Chapter Text
When Aegon was seven, his father became heir to the Iron Throne.
Uncle Aemon had to have died first, of course, but that could not be helped. He had heard that it was some Myrish crossbowman who had done him in - but it made no matter. Father had burned a thousand of the foreigners with his dragon afterward anyhow, and the invasion had been thwarted. That was all that mattered.
The day after, he had asked Maester Theomore, "Will I be king?" At the time, he had no knowledge of what being king quite was. All he knew was that grandfather was a powerful man who was able to punish his enemies and cast down the cruel and wicked, and he liked that. That way, when he was king, he would be able to cast down every squire, every groom, every knight who had laughed at him - all the maesters who had pitied him, all the septons who had prattled at him to make repentance for the body which he was born into, by no fault of his own, and the mother he had murdered to enter the world.
The maester had smiled at him, not unkindly, looking down at the little hunchbacked prince. "No, Aegon. If the Princess Rhaenys does not become queen, it will be your brother Viserys." But Theomore had also told him that he had no fault in his mother's death, and that his father did not blame him, so he did not believe him.
That evening, when he ventured into the yard for training (for even being a cripple had not gotten him out of it), he had taken up his sword and shield and, while Daemon battered away at his shield and he gave ground, he asked, "Will I be king?"
Viserys smiled at him, but Daemon laughed. "Not in ten thousand years, Aeg," he said, knowing that Aegon hated it when he called him that. "You're a little brother, and a monster besides."
"A little monster," chirped Ser Joffrey Bulwer, a young knight of the household watching the engagement.
Daemon said, "The throne passes to the firstborn like Vis or a warrior like me." With a savage kick, Daemon folded Aegon's bad leg out from under him, and with a crash the shield fell from his arm and he tumbled to the muck. Aegon cried out. "Maybe if you're lucky you'll be a maester. You can bow even more than you already do!" He laughed.
God, how I hate him, he had thought. Him and his perfect body, his hair, the courtiers who laughed with him instead of at him. He vowed in that moment to never become a maester. He would be shackled, yes, shackled - to a life of slavery, of servitude, of oddity, more than he already was. 'Look,' whichever lord he served would say. 'There is the Prince Aegon fetching our ravens, who could have been a king.'
Neither would he be a septon. Those holy men looked at him so often with pity in their eyes, speaking of repentance, of forgiveness. Forgiveness for what? He might have asked. For being born? For killing my mother? How could it have been my fault? He decided then that he hated the Gods, and those who served them.
He would not have minded them if they had not cursed him with that permanent affliction called brotherhood.
He had been named after Aegon the Conqueror. He only knew because Daemon teased him for it. He did not seem a conqueror, but then again, he was only seven. He had plenty of time.
He looked up at Daemon, standing atop him in the mud, and he bore a smile on his face as he accepted his help to stand up, though his eyes hated.
Plenty of time.