Chapter Text
There's blood running down the marble icy floor. There's blood on her dress and on her ivory hands.
She holds a cold, lifeless body against her chest. She cradles it; rocks it front to back as if she's soothing him while she cries. And she cries. And she cries.
And she just cries.
“I'm sorry,” she whispers into her lover's ear.
Her chest burns. She feels like her heart has been ripped out of her. She feels like she's about to vanish into her pain.
Everything has been taken away from her. Everything. Everything.
Annika desires to go with him. She intends not to live in a world without her lover. She wishes to die.
Her pain burns through her guts and skin and head like the green wildfire.
I am sorry. I am sorry. I am so sorry.
But neither her apologies nor her prayers will bring him back.
She looks up to see the man who had just slay her reason to being right in front of her, on her very wedding day.
Her father's face stares back at her.
The blade of his sword drenched in the thick scarlet liquid; the hands that holds it full of different sins.
Hers are not that cleaner either.
They are just as blood soaked. Both literal and figuratively. “Why?” she howls uncontrollably and atrociously. “Why!?” She knows the reason, though. Annika has never been stupid. Perhaps being in love had clouded her judgement once, but a mind as sharp has hers cannot be easily dulled.
She screams, but no one listens. No one pays attention to her pleas.
“Wipe those tears and move on. You won more than you lost,” her father commands. He reaches down to take her arm, but she pulls away from him.
It's as if his hands stained with her lover's blood burned her skin. She despises him even more than she loves the dead boy in her arms.
Let him not touch her. If her father touches her, he might obliterate the boy's touch on her skin.
He might obliterate his last hug with those goddamn bloody, slayer hands. She will not allow such thing.
She can still sense his fingertips on her arms, on her hands, from when he was ready to wed her and ran away from everyone.
“I just saved you from making the biggest mistake of your life. Show me a little gratitude,” he says. But she only listens to the voice of her late lover in her head. “You are to be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.”
She has not won anything.
Neither dragons, nor gold, nor the Seven Kingdoms could put her back together.
Her soul has died with him, as she were about to swore to do. It matters little to her that they did not get to consummate or validate their marriage.
In her heart, she is a widow now. Her soul is dry for it had follow him to his death. The Seven Kingdoms are not worth it. The Seven Kingdoms cannot fill that void. She is sure of one thing, and one thing only.
She will meet him again.
But first, she will avenge him.
° ° °
Aegon had not loved Helaena that way, but still his heart ached for her. For the first time in his life, he feels something.
And he doesn't like it.
She had been his sister. His little sister, whom he was supposed to protect. She had been his wife and his queen and the mother of his children and yet she was not just gone.
She was dead. Reduced to nothing.
Helaena was now his past and the future ahead is not looking so bright either.
Who once had been the fundamental pillar in his family no longer existed. Helaena took the warmth and light and dreams and probably the lost love that remained between the Targaryen siblings and their mother as well.
The Stranger had also claimed the life of his firstborn, and Helaena could not bear it. She died out of love for their child. The perfect child of his. Everything he could have been, everything he would no longer be.
He wants to blame someone, but deep down he knows there's no one to blame but himself. He was the King, the father, the husband. It was his duty to keep them safe and sound and yet he had failed.
Again.
In his back, he carries a guilty weight. His hands are tainted with the blood of his wife and sister Helaena and his son Jaehaerys. And of all those who were yet to come.
“Don't worry, my King,” the Hand's raspy voice sweetens his ear. For the family man he claims to be, he isn't as affected by the losses of his granddaughter and great-grandson. “I got you a new wife.”
So soon?
Well. The world must go on.
He has no time for anything other than securing the Throne for him. It is his birthright, and he regrets only had seen it that late. It is also the total destruction of him. And he knows it.
And while he's not the brightest son, he's smart enough to know that without a queen, the throne and his reign are in jeopardy.
He can't stop fantasizing about the blood on his hands, dry under his fingernails. He wants to clean it up and rubs his palms against his trousers impatiently.
The imaginary blood does not wash off.
After a while, his hands are nothing but flesh. It stings. But the raw pain is a reminder of what he has done. What he has not done. How he has failed miserably.
“Annika Lannister will be your Queen now.”
He has heard that name before. He hasn't paid attention to it. Lannisters are arrogant and he can't stand arrogance other than his own and perhaps his younger brother's. He never had the time or energy to deal with them Lannisters.
At first, he is disgusted and certainly mad about it.
But then again, the Hand is not the only one who whispers in his ear on these lugubrious and mournful days.
He thus finds out that his future wife and queen also has grudges and blood on her hands and a void in her chest.
He is now relieved and curious, rather.
Any other man would be worried about sleeping with a hungry and upset lion next to them. He particularly is not.
He is a dragon, after all.
And mayhaps she is just like him. Just another mourning spirit, too far gone and lost on her sorrow to ever love again.
May the Gods protect the Seven Kingdoms from their cold, vengeful hearts.