Chapter Text
She was small, so small and sweet, some fruit from the roots of a big three, from soil and water and love, so much love; and she didn’t came alone, there were two, she and he, sweet babies made of love and flesh and blood, their mother’s delight, and their father’s too, both of them. Their twinflower.
Y/n and Lucerys were the two sides of the same coin, two sharp ends of a fine blade, one strong but timid, the other small but full of fire. They spent so much time together, playing around, pestering Jace every time they could and being showered in love by their parents, all three of them, Sir Laenor, Rhaenyra and Ser Harwin. Sweet little flowers attached to the same stem, growing healthy and beautiful with their curly hair, round cheeks, and big eyes.
Their life was nice, yes, but not every garden can be safe of weeds, those spread quick and never leave, they root in the good soil and if you take them out, they’ll just grow once again and stain your beautiful garden.
Rhaenyra’s garden was beautiful, it’s flowers and trees bright and healthy, covered in different colors and shapes, a mirror of freedom, love and happiness; Alicent’s was different, her garden was plain, the same color, almost the same shape, she had no trees, and her only flower would soon die because the soil was bad, poisoned, the only plants there were poison ivy, not pleasant to touch or to smell.
But in the end, soil it’s soil, it gets mixed, it shares ground no matter how hard you try to keep distance between terrains, even more so when the owner of the land asks the gardeners to make a new scene for him, to mix their plants and encourage them to grow together; flowers can’t shine when ivies make the land look bad.
Still, sometimes, if you have a good hand, if you know how to make a beautiful landscape, weeds and flowers can look good together.
Aemond was always drawn to his niece, Y/n was small, she seemed fragile, as if a small breeze could break her, but deep inside she was the opposite, brave and with a mouth big enough to talk back and defend herself from the tongues of the folks who cursed at her behind her back since her hair was dark and curly, not silver, not smooth, she had the face of her mother but besides that, she and her brother’s looked a lot like their father. Aemond knew that, his mother told him so almost every day, reminded him that they were different, Rhaenyra’s child’s were the weeds, not the other way around; that didn’t stopped him from growing fond of her, where her brother’s and his own were harsh and mean with him, she gave him peace and a good chat sometimes, Y/n was small but with a mind full of wonders and questions, even gossip sometimes. You could say they were friends even.
“I ate lemon cakes today, three.” Small fingers pose before him, Aemond smiles and holds his small laugh.
“Did you?” He asks, and the girl nods and smiles, and oh, the world spins again, his heart beats and his insides feel warm. She’s so cute, small, and cute, five years of bringing light and joy to the world, to his world. “Your mother gave them to you?”
Then she stops and looks down, her hands behind her back as her round cheeks turn pinkish, tainting that pale skin of hers with such a beautiful color, again he smiles and shakes his head, his hand come to rest on the top of her head, fingers combing dark strands of curls, so unlike his, yet beautiful. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell.” Her smile returns.
Their youth is nice, innocent, a perfect landscape of weeds and flowers getting along, the owner of the land is happy with the gardeners, he smiles and cheers, yet things are bound to get sour and burn the lawn. Some of us are born with a gift, some of us know how to take care of plants because we had someone to show us how, people who teach with love, other’s do it because they forced to, even if their hands are not meant to plant seeds and water them, sing to them and love them. They burn them.
Y/n finds herself trapped in her own mind, trying to comprehend what happened between them to make them grow apart (besides the incident, one she wasn’t even part of), why does her dear uncle not come to visit anymore? Why does he look at her with eyes filled of blades in the very few times they have to be together at family gatherings. Why. Why. Why. She tries to mend any mistake she had made; she apologizes every chance she gets even if she doesn’t even know why she’s doing it in the first place, she just hopes it works, she yearns for his company, their small talks, his advice, his comfort when Jace and Luke get too annoying. Now she’s alone. He seems to like her small suffering.
The food is nice and warm, the wine slides down her throat so softly she almost forgets wine gives her headaches. Jace is dancing with Helaena, both smile, Luke chats with Rhaena and she just enjoys the evening, things feel like older times, when she was just a child with a sweet tooth wandering around rooms and the shore, small hands holding onto her mother’s skirts every time someone new came to visit, being held by Laenor when she felt upset and always under the watching eye of sweet Ser Harwin, who now watches over her from above.
Y/n feels it, the eye burning holes on her frame, she does her best to not look up, to avoid his gaze. He’s always looking at her, always. She knows, she feels it, like a string pulling at her so hard it almost hurts, but it’s for the best, things are not good nowadays, everyone is at each other’s throats, they could be smiling and dancing toady but tomorrow everything will go back to normal, the same cycle. Some weeds are taken away, but new ones grow.
And as if she had asked the gods for something to ruin the evening, everything goes down. She felt it coming, she had made the mistake to look up at meet his eye, that lovely purple orb that used to made her smile every time it was on her. Aemond smirked, laughing at her in silence before making his toast, he knew what he was doing, he had lost an eye for something alike when younger, the first crack in the vase that held them. His cup is raised at her twin when the word ‘strong’ leaves his lips, then hell breaks out, Jace punches him, Aegon smashes Luke against the table, she jumps at her older uncle in some effort to free her twin, but she’s pushed aside and to the ground, the room fills with hatred and yells and before she can even open her mouth she’s sent back to her chambers along with her brother’s and aunts.
Inside the walls and after tending to her brother's small wounds she let’s herself cry, tears slide down her cheeks and pool at her lap as she sits on her bed, wondering where did all go wrong, why couldn’t they just get along at least for a day, why did they hate them? What had they done to earn that, sour expressions and harsh words that eat her soul and leave her like an empty shell. Before she can think straight, she finds herself before his door, hand clasped behind her back as she greets the guard who let’s her in after a short moment.
He was waiting for her, he knew she would come, that was the reason of his little play at dinner, both were bound to always clash and melt, like lavender candles and steel.
“I don’t recall calling you here.” He says with a voice so soft and calm, almost the same he used when they were younger, happy.
“I wanted to have a little chat.” Y/n takes one step, the another, and he doesn’t stop her, his lone eye glued to the book resting in his hands. She takes it as an invitation and sits on a chair in front of him. “Like the old times.”
Aemond then looks at her, expressionless, she mirrors him, feeling oddly calm at the situation. “How have you been?” She asks to start a conversation; the silence makes her feel trapped in a cell. “It’s been a while since we had a chance to talk.”
“You know the reason, dear niece.” His eye falls on the book again, he flips a page, and the silence fills the room once again, Y/n swallows and her nails scratch her lap.
“I wasn’t even there, you know? I never knew until you left.” He doesn’t say anything and that makes her even more desperate. At some point in her life, she became addicted to him, his presence, his voice, and advice, she couldn’t understand why, why couldn’t she let go of him when he went away, when he called her bastard for the first time, when he did it today. Why? “I wasn’t the one who harmed you, why do you treat me like this?”
“Because you look just like him.” His voice comes out low, like a growl. The book falls from his hands and hits the floor as he makes his way towards her, big hands taking her face and forcing her to look up, she does not resist, she could never. “That hair, those eyes and that smile you carry, you are him as he is just like you, a bastard torn in two.”
“Stop calling us that.” She says back, her hands holding on his wrists to try and loosen his grip, knowing well his fingers would leave marks on her pale skin. Aemond growls again and let’s go of her, almost letting her fall to the ground.
“You want me to lie then? To act as if you were Laenor’s child?” A cruel smirk tugs at his lips before he shakes his head and laughs. “You have two eyes, but you remain blind to your own roots.”
“Why are you always like this?!” The young woman finally breaks, tears threatening to come out her dark eyes as her hands turn into fists, nails almost breaking skin at her palms. “I have never done anything to you, I was always kind and respectful. If my brothers were mean that’s not my doing! Why can’t you just be nice? Why can’t we get along like we used to?!”
Aemond doesn’t answer, but she still knows him well to know the answer. A single tear slides down her cheek before she storms out of the room. Hands covering her face as she tries to wipe the salty cascades away. She doesn’t say anything when her mother questions her puffy eyes and cheeks in the morning before they leave. Things go downhill after that.
It’s been some months since the incident, things have been at peace, to say the least, her father and her aunt are dead, her mother married to Daemon, his daughters are a delight to be with and now she can call them sisters, still, not everything is sunshine and lemon cakes.
She feels it before it happens, a small tug at her guts that soon turns into a horrible pain and headache, her sixth sense trying to tell her something. Everything becomes a blur after, she can hear screams and growls in her head as she falls on her knees, then she feels nothing, emptiness, some kind of phantom pain, a part of her had been ripped off her body like a flower being picked up from a garden.
Y/n stands up again, legs shaky, feeling a sense of dizziness but manages to make her way towards her mother’s chambers. The girl does not knock, she pushes the door open with her whole weight and falls again, fingers trying to dig the stone floors.
“Lucerys…” Is all she says. Rhaenyra wasn’t alone, Daemon was there with her, a kind hand holding his wife’s, a small sign of comfort that doesn’t seem to be helping the woman at all. “Mother… where’s Lucerys?”
Rhaenyra holds her breath and looks down at the floor and Y/n feels like she’s being ripped apart, piece by piece, no one dares to tell those words, but she knows it, she felt it inside her, how the other half of her soul burned and then vanished, leaving her alone in the stem.
No longer a twinflower.
They spent days looking for his remains, a small sign of him, even if it’s just a lock of his soft hair or a finger, something they can mourn to and bury properly but they find nothing, and she feels lost, incomplete. At some point they weren’t that close as before but still they had shared that bond, they were two of one, same heart, same mind, now there was only half of it.
Jace blames himself for suggesting they go to the lords in person, Rhaenyra for accepting and letting them go, sending his sweet boy to a certain death. Y/n just feels empty, restless, no food enters her body, and her bed stays cold for a whole week, even after making him a funeral she refuses to lose hope and keeps riding her dragon every day and every night to look for him, even when she knows well, he’s no longer with them, the sea claimed him after the skies kissed him goodbye.
A son for a son, Daemon had said, the man felt the pain of losing Luke too, he might not been his son but the lad had grown in his stone heart as he did in everyone else, he avenged his step-son, killing one of Aegon’s, starting a war against Rhaenyra’s will, something he wanted from the start too, a reason to finally get rid o the greens and their damn bloodline.
At some point things weren’t looking good for them, Alicent had played her cards and most of the lords broke the promise they made by supporting Aegon just because he had a cock, they were about to lose until the tiniest spark of hope came their way. In a rare and even bizarre moment of patching things up, Rhaenyra and Alicent came to an agreement, a deal that would not be entirely to the liking of those involved but that would ensure a peaceful end to the war.
“How could you do this to me, mother?” Y/n asked at the brim of tears as she paced around the room, her hands turning into fists at her sides, her mother looked down and frowned, she didn’t like the idea either, but it was for the best.
“My dear you have to understand- “
“Understand what? That you want the crown more than you love your own children?” The young woman cut her off mid-sentence, almost yelling. Her eyes were red and puffy, her nails had already sliced through the skin of her palms. Daemon, who was standing on the corner of the room approached the girl and held her hands in hopes of stopping her from harming herself further. “I'll be a sheep straight to the dragon's mouth.”
“The girl is right.” He began, giving his wife a disapproving look and a scowl. “How can you trust that woman’s words after all this time? This could be a trap, think of it Rhaenyra, you’ve already lost a child in the hands of that cunt.”
Rhaenyra bit her bottom lip as she looked at both, Y/n felt betrayed by her own mother and even Daemon seemed to be against the idea, he had grown fond of the girl and loved her as if she was his own, just like Baela and Rhaena. “You’re going to kill her.”
“I want to save her!” The woman yelled back, eyes filling with tears as her hands came up to massage her temples, she was between the wall and the blade. “I won’t be doing this if I didn’t feel It was necessary. I know sounds like madness, but I can’t find another way out, I don’t want to end this war with blood, to lose more innocent lives. Aemond might seem like a bad option, but he will keep her safe, believe it or not he has a good sense of duty.”
“He killed Lucerys in cold blood!” Y/n felt the anger boil inside her, Daemon held her, trying to avoid any confrontation. “What do you think he is going to do with me? Please mother, there must be another way, I can’t marry him… if- if you want to keep me safe send me to the north, give my hand to Cregan, he’s a good man, he will help, and we can- “
“The decision has already been made, my sdear. I am truly sorry.” And like that her fate had been sealed, another flower taken from the garden and given away to wither.
The arrangements were made and before she could digest everything, she was already in front of her uncle wearing the traditional robes and letting him hold her hands. She felt lost, nauseous, Aemond looked at her with no expression in his face but in some way, she knew he was pleased, he had that look in his lone eyes that reminded her of better times but at the same time she saw that same glint he had the day he called them bastards. Y/n didn’t kiss him, Aemond was the one to lean in and place his lips on the commissure of hers, they were warm and a bit dry, she felt like throwing up.
There was no big party afterwards, just a small diner between the families, something that reminded her again of that night, she wanted to cry and yell, to run away or for the sea to claim her just like it did with her brother, everyone could see it, she had been an offering, a nice vase full of water to let the fire of the war die down.
As soon as the diner was over, she was taken away by some maids who were quick to undress and bathe her, scenting her skin with lavender oils and dress her in a soft nightgown before being escorted to Aemond’s room by the guards.
She found herself in front of the door, feeling a small sense of déjà vu, things were different now but, in some way, she knew that time ago, deep inside she had been wanting to be in a situation alike, it made her hate herself. Y/n walked in the room as the doors were closed behind her, Aemond was seated on the bed, looking at her with that cold expression he always carried, not moving an inch until he realized she wasn’t going to approach him. He sighed, shook his head and got on his feet, making his way towards her.
“Come here.” He said in a whisper, his hands quick to find their place on her hips, she sook her head and pulled away, her hands on his chest, keeping some distance between them. "Fine."
Aemond didn't say a thing after that, he just made his way towards the bed and got under the covers. The girl finally relaxed a little, lowering her head before walking out of the room, paying no attention to the confused looks the guards gave her.
Even after all those years, she still had a soft spot in his heart.