Work Text:
July, 1996
Rhaenyra
She dreamt of running away most nights.
When she felt herself waking up, she’d curl her hands into the purple duvet and squeeze her eyes shut as if it would hold her there, as if it would trap her in a dreamland of sprawling city and life and beauty. A long stretch of highway with her feet on the dash and someone else driving. It always slipped away though, no matter how hard she tried to keep it.
“Where would you go?” Criston had asked her once, hair damp from the shower at his place, drying in waves and springy curls against his forehead.
She’d scoffed, “Anywhere but here.”
He’d wanted to run away with her to his home, to his small town in California, but every time he talked about it she couldn’t help but think it sounded more like here than anything. That going there would only be a terrible reminder of what she was leaving behind. He’d offer again and again to marry her, to take her away with an arcade game ring to a new life on the West Coast.
“With what money?” She had asked.
How could she not? He worked for her father, the second that it became known that he was sleeping with his boss’ daughter, he’d be out of a job and in breach of contract. Remain in professional conduct with those in residence, his work agreement said, among other things like, relationships are prohibited between staff in positions of different levels of authority. So they’d snuck around. She’d always park her car back behind the Baptist church and he'd pick her up down the road from it.
If she walked away, she might as well kiss her inheritance goodbye and give it to Aegon as a birthday gift. Not even Laenor’s plan could save her then. Though, truly she was saving him. It was harder to accuse a married man in the military of being gay, after all. All she had to do was play the doting wife and ship him off to the Navy to fulfill his dreams.
“Listen,” she’d said, “Laenor’s asked me to marry him. It won’t change you and I, we can stay together once he’s overseas.”
He hadn’t taken it well. It wasn’t like she could explain the full truth of it, about Laenor. Criston was a hothead and despite the incredibly platonic nature of it, she loved Laenor. She really did. He’d come over after the breakup, slinging an arm around her shoulders and sitting with her on the porch swings and doing terrible impressions of his mother’s fussing over the wedding plans. Criston still worked on the ranch, the money was too good for him to go too far, especially around here, and they’d see him on occasion, watching them with the simmering anger she remembered seeing him directing at the girls at their school who got pregnant out of wedlock or the boys who hosted parties when their parents were out of town.
Today, on her wedding day, looking at herself in the mirror, she wondered if she’d have felt more like a bride in some courthouse in California with a ten cent ring turning her finger green.
Rhaenyra had the dress, white and lacy and off the shoulder, as bridal as could be. Her mother’s wedding diamonds were at her throat, her ears, glittering in the tiara on her pale hair. Laenor’s gold solitaire diamond ring was on her finger, her nails were done with french tips. She thought it’d feel different, even if it wasn’t real. Instead she felt like a little girl in a mall dressing room, pulling on the prom dresses that were far too tall for her, awaiting their return to the rack where she’d hunt for them in a few years during her own time only to find them sold and worn and discarded.
Alicent hovered in the reflection of the doorway, her face puffy, fingers absentmindedly picking. She was pregnant again, Rhaenyra knew it, she’d heard her vomiting earlier in the hall bathroom and there was something vicious in the way that she enjoyed that her once-friend never used the master bathroom. The way it would always be her mother’s bathroom, no matter who lived in her house. Always Aemma’s, never Alicent’s, just like the diamonds on her throat. They’d go to her own daughters, not her father’s daughters with Alicent if they had them, and the ranch would too someday.
“You look beautiful.”
Rhaenyra shrugged, reaching up to adjust her necklace, “Yeah, I do. Thanks for noticing.”
She’d wished for a long time that they could go back to how things were before, but they couldn’t. She couldn’t.
Alicent frowned in the reflection before stepping into the room and shutting the door behind her, “Does Laenor know?”
“About what?” Rhaenyra turned in the mirror to get a better look at the veil.
“About Cole. About the affair.”
She couldn't just marry Rhaenyra's father, could she? She also had to get into all her personal business as well. Rhaenyra rolled her eyes, dropping her hands to her sides and turning to fully face her former friend.
“Sure does, we love having a third.”
Alicent’s face screwed up like she’d bitten into lemon, “Is nothing sacred to you?”
“I think we have very different ideas of what is sacred, Alicent.” She hiked her skirt up so she wouldn’t trip, “now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a wedding to get to.”
. . .
May 16, 1997
He was a chubby baby, all pouty cheeks and lips and dark, dark hair.
Jace, she called him when they put him into her arms, squalling and red and pitiful, his cries quieting at the sound of her voice. He’d terrified her when she’d found out, a half-dozen pregnancy tests declaring her fate, and she hadn’t quite known how to love him yet. But now she could, it was easier than she expected, to look at his sweet face with his long, dark eyelashes and love him so much that it almost hurt.
“He’s even bigger than Baela was,” Laena said, grinning as she brushed Rhaenyra’s hair back from her face, “and so much hair too, such a handsome boy.”
Helps that he’s got a handsome dad, Rhaenyra wanted to say, but there was a knock on the door. Laenor popped his head in, waiting for her go-ahead before he opened the door fully to let her father in. And Alicent, of course. There was a half-second where she thought about causing a scene just to embarrass her and have her removed but she was simply too tired to commit to it.
“Your mother’s cousins have the darkest hair, Nyra, she'd love that they look like her kin,” Her father said, beaming as he held Jace, a tiny hand holding onto his thumb, “And Rhaenys’ too. Look at you, you’re so strong.”
Rhaenyra bit back a laugh.
. . .
September, 2002
Where Jace had brought questions, Luke brought stares.
Everyone knew, how could they not? Laenor had been gone on deployment for five months when she got pregnant and wasn’t due back for another five. It wasn’t Luke’s fault, she’d never blame him, but his birth had brought a whirlwind of scrutiny that never seemed to end.
Eventually, scrutiny turned to action, and even Laenor’s clear love for his sons did nothing to change that.
They tried to protect them, but there was only so much they could do. Even with Harwin looming like a guard dog, that didn’t keep them from walking out of the grocery store and finding her car spray-painted. Jace, even at five, didn’t need to know how to read to know what was on the car. He’d already heard someone call her a whore more than once, enough times that he’d started dreading leaving the house. It broke her heart that her baby, her sweet friendly baby, stared down every adult in his path with a fierceness that a five year old shouldn’t have to have.
“What’s a bastard?” He’d asked her when she’d picked him up from his first day at preschool.
Once he’d gone to bed, she’d finally let herself cry over it.
. . .
December, 2005
She could hear his sniffles through the door.
“Jace, baby?”
Rhaenyra pushed open the door as he rolled away to face the wall, yanking the blanket up to his chin. Her heart sank watching him, the little hitches in his breathing, and she sat down on the edge of the bed.
“I don’t want him to go.”
Come with me, Harwin had begged, after, her face in his loving hands, we’ll find a good school for the boys, they’ll be happy there.
She wanted to, she’d always wanted to, but she couldn’t. If she left, she’d never make it back, always caught at the town line, staring in at another life that she could have had. If she walked away, she’d lose the house she was brought home from the hospital to, the house where her grandparents had gotten married, where her father had walked her down the aisle. Dragonstone was her home. King’s Landing and every horse and building on it was hers. Its layout was burned into her bones, its history in her DNA, its ghosts in her soul.
“I know, I don’t either.”
Her eight-year-old let out a little sob next to her, “Why can’t we go with him?”
Her eyes burned, vision blurry. She laid down on top of the blankets and wrapped an arm over her son, pulling him close.
“Our place is here,” Her voice was thick with tears, “We have to be strong for ourselves now.”
. . .
2011
There was a new wedding ring on her finger, silver and ruby and sparkling in the sun.
There was a paper taped to her front door that said abomination.
There was a call from a principal about Jace getting into a fight, and another, and another, and another.
. . .
January, 2012
Can you forgive me, someday?
The question sat on her tongue the whole drive to the airport and clawed at her throat as Daemon helped her son get his suitcase out of the trunk.
She hugged him as tight as she could with her belly in the way, unable to fight back her tears and letting them fall into his dark hair. When they returned to the car, Jace all the way through security and waving at them from the other side, she couldn’t stop the tears. They came out in ugly sobs, horrible heaving breaths that made her worry that she was going to throw up from the force of them as Daemon rubbed her back.
Can you forgive me, someday, for keeping you here as long as I did?