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There is only softness, now. The kind of softness that can only replace jagged edges and deep scars. It is the kind of blade that has been dulled, past even a child’s toy. It is violence, made gentleness. The origins of cruelty are fundamental to what it has become.
Rhaenyra wakes up screaming; they both do these days. They have learned to sleep like they did as children, sneaking into one another’s rooms just to be able to hold each other close without the disappointment , or the rage, of their fathers. It is not an easy thing, to not startle at the sound of the scream. It is harder still, to forget their blood is not only passed down from their mothers.
But there are no mothers and fathers here, now. There is only a screaming woman, sobbing through near-white hair that had fallen on her face as she slept.
“Rhaenyra,” Alicent is upon her immediately, rolling over to swipe the hair away from her face, to demand that Rhaenyra meet her eyes. It is the simplest and the most effective tool. Nothing has been able to wrench the two of them out of their pasts so much as their own faces. Alicent’s hands immediately go to rest on Rhaenyra’s cheeks, the left thumb rubbing the slightest of circles as she wakes.
“ Alicent.” She gasps, her mouth parted enough that a single tear rolls down her own skin before Alicent can catch it with a thumb. It beads down and drops from her sore lip, falling into her own mouth. Rhaenyra’s eyes are wide like a child’s. She’s trying to say something, but she can’t phrase it. Her mouth is set in the beginnings of a letter, but her pain seems to overtake her before she can phrase anything.
Alicent lowers her head to Rhaenyra’s, sweat - wicked skin meeting cool and dry. Rhaenyra shudders at the contact, as if she’s never been touched in her life. It is always a strange thing, to Alicent, how after all this time, Rhaenyra can still find shock at even the smallest contact. Alicent longs to brush her own lips, to meet Rhaenyra’s, bitten and bloody as they were, but it would only hurt Rhaenyra now. They are caged animals in their grief, and even long dead instincts can resurface if the other pulls to hard. They are both far too aware of their own roles in each other’s grief.
It is always the children. Whomever they have lost in siblings, mentors, even lovers, are all manageable losses. Things they carry with them, Rhaenyra especially, who has truly loved others aside Alicent. But the children— their children— are losses that cannot be consoled within a single heart. It has to be shared. It has to be dumped into the other’s hands, something bloody and burning. It is the only way either of them survived.
Rhaenyra swallows, tears following after others, catching in Alicent’s palm as they run down her cheek. Her eyes flit across Alicent’s face only to close again as her teeth catch her bottom lip. It is an attempt to calm herself, through the mild pain of her teeth against her own skin. It worries Alicent sometimes, but she is never in a place to question it when Rhaenyra could simply tell Alicent to look at her own hands.
“ Jaecerys,” Rhaenyra mumbles and Alicent forcibly refocuses herself away from Rhaenyra’s every moment to process the name that falls from her mouth.
Her eldest, then. The tall boy, skin fair like a Targaryen, honorable and proud like a Strong. It is perhaps overly - distant of Alicent to simply consider him through his most obvious physical traits — even the ones she does not hold against him anymore, as useless as petty forgiveness can be when the recipient of such is dead. Since Rhaenyra and Alicent found each other again, they have gained a knowledge of the dead both of them now share. They have come to understand each other’s losses; to grieve as only mothers can. They have come to share.
They need not say much to each other when the pain of loss greets one of them. Before, in the earlier days, they spoke much of each child lost. It was important, for both of them, that the other understood. Alicent told Rhaenyra the names of each of Helaena’s insects — the meticulous list she’d documented in her head, despite her revulsion of the creatures.
“It made Helaena happy.” she spoke, so softly she was sure her voice was give out. “So I remembered, and I called them by name.”
A pause. “The things we do for our children when we have failed them.” She added, so softly it might have been inaudible.
The love Rhaenyra shared for her children was always equal, but the deaths of her eldest two alw ays seemed to haunt her the most—Lucerys in particular. The days when Rhaenyra let herself think of him, or the nights when she was no longer given the choice, were long and painful. She would not be angry, or even sad. She was simply nothing, as if all the fire in her blood had been lost to the sea with her boys.
Lucerys was the nightmare Rhaenyra woke up from once a week at minimum. He was the worst age for such a tragedy; old enough to have grown into a boy, for Rhaenyra to not only have fallen in love with simply what he was— her son— but also his sweet demeanor, his shy personality. His quiet determination, seemingly devoid of the traces of revenge and bitterness that laced Jacaerys’ own. He was not quite naïve, but he was willing to play the part, for his mother. That steady love, that undeniable gentleness, ruined Rhaenyra in the end. It was her undoing, to lose something so entirely tender in this world of harshness; even still, even now, Alicent is picking pieces of her up off the floor.
But Rhaenyra is not thinking of Lucerys now.
“He was in pain, Alicent.” Rhaenyra lifted her hand to grasp at a strand of Alicent’s unruly hair, and pressed it against her lips, as if it was all the contact she could handle. It likely was. Her whole body was shaking, nearly convulsing in sobs. In the history books, they would write that upon learning of her son’s respective deaths, Rhaenyra had let a single tear fall from her eye before plotting her revenge. It was the most kindness the writers of history were willing to paint Rhaenyra in; Rhaenyra the Cruel was allowed a single tear in the records of their lives. The reality of her grief, or Alicent’s, could not be depicted by a maester’s limited vocabulary. It could only be felt.
“ Jaecerys, they must have shot him four or five times before he finally —”
“No, my love.” Alicent let her right hand fall to Rhaenyra’s hair, running her fingers through it absent - mindedly as she searched for the words. Alicent’s lips pursed. She wished to speak comforting half - truths, or downright lies. Alicent used to tell herself so many lies before, that it become something of an instinct. It was easier than reality, but it was crueler in its own way. And both of them agreed to stop lying to one another.
Alicent sighed, not meeting Rhaenyra’s eyes. “He suffered only for a moment. Just a few seconds, and then he fell. And then he was at peace. Then he was with his father, and his brother.” Her own eyes burned with tears, as Rhaenyra’s grief grew within her. They had linked themselves together irrevocably; for the price they paid for companionship, was to share the burden of it. Alicent let the pain fester in her chest, rise to her throat. She closed her eyes.
“He felt it when he died,” Rhaenyra continued. “I could not save him, four dragonseeds sent alongside, and he was the one — ” She could not continue then, either through the emotion overwhelming her or a hesitancy to voice her own worst thoughts.
“He died knowing you loved him.” Alicent countered, forcing a confidence into her voice she did not feel. The words themselves she was confident in — Rhaenyra loved her children as she breathed, in everything she did. Even now, years later, Alicent can never feel entirely sure of her words when it revolves around Rhaenyra’s eldest two, so involved in the war as they were. “He was loved.”
“He is dead.” Rhaenyra half — snarls, but any anger left in the words is gone by the time she can breathe out. Alicent knows the anger is not directed at her. They are past that now. They are tired of anger. There is only loss now. There is only the pain that overwhelm them, that they must pull each other out of, and the fleeting moments when they can both avoid the darkness that seeks to undo them both.
“He is dead.” Alicent confirms, softly. So sickly considerate, how every word meters out in pain that they pass between the both of them like a hot stone. She let go of Alicent’s hair, sinking back into the mattress of their bed. Alicent rolls off her, sinking back into her own side. Alicent tilts her head, so they are facing each other.
Alicent would never speak it to Rhaenyra, but she is beautiful in her grief. She is the Light here, in this room: her skin red, slightly blotchy with tears, her eyes distant and focused on the past. In these moments, Alicent thinks Rhaenyra more holy than any man could ever be: as if casted in the image of the Mother herself. The mother defines the both of them, Alicent thinks. Were their mothers not the shadows hidden in the corridors of their childhood, both the first losses they would experience among countless others?
Alicent carried motherhood like a violence; like a punishment inflicted on her, as if each of her children had made space for themselves by destroying the rest of her. Rhaenyra, in contrast, had found motherhood a pearl in a shell. A hidden joy she could not have named, and Alicent watched it with a kind of intensity she could not bring herself to call jealousy. It was religious. It was fervor.
Pale, lilac eyes lock onto her own brown ones. Rhaenyra is silent for a length of time Alicent could not name; perhaps hours, or days. More likely, it is moments.
“He is dead.” Rhaenyra repeats, acceptance left in her eyes, in the curve of her jaw.
Rhaenyra has worn every emotion like a crown, something to be honored. Two highborn children, two women, were taught the importance of restraining their emotions. Alicent internalized it, as Rhaenyra externalized it. Where Alicent learned to dampen or replace, Rhaenyra had transformed. She need not act like she was angry, if that anger earned her respect. And it did, when it Rhaenyra spoke every word with a conviction none dared to question.
Now, Alicent understands her pain is dissimilar in this. Rhaenyra will not adopt her pain into something diplomatic, or efficient. Rhaenyra could not adapt to it as she did so effortlessly with everything else.
Alicent doesn’t tell Rhaenyra, but when she cannot restrain herself, cannot smooth her emotions into something bold and presentable, it is when Alicent loves her most.
Alicent doesn’t tell Rhaenyra, but sometimes she thinks she might love her more as an open wound than she loves her as a woman, or a queen.
Rhaenyra is reaching for Alicent, and Alicent can only murmur a short noise of surprise before Rhaenyra has her arms around her, pressing Alicent into her chest. Rhaenyra sets her face into the crown of Alicent’s head, breathing through her ruly auburn hair. Rhaenyra’s arms around her are strong, despite her emotional state. Alicent can hear how her heart still races, slowing ever so slightly for each minute they stay like this. She watches the column of Rhaenyra’s neck rise ever so slightly with every inhale, and watches it descend as she exhales. The rhythm of it soothes something inside of her.
“You were awake before me.” Rhaeynra murmurs. Her voice is still rough around the edges, there’s something still raw inside of her, but she has set it aside for now. Rhaenyra is focused solely on Alicent, for better or worse.
Alicent’s eyes flutter closed, her own loss floating back into her mind. She doesn’t answer Rhaenyra, initially. She’s been avoiding Rhaenyra’s painful questions since she was a little girl.
Does your father scare you?
Who were you mourning before I woke up?
Did my father scare you?
Why have you been picking your nails again?
Did I?
“Aemond.” She answers simply.
Rhaenyra nods. It was harder, in the beginning, for them to speak of Alicent’s children; When the blunted knife was still a knife, and their scars still bled on bad days. How could Alicent expect Rhaenyra to grieve those culpable for the death of her own son? Who had caused her own light to die? Before, she had grown to tolerate Alicent’s grief. It was a shaky, uncomfortable thing. It left Alicent feeling like she could only say so much, before she had to leave and sob alone.
Rhaenyra grieved Aemond with Alicent a few years after they left. In a night not terribly unlike this one, but a storm accompanied Alicent’s nightmare and panic episode. The bolts of lightning kept frightening, and reminding, them both. Dragons in a storm. Dragons in a storm, flying over a sea. A boy falling from the sky. Alicent told Rhaenyra that Aemond had always been afraid of lightning. She told Rhaenyra, as thunder shook their silent house, that Aemond had always wanted to sleep in her bed during thunderstorms.
“Silly boy.” She stuttered, the tension in the room thick. Rhaenyra’s eyes wouldn’t leave her. There was nowhere for her grief to escape to, outside of the gaze of a furious mother. Even his memory must be stared at under the ugly coloring of his worst moments. Such was legacy. Alicent would know.
“He was gentle. He was sweet.” She couldn’t bring herself to add the necessary qualifier of before to the end of each statement. Before what could not be brought back. All the past ever seemed to do was haunt them.
It had been so, painstakingly, quiet. It had been minutes since the last thunder. Alicent knew it would happen any moment, then. She kept waiting for the flash of light to land across Rhaenyra’s face, as the lighting would paint her skin from the window.
“He was yours.” Rhaenyra whispered, in that soft voice that melted Alicent like dragonfire. It was fitting, almost, that even in Rhaenyra’s gentleness, Alicent was always burning. The love of Targaryens could never be something that did not ache in the process. “And he will be mine, now, aswell.”
“He is at peace.” Rhaenyra speaks, whisking Alicent away from memories of stormier days. “He was brave. He is protecting them, now,” Them. Aegon and Helaena and Daeron. Alicent of years past would laugh at it; the notion that Aemond possessed any fraction of love for his older brother. The Alicent of today knows Rhaenyra’s words for what they are, as she knows what her own were in the face of Jacaerys’ passing; an attempt to soothe what can never be fixed. Grief that can be shared, but whose edges can never fully match up. They are broken halves.
“I know.” Alicent tilts her head to rest it fully against Rhaenya’s chest.
Sleep tugs at her like an apology for all her pain. She will fall into it now, and in the morning, neither of them will speak of dead children or the corpses of dragons. They will simply untangle themselves from one another and try to wrench themselves away from their ghosts for a few fleeting hours of the day. Night will return again, and they will have this conversation again. And the pain will never fully go away, nor will it lessen.
It will only be shared.