Chapter Text
The babe was so small in her arms. Outside, the kingdom awaited. She could feel it pressing against the chambers of her heart, that inevitable calamity. A boy. A single pebble under a wagon wheel could bring down a winter’s worth of grain; one little boy could throw the entire kingdom into chaos.
But for now– her son. Glowing not like dragonsfire, but like the green flames licking from the High Tower. A whole world in her arms, and so frail for the moment. Her husband would be here, then her father, then the kingdom. The future seemed so vast and unknowable in the eyes of this babe, who seemed to shy from the soft light of the birthing chamber.
“Don’t be afraid, little one,” she cooed. “You are our future.”
Past and present, too. In the still moment, the agony of choosing his name seemed to solve itself. All agonies she’d had, erased in a second by the gods’ very clear message. This babe was the heat of her home, the mind of his grandsire, and the blood of his father. She ran her thumb over his small cheek where the wet warmth of birth clung, amazed so much could fit in such a small form. His stiff face seemed to relax under her touch.
“My little Aegon.”
“Mama,” Aegon sobbed. Fat tears rolled down his red cheeks, wetting the baby fat under his chin. He clutched a golden bauble in his hands like the whole of him might roll away if he let it go.
“What’s the matter, my love?”
“Rhaenyra will not play with me!” He hiccuped pitifully, with all the might in his small chest. With his brother still in swaddling clothes and his sister the object of none of his affections, the poor thing was always looking for playmates in fruitless places. She did not know how to explain to the boy how he’d been hated by the princess since birth.
A child of three could not understand the audacity of being born male, how the matter of it would plague him for a life over unless he had the greater audacity to take his fate into his hands. She’d already determined to let him live in peace for the few years before his destiny was revealed to him. Gods willing, she’d give him a normal childhood, the vain little girl aside.
“It’s alright,” she said, stroking his fine hair as he pushed his damp face into her skirts. “I’ll play any game you like.”
“It’s not the same,” he cried.
She rapped on the door, but did not expect to be admitted. She knew he’d been pulling away little by little, and she wondered if one of these days she’d reach out and find a stranger where her son had been. She was surprised, then, to feel the door give way under her touch to a boy more child than man.
His attempts to rub away his tears rimmed his eyes with an obvious red that wounded her more than any of the underhanded jabs that had been targeted at her for a decade now. Her wounds were glancing, but a wound towards her son? Her heart could not choose whether to boil or break. Even when they sat together, she had not quite made the decision, until he whispered–
“He doesn’t know me.” Here was the fire, licking at her chest. She’d chosen her green flames five years before, and it was too late to quench them.
“He’s never tried,” she admitted.
“Why?” His voice was so small. Her husband was trying to make this of him, someone he could brush away without a second thought.
“He’s scared of you. Of what you are, and what you could be.”
“What am I?” He sniffled, wiping his nose on his sleeve. She leaned in close, hugging him fiercely.
“A king.”
“I don’t want it,” he slurred, his words swirling away in the strongwine. “I’ve never fucking wanted it.”
“Do you think your father wanted it? Or his grandsire? Great men do not have the luxury of conducting themselves based on what they want.”
“There is nothing great about me,” he laughed bitterly.
“How can you say that?” She wanted to reach out for him before he vanished before her, but restrained herself. He was far past being treated like a child, regardless of the fact that he would always be hers. “I prayed and prayed for the gods to show me your path. They have shown me— with no ambiguity —that it is to lead. Balance must be restored to this kingdom, between Valyrian power and Andal sensibility, and steer the Targaryen line from its taint of bastardy and degeneracy. It is not an easy path,” she admitted. “I would not wish this upon you, but it is not my choice to make. It is the gods’. And you are their chosen.”
His face was so consumed with misery, she wanted to wish the words away. But it would not make them any less true. It was the same speech her father had given to her, and the one she now repeated to herself time and time again. She so often wished the task could fall to another one of her children, not because she deemed Aegon lesser, but because it exacted such a toll on him. If it were someone who wanted it, like Aemond, or someone who had never doubted his worthiness, like Daeron, she would sleep much more soundly.
“Leave me,” he growled. She hated to see him in such pain, but hated even more to leave him to stew in it. However, it was not her place to lick his wounds. Even if it was, she did not think she even had the words to comfort him. So, she let him be.
When the crown touched his brow, a strange look drew over his feature. A single, flickering second only she and— judging by the tightening of her daughter’s hand —Helaena would ever catch. It was the same look she’d seen when he’d been brought into the small council chamber, already smelling of Arbor wine. She didn’t know what to make of it, and it seemed neither did her daughter, because before they stepped forward to make her a queen, she caught Alicent’s eye with a silent, earnest plea. Not for the first time since her husband’s hand had dropped lifelessly out of her own, Alicent felt helpless.
“Mother?” His voice was little more than the creaking of winds passing through an old hallway. Half of him was obscured with paddings, and the room smelled like sickly numbing herbs. The other half of him was swollen and agitated, which the maesters attributed to the fall from the sky. Half of his ribs were crushed, and they told her even the shortest bit of speech would hurt him.
His uncovered eye was almost covered by inflamed flesh above the black bruise spanning his cheekbone. It still cracked open to greet her, as violet as she remembered it being on the day he was born. She pressed a hand over her mouth, almost unable to comprehend the sight. This was her child.
“Mama,” he panted again. He hadn’t called her that since he was a babe.
“Shh… it’s alright. You don’t have to speak.” It was natural to gravitate to his side and brush his sweaty hair out of his face, the color more like an old rag than the stunning silver and gold she knew it to be. There had been so much pain and urgency in peeling the armor— and half of his skin —off of him, no one had bothered wash his hair.
“Bring me a wash basin,” she demanded of the nearest maid. The girl nodded her head and rushed out of the room to procure it.
“Tell…” even the word took so much out of him, but no amount of her cooing could dissuade him from finishing the sentence. “tell… Aemond— it—” he groaned in pain as the effort of pushing air out of his lungs must have agitated his ribs. Regardless, he pressed on. “It wasn’t his fault,” he forced out in a hurry. Tears slipped out of the corners of his eyes at the finished effort.
“Oh, my love,” she struggled, pressing down her own tears. “He knows.”
In truth, she hadn’t seen Aemond since he’d brought Aegon from the battlefield on Vhagar’s back, apparently refusing to leave his side against the maesters’ protests until Ser Criston wrestled him out of his brother’s bedchambers. Since then, he’d locked himself away in his rooms.
“It was an accident. Everyone knows—” her words were interrupted by the maid reentering, and setting a basin on the bedside table with a rag draped over its rim. Alicent grabbed the rag and soaked it into the warm water, then wrung it out until it was merely damp and not soaking wet. She hadn’t done this since she was a girl looking over the old king, but the actions came back naturally. She ran it over her son’s scraggly hair, slowly loosening the muddy clumps there as he slipped into sleep.
“They’re coming,” Aegon spoke more gravely than she’d ever known him to. The fire had burned away all that was a boy in him, it seemed. She nodded gravely. There was no point in delaying the inevitable. “Larys has already arranged passage for all of us out of the keep. The children are not safe while Rhaenyra surely hunts me, you must accompany them—”
“No,” Alicent decided in an instant. Aegon’s scarred face twisted further. “Someone must stay behind, to surrender the castle to her for the sake of our men. She might spare them if I go willingly. I could beg for the lives of my father, and Helaena.” The mention of his sister shuttered Aegon’s face. She knew he hadn’t visited her since Jaehaerys’s funeral. “It’s the only way to give the impression of cooperation. I will say I knew nothing of your plot, and play the peacekeeper. I may— even be able to arrange for some treaty.”
“Mother,” he sighed. “I will not surrender my claim. All of it— it cannot be for nothing. I will end this war as king, or I will die in pursuit of it.”
“I know. I did not mean—” she had the exact same thought as him. Not for nothing.
“Then it is decided. We cannot waste time second guessing ourselves.” As he drew himself up to leave, still a laborious process, Alicent thought he’d never looked more like Otto. She’d never seen the resemblance before, nor seen her son colder.
Before she could stop herself, she surged out of her seat to stop him.
“Aegon,” she cried. “Promise I’ll see you again. My son…” She reached out to cup his cheek, but he shied away.
“As your son,” he agreed, “and as your king.”
“Aegon,” she sobbed, running forward to meet him. To her surprise, he wrapped the arm not holding his crutch around her. She grabbed at him frantically, breathing in the smoky scent of dragon about him.
“I did it, Mother,” he sounded almost numb. “I killed her. Rhaenyra— she’s gone.” She hadn’t heard him refer to her by her name since the onset of this blighted conflict.
“I know, and I’m so proud.” She clutched the back of his head as it fell into her shoulder, stroking him as he broke into silent sobs meant for her alone.
“What’s happening?” Guards she recognized by the seahorse blazoned on their chests grabbed her roughly by the arms. “What’s happened?” she shrieked, fighting against their steadfast hold.
It was not until she was firmly locked away behind cell doors that she heard the truth, casually spilled between her gossiping guards.
“NO!” she screamed, throwing herself against the barred door. The guards startled and banged their swords against the stone in warning. They spoke to her, but she was deaf to their words. “No,” she sobbed.
But he always came back to her, and power changed hands again and she could not have cared less about which man ordered her freed. She only knew that there was her first and last son, laying beneath those iron steps. That damned throne which stole each of her children from her in turn.
“Oh no, my love.” She fell to her knees before him. Like this, she could almost believe he was simply asleep. She cupped his face, hoping to find some sign of life in his quickly cooling flesh. “My son, what did they do to you? What did they do?” She pressed her face against his chest, holding his hand fast in her own.
“We were so close.”