile wavered and disappeared. Aelinor realized that she had to act fast, or lose him this time, too.
"Aerys," she said and looked him in the eye. "I cannot go on like this. I am so tired of this semi-life we're leading. I want to be with you."
For all their years together, that was the first time she explicitly stated the reality of their situation. He sighed again, his eyes deep and sad. "You're asking for something that I cannot give, Aelinor. I… I am sorry. I don't want it to be like this."
She held tighter to the hand he tried to release. "But why?" she asked. "Why? Why can't you?"
There was a peculiar look in his eyes, something that made her want both to hold him and shield him from whatever it was that he feared and shake him, screaming, Get a hold of yourself! Be a man, just this once!
"There is more at the stake than you and me, and our desires," he said. "The future of the world is at stake."
Our desires, she thought. There is no such thing as our desires. Just yours and mine.
"We must figure it out," he went on. "The dragons will return to dance again. And the world will bathe in blood. We must find out how to make it happen. A hundred years later, the world might be no more."
Aelinor barely kept herself from screaming. She had heard this song so often and in so many variations that she could sing it half-asleep.
"Aerys," she said. "Now."
For a moment, he kept looking at her, not quite seeing her, and then something made him snap out of his world of books and knowledge. "What now?"
"Now," she said again. "We're living now. In a hundred year time neither you nor I will be here. We won't see whether you were right. Aerys, I want to live, not waste my life while trying to make the lives of those hundred years from now possibly better."
"Knowledge," he said, "makes everything certainly better."
His voice was as soft as ever, yet Aelinor knew him well enough to know when he would not be dissuaded. She rose angrily and left the bedchamber, her eyes stinging with tears of pain, disappointment, and humiliation that she felt she did not deserve.
For a while, she paced around her own chamber like a caged animal until she felt she could no longer bear the heat her own anger spread all over her body. Without bothering to take a cloak, she left her apartments, descended the stairs, and went out in the wintry night.
In the beginning, the fiery whirlwind of dark emotions raging in her soul did not let her cool; but after a long time of walking around the sleeping courtyards and gardens, she finally felt that the falling snow had started to help. I won't burn to death tonight, she thought and sank down on a coach, the recent encounter with Aerys mingling in her mind with the painful fact that Maekar and Naeryn seemed to have restored their relationship. Not only was she with child once again but he often accompanied her during her strolls in the gardens. She talked to him animatedly, her lilac eyes shining, and he smiled as he listened to her. It was not only Aerys who was tormenting her, those two did, as well, taunting her with the unwitting cruelty of happy youth. Everyone was happy but her; to her, there was only one prospect –spending her life unwanted and alone.
She was so engrossed in the whirlwind of dissatisfaction, pain, feeling of loss, jealousy, and mortification that she did not notice the snowflakes falling down upon her. She closed her eyes, telling herself that she was only going to give her fevered mind a minute of rest.
When they found her the next morning, they thought she had died of freezing.
At first, it wasn't so bad. Only a little stiffness here and there, sometimes a sharp pain when she turned after having sat for too long. And no dancing. With years, though, the problems became more evident. She developed a slight limp that slowly became prominent; she could not walk for long without stopping to take a rest. Too many poses became uncomfortable for her, so she avoided them.
Plagued by guilt, Aerys distanced himself from her further. His regrets, though, never reached as far as starting a real marital life with her. Her parents felt guilty, too, about the way her life had turned out, so there was always this awkwardness between them.
And then, Naeryn died.
Aelinor couldn't believe it – and then she couldn't believe that she hadn't believed it. Naeryn was one of the finest souls she had ever known, with the possible exception of Rhaegel and she was surprised to find out that she had unknowingly believed that doom could not affect someone who was so good. Hadn't she learned by now that gods were not fair, that they loved cruel japes?
She had been jealous of Naeryn. Bitter. Envious. But she had been her friend. She had never wanted her to die. Now, she took Daella and Rhae under her wing whenever they were at King's Landing – or she, at Summerhall. They were more pliable than the boys because they didn't really remember their mother – they just needed someone to play mother for them. And that fulfilled the longing of her own lonely heart, as well, so at the end, both parties were pleased.
Naeryn's death meant another change altogether, as loathe as Aelinor was in the beginning even to consider it. Now Maekar was as lonely as she was. Little by little, they grew close once again, although the passion that had always burned between them was no longer the dominant feeling, replaced by fierce protectiveness of each other, heightened interest in each other's emotional needs and desires. Maybe it was due to the passing of years, or the realization that no matter what they did, they could never have the physical side of their relationship back. It was either that semi-relationship or the terrifying loneliness they both knew so well. She might be sinking into despair and he might be growing bitter with any passing day; but they were not desperate and bitter enough to choose loneliness.
"Did you finally count them?"
She looked up and smiled at him, not quite understanding. "What?"
"My scars. You are always looking at them so intently. Did you count them, at last?"
Aelinor smiled again and looked aside. Let him think that was what she had been doing. She did not want to count them, had no desire to know just how many times he had been so close to death. Some of those scars ran so near to where his heart beat… They covered him like a web, a map of his life that she had been unable to see being drawn. But in fact, the scars were not the only thing she stared at. She was fascinated by the slackening of the skin over the tight muscles, the coarsening of the hairs on his torso that she remembered so sparse and silky under her fingers when they had been together as a very young boy and girl, not even fully grown, the blue veins throbbing so visibly under the fair skin. His eyes were still deep violet but now there were lines around them even when he wasn't tired. His hair was thick and silver but coarser in texture and lacking lustre, just like her own would have been, had she not been washing it with special potions. She had been alone for so long that she had had no idea how aging would affect a man under the finery, and she felt a faint echo of sadness that they had been unable to go through the changes together. "Go to sleep," she murmured. "You're tired. A whole day with the Small Council is never a good thing."
He closed his eyes, although his breathing did not even out. Lately, he had started grasping any chance to get some rest and since Aelinor had stopped moving much, it was not hard for her to create an environment where he could relax. She curled up next to him with her book. "How can you be so outrageously warm?" she muttered enviously. "It isn't fair. What do you do to achieve it?"
He laughed softly, not bothering to open his eyes. "I have no idea. It just comes pouring off me. Come here, I'll get you warm."
He took care to say it nonchalantly, put her mind at ease that he did not mean it as a carnal invitation. Today was one of her bad days. By the way she moved, he could say that soon, she'd need any additional heat she could find, desperately. The maesters were helpless to stop the frequent inflammations in her hip and leg and getting warm relieved the symptoms somewhat. She put the book aside and he turned on his side, so he could embrace her. Aelinor snuggled up to him, muttering something about a bloody fireplace. He slid a leg between hers to elevate her knee slightly, since this, too, soothed her, and her breathing soon showed him that she had gone to sleep, exhaustedly. He, though, lay wide awake, holding her close, grateful beyond measure that she was finally his, yet frantically afraid of what would happen. Her condition was worsening. In a few years, she might need to be attended… in everything. And she wouldn't let him see just how bad the damage was. Her insecurities saddened him more than he could ever express, yet Aelinor did not seem capable to understand. She thought it was all about her looks. But then, would he have understood, had he started losing his martial prowess? Maekar very much doubted it!
A few hours later, a sudden chill in the huge royal bedchamber made Aelinor shiver and open her eyes. "What are you doing?" she asked sleepily and then was startled awake when she realized what it was. "No!" she cried out and tried to drag the cover back. Maekar didn't let her – he kept staring at the distorted flesh below the nightgown he had just lifted. Bitter tears sprang to her eyes. Everything that she had been hiding for years was now revealed for him to see under the merciless light of the dawn – the twisting, the damaged muscles, the hollows under the skin. She looked aside, unable to take the sight of her own deformity or his revulsion.
"Is that it?" he finally asked and there was something like a smile in his voice. "You cannot possibly know the horrors I imagined I would encounter… Was this the great secret?"
Angrily, she tried to turn aside. Now, her tears were borne of humiliation when she realized she couldn't do even that without leaning on her elbow – and he wasn't about to let her rise. She pushed his hands away and then suddenly had the energy only to curl in a wretched ball of misery.
He placed a hand on her hip, trying to warm it; she shook it away and slowly opened her eyes to look straight at his. "How can you act like this? As if it doesn't matter," she said, her fury flaming once again. "When I know it does. What do you see when you look at me now?"
"You," he said. "Only you. No one has ever wanted me but you."
He didn't say it as a matter of self-pity and she didn't take it this way. It was a fact. He didn't know how to mingle with people and they took it to mean that he didn't want to which contributed to the rumours of his vile, unfeeling nature. Ever before he could talk, he had started hearing the whispers he'd later grow to understand, one of the realities of life. A first son was always fervently desired, as well as a second. But a fourth one? The fourth one was not needed neither as heir nor spare. A fertile queen was almost as troublesome as a barren one, people said. And in their early childhood, their mother's fears of Rhaegel's madness repeating in her youngest led to attitude that made him feel acutely how different it was for him in comparison to his siblings. He had never been able to make many friends. He was not an easy man to like. And Naeryn would have come to love everyone who wasn't a true villain – that was just how she was, that was why he had loved her.
But the words were a powerful reminder just how things were between them. All of a sudden, Aelinor felt stupid for forgetting the truth: her looks had never been the main reason for his attraction to her. Sure, he liked it well enough but it mattered far more to her than it did to him. Their relationship went so deeply that no superficial cuts could break it. And yet, she asked uncertainly, "Is that the main thing that binds us together? Our weaknesses?"
He shook his head. His hand went once again over her hip and this time, she didn't push it away. "No, not our weaknesses but our trust. We show our weakness only to those we trust to understand and accept us in spite of it. You accepted me as I am. Why don't you believe me when I say I accept you, too, just as you are?"
She sighed, feeling unburdened, released. "I believe you," she said and turned on her belly, so he could see the entire damage clearly in the bright sunlight that was already bathing their bedchamber in waterfall of gold.
The End