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Standing in Dragonstone, Alicent is ten-and-four again, picking at her bleeding nailbeds, heart thumping violently and mind abuzz with incessant thoughts of wanting.
Her desire for peace rang clear above all of the noise – peace, as if she ever knew it. Her mind drifted to the resolute silence she sought and found in the wild. She would have filled her pockets with stones and sunk to the bottom of the lake if she thought it would bring her serenity, but such a notion was a foreign concept. One thousand more lifetimes spent free could never consolidate the pieces of her shattered soul, nor could it amend the agony of the loss of the life she once knew, left slumbering beneath the waves of time.
Alicent had been dead a long time, anyway. A lifetime spent begging on her knees – begging to be believed, begging to have a sword on her side, begging for the world to see that she, too, bore a fire inside of her. Like she did – she whom Alicent had always loved.
Over three decades of a life spent as a pawn; a life of silent torment, yet no torture inflicted was so cold, nay, cruel, as her isolation from the wilderness that was Rhaenyra Targaryen.
Fire in human form, and Alicent could never hope to match her ferocity. Alicent Hightower was smoke, Alicent was the whisper of sauntering shadow long-since-forgotten.
Alicent was weak, whittled down to bone and marrow, to guilt and to shame, and still, the embers of love for Rhaenyra ever flickered within. Gasping, reaching, yearning for Rhaenyra, her pillar of strength, her softest dream.
The gods could not hope to fill a hole so large as that which Viserys’ daughter left behind when the affairs of men had separated them. It was a disgusting longing. A pining so white-hot and agonizing. Craven, throbbing, frightening. Maddening. Utterly unbecoming of the once-Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.
Destruction was left in Rhaenyra’s wake in all where she went, and she went where she pleased. Alicent envied and admired this in equal measure; how she longed to be a dragon and to be free. Alicent was of House Florent, forever rooted to the earth. Rhaenyra was the sun that nourished her, even if she never realized it, or rather, never dared to admit it.
Rhaenyra was beyond this – she was moonlight. She was the wind. She was the caring, attending hand. She was the water. She was intangible, beautiful, a palpable delight. A gift to be savored, one that Alicent wished she had when time was held in her hands. Time – a fleeting, weeping, senseless thing.
But it was a lifetime ago that her friend’s star-silver tresses were splayed across her lap. Alicent was hesitant to touch her then. Alicent was a flower long-since-plucked for the sake of the men who had admired her and used her. Through all of her strife, it was only the thoughts of her that kept her standing. How she longed to have the chance to reach for her now. She would touch her hair, yes, and her cheek, and stroke her nose, down the length of her neck, and reach for her hands...
And then, like an impossible wish granted from a bleeding comet, there she stood. Rhaenyra, illuminated in a whisper of light from flame and moon alike. Alicent froze, intoxicated. Paralyzed. Drinking in the sight of her grace, etherized by her beauty even now in the face of so much agony. Alicent told herself to be fortified, yet now she was crumbling all over again.
“I had to see you,” The words fall from her mouth gracelessly before she realizes she has spoken them. Her nail cuts deeply into her cuticle, drawing blood, grounding her to the current moment.
But she is ten-and-four no longer, and this is no longer her companion of girlhood standing before her.
“I was raised to believe there was an order to things,” Alicent speaks to fill the silence, or perhaps to speak over the sound of her ever-pattering heart. “That there was security in following the paths that were laid out for us. I resented you, I think–”
I could never resent you.
“For caring so little for any of it. For knowing what you wanted. I did not know what I wanted.” Her eyes fall to the floor, unable to withstand the weight of Rhaenyra’s stare, and the weight of her sin. Her lie.
I wanted you.
Wanted her, wanted to be her. The dragon and the fox. Rhaenyra was all teeth, claws of knives and lips of danger, but Alicent could never be cunning. It was not in her nature.
There was once a time in their youth where Alicent stood taller than her, looking down upon her. Then, she could have cut her down and consumed her in a fervent dance of gnashing fangs. She dreamed of what her friend tasted like, and prayed to the gods to take these thoughts from her. She touched herself to the idea of her tongue plunging inside of Rhaenyra’s pretty mouth, only to scrub her hands raw after. It was not prayer that was her salvation, but Rhaenyra, who disarmed her with no thought to her actions.
For Alicent, through youth and adulthood, there was comfort found in the idea of having successfully breached the dragon’s den, having befriended Rhaenyra, and perhaps one day claiming her for herself – perhaps there was some guile in her blood after all.
Words are exchanged, and venom in kind. Alicent can hardly hear it above the sound of her heart. Would that she were equipped with a blade, she would cut open her chest and present the bloodied organ to Rhaenyra.
“It’s too late, Alicent,” Rhaenyra speaks, coldly, and Alicent is disarmed once more.
Alicent turns away. She cannot bear to look at her, so beautiful in her destruction. Rhaenyra continues in her spiteful drivel but Alicent does not hear her. Her thumb lifts to her mouth, where she bites the bleeding skin.
“I never stopped loving you,” Alicent cannot look upon the dragon queen as she says it. She can sense Rhaenyra behind her, stiff, alarmed. Alicent herself is shocked, shocked that she has allowed her private thoughts to slip from the prison of her mind and out of her lips.
“You were the vision that sustained me,” Alicent continues. She cannot stop; she half-turns, desperate for a glimpse at the face of her once-friend, but she has no strength in her body to lift her eyes. Rhaenyra had a certain gravity in her purple gaze, one that threatened to drag Alicent back down to her knees should she meet it. She did not deserve to look upon her, least of all now.
“I would have chosen you, every time,” Alicent’s voice is barely above that of a whisper, as it would be in prayer. Her hand finds her way to her own throat, clutching the skin, as if to squeeze the last of her words out that courage alone would not withdraw. “You are much changed, as… as am I. I wish… I wish we could have flown together–”
“You come here to spew your girlish wishes, after you have defiled my name and my house, and beyond that, my father’s legacy? Your late husband?” Rhaenyra’s voice is a blade, is the shriek of shattering glass, and Alicent shrinks beneath its volume.
You are hurt. And I am the one who has inflicted the injury.
Alicent turns, at last. Her eyes lift to Rhaenyra, who is incensed. Rightfully so. “Why have you come here, truly? What is it that you want from me?” Rhaenyra snarls.
Alicent draws a shaky breath. “I cast myself on the mercy of a friend who once loved me. I am at last myself.” She cannot be afraid, lest the dragon should choose to consume her.
“What I wish is of no importance to you, I well-understand this. It has never been of importance to anyone, truly,” She continues.
I was important to you, once.
“But none of that matters now. The world that I know has forever been too small for the heart within my chest, and for the festering wound in its flesh.”
Rhaenyra is silent for a moment, as if to consider the dowager queen's confession. Something in her expression shifts, and Alicent cracks at the sight of it, grasping at her hopes.
“You speak as if from a distant dream.” Rhaenyra’s tone is softer.
“Come with me,” Alicent blurts with all of the force of her aching heart, and steps forward, and her hands reach for Rhaenyra’s. Their hands meet, briefly, skin against skin, and for a moment, Alicent feels whole.
Then Rhaenyra jerks her hand away, and Alicent dies all over again.
“Come with me.” She repeats herself. Loyalty to a bond that defied reason. A foolish wish, a fruitless effort, but she would ever elect to dream of a life spent with her rather than a life forever tethered to suffering. She would forsake it all, everyone, for her. Her dearest wish, her greatest loss.
Rhaenyra smiles.
You dreamed of this, too.
Rhaenyra steps forward, closing the distance. She looks down at Alicent, who seems so small now, and so insignificant. Alicent wishes to lunge for her mouth, to kiss her, to bite her, to tear her lips from her face and to drink her crimson syrup. She wished to dive into her, to become one with her. But she is not brave, not like her, her fearless dragonrider.
"I cannot. My place is here, whether I will it or no."
My place is by your side.
“Go.”
Permission, and an order.
Alicent is overcome by the umbra of regret, but she heeds the Black Queen, for she dared to defy her once, and it cost her everything.