Archive of Our Own

She was half convinced; Otto Hightower kindly remind her of the Managing Director position at Hightower & Co that by birth right and professionally was hers could be passed on to another people—specifically to Rhaenyra Targaryen, out of all people—did the other half. 

It’s right to say it was a job she had no idea how to work through. After all, she was not a family solicitor and there are no textbooks and guidelines that mention this specific case. 

Daeron was just a seven-month old, a quiet kid; even for Alicent’s standard and knowledge of a baby—which was almost nonexistent, and not letting a kid die was apparently very legal, especially if you were legally assigned by the parents as a guardian. 

"Their house was burned to ashes,” her father told her in a somber tone, later when Alicent did pick the kid up. “It was a wonder he even survived.”

Everything afterward had come too quickly for her to comprehend. He got delivered to her father after spending a few days in the system with a clear instruction to pass his guardianship to a family member should anything happen to the parents. But Hobert Hightower was dead, and so were Ormund’s siblings. So, as a last resort, his uncle, Otto Hightower was the new legal guardian of Daeron Hightower. 

Which, naturally, the responsibility falls on her. Gwayne has his own family now, and her twin sister, Helaena, in prison. Thus, like everything else in her life, Otto handed this heavy burden onto her hands and called it another duty. 

“Can’t you take it to a foster care? Surely there must be another kin—from its mother’s si—“

“It is a him, Alicent,” father cut her off. “He’s a family and we don’t abandon one another.”

“There was no we when you entrusted him to me, father,” she doesn’t expect the words to come out so bitter, but there they were, raw as day and tense in her childhood home. “In what world would you think it was a good idea to put him with me?”

Her father’s hand tightened around her elbow. “A world where you were to prove yourself for that position,” he snapped, and this was how it always is with him. Trying to comfort with a razor-edged blade, always annoyed at the slightest rebuttal. 

“By babysitting?” She asked mockingly. 

“By being responsible enough to raise a child,” her father corrected her. 

“Are you punishing me? Is that what this is?” Punishment for what though, Alicent didn’t even know. 

“If you think of this as a punishment, my daughter, then you’re a bigger fool than I thought.”

Alicent pinched the bridge of her nose and puts aside any substantial protest at the moment—she knew better. 

“You always rise to the occasion, Alicent,” father continued in a much gentler tone, softened enough to soothe a wound. And like they were just discussing the weather, he changed the subject, “do you remember your cousin Ormund?” 

She did remember cousin Ormund, the lanky boy who used to chase Alicent and her sister around the garden before Otto moved his family from Oldtown to King’s Landing and never looked back. She looks at the sleeping baby inside the pram and thinks way back to her choices in life that led her to this exact moment. Alicent suddenly wants to yell at him, for having the audacity to survive. To Otto, for once again moving her about like a piece on the board. And to herself, for obeying him once more. 

“I remember.”

It was the only answer left to give.

***

The first few weeks were hell. There was simply no other word for it. Daeron cried constantly, which in hindsight was his first opposing act against her belief that he was a ‘quiet kid’, and Alicent quickly discovered that there were different types of crying, which seemed ridiculous because they all sounded exactly the same to her ears. He cries when he wants to be held, cries when he’s tired, cries when he wants to be fed, cries just because he wants to. Alicent doesn’t know how to hold him or what she was to feed him, and more than once she found herself cried right alongside with him because of it. 

Alicent didn’t cry often. One of her earliest lessons by her father was him scolding her for the pouring tears spilling down her chubby, baby cheeks. Tears, he had grumbled. Hightowers could not be ruled by such sentiment. It’s not a luxury we could afford in public. Annoyingly, the lesson did stuck with her the way all things did concerning father. When mourning mother, she only cried in the presence of Helaena in the darkness of their shared bedroom, huddled under the covers together. We’re going to be okay, she had said with all the solemnity a seven-year old should not possess. Mum said to take care of each other and we will, okay Ali?

She could count the times she cried after that on exactly seven fingers and lost count of how many lives it had been since she last produced a single tear. When news of the introduction of a Serious Disruption Prevention Orders by The Public Order following the protest against environmental degradation to Rainwood—led by Helaena and sixteen other campaigners, she hadn’t cried. Not when father condemned Helaena as the black sheep of the family and explicitly told Alicent to not work the case or else. Not at the court hearing and after which Helaena uttered the words we will walk out in the sun again that felt more like absolution than goodbyes. The tears did not come then, either. 

In its place, regret did. And it haunts Alicent all the same. 

So, it was actually ridiculous now that Alicent cries over spilled milk. Ha ha, exactly like the expression. She was sobbing as she propped Daeron up on her hip, on the very first night, after she finally managed to buy nappies and baby formula and practically pestered the poor pharmacist to show her how to make one. The kid was already crying by the time she’s screwing the teat and accidentally knocked it over when she tried to rock him. 

The tears flow unbidden down her adult cheeks and without realizing she was crying. Daeron stopped his—in sympathy, she supposed—and that was a relief and the worst thing ever at the same time because it felt like Alicent was the one stealing his grief. 

“I’m sorry,” she sniffed. 

The kid only stared at her for a long, unblinking moment as if to say I’m sorry too. 

***

It was around the time Alicent was flat out at the height of her career. Being one of the youngest postgraduate at the age of twenty-three with Masters in Litigation Law, it was safe to say that she earned the junior position at her father’s firm, rather than being the daddy’s girl everyone believed her to be. By the age of twenty-eight, she had already made a name for herself, specifically after winning the Stepstones Trial that made for the news and headlines of newspapers; one that even her father had it framed and hung in his office—the only kind of affection Otto Hightower would ever shown her. 

(Her father may have never told her that he’s proud of Alicent, but he demonstrated it: introducing her to his important colleagues; allowing Alicent to have her pick on legal cases that came to the office; even aiding her in dissenting opinions on the rare days where he noticed she was mentally delirious. 

Love he can’t always guarantee, but this was one thing he’d never fail at, and it was enough for her.)

Having Daeron with her would not change these facts. Alicent was good at her job in the same proportion she was terrible at looking after a child. Where she’d spent years studying commandments and regulations for the first part, children—unfortunately, she’d found—did not come with a syllabus. There were days when she’d rather endure another work trial that left her hoarse from arguing rather than spending the afternoon listening to a wailing sound of a kid. 

Because in that she, at least, had a concrete opponent to argue back. There would always be a row to oppose, a case to defend, and a satisfaction of walking out of the courtroom with ‘not guilty’ clients at the end of every trial. Whilst Daeron, it seems, opposed to appeal accordingly to the laws of judgment. He who could not yet voice his own argument with words—opts to riposte with tears, though she supposed she couldn’t fault him for that—and Alicent would very much prefer not to walk out of her own sitting room, thank you very much. 

“You have to soothe him, Ali,” Gwayne would say, because after a full week of trying and failing to do everything alone, she finally surrendered and called him. He would stopped by once or twice in the afternoons after work, showed her the proper formula measurements for a bottle of milk, and how to put him to sleep, knowing that Alicent had left the kid to cry it out until he’s worn out and drowsy. 

“He’s inconsolable,” Alicent would answer, because it’s a better alternative than outright admitting that she’s tried everything she read on the internet and still falls short. 

“He doesn’t like to be left alone,” Gwayne looked down at the kid in his arms. He really is a natural, and Daeron looked content enough to snuggle up to him. “He just needs some company, that’s all.”

Alicent would rolled her eyes at the suggestion, but found herself, shamefully more than once, begged Gwayne to take the kid with him when she followed her brother all the way to the front door. 

Alicent would start her pleading with: “I don’t know how to be what the boy needs.” 

He would gather her in his arms in lieu of a goodbye and press his lips against her forehead. It drove her mad because he never did it to be patronising—like he was treating her as he would when they were children—that she almost wished he had simply slammed the door on her face to make things easier. 

“That’s not true,” Gwayne would say, resting his chin gently on her head, feeling all the way how her body gave a little shudder from the simple gesture. 

But even he had a home and a family to return to. And this is where she knew she had already lost the fight. Still, “I’m not the right person for this.”

“I don’t know, Alicent,” his voice was so full of sincerity and belief in her that there was nothing she could do but to believe his words. “I certainly couldn’t have imagined a better person.”

***

Alicent took Daeron with her to the office one Monday during one of the busiest weeks after summer in which the court resumed its full schedules. Tayla, her newly hired nanny, had called in sick that morning and apologised profusely for not being able to come. She told her to get some rest—she’s not a monster alright—and end the call. 

She nervously looked at the kid sitting in a highchair playing with his food—a soft-mashed avocado in a bowl, and wondered if he too was panicking about his supposedly ruined nap time. 

Daycare was out of the options; she hadn’t bothered to look for one and the idea of filling tons of paperwork at eight in the morning was enough for Alicent to put it off. She could try her father; he was kind enough to give her a few weeks off to settle everything when she brought Daeron home with her, but to call him would be to admit defeat, and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction even though he was the one who put her in this situation in the first place. 

That’s how Alicent found herself sitting in her office at ten in the morning with a pram beside her desk. His changing bag was neatly tucked away with her office purse, and he was babbling to himself in a language she didn’t understand as she was nose-deep into a contract review that she intended to finish before lunch. 

Alicent was on her knees under her desk to retrieve Daeron’s bunny plushie that he just threw when she felt a waft of warm air barely brush her hair and cheek and put one hand on her desk to right herself up. Rhaenyra Targaryen stood framed in the doorway in front of her. The other woman wore tailored black trousers paired with a fitted burgundy sleeveless turtleneck, covering her neck well enough to bring out her straight silver hair that was left tumbling down on one shoulder. 

She looked at Alicent as if she was surprised to find her here, though Alicent knew full well that her shock was not from her current state but rather from seeing the four-wheeled carriage that looked so out of place in her otherwise pristine office; it was practically begging to be addressed like an elephant. Her pink painted lips curled up into a smile, a genuine one—the one she rarely gives to Alicent—as she stepped fully into the room. The door remained open behind her, exposed for everyone to see. 

Rhaenyra stopped in front of her desk as her eyes moved from Alicent’s figure to the pram beside her. “How did you get your husband pregnant?”

“Excuse me?”

“You have a child!” She was fully grinning now; Alicent found she wanted to slap it off her face. “A year I’ve worked with you, and I have never once seen you take parental leave.”

A child. Alicent still wasn’t quite sure if she ever addressed Daeron as such—better to see him as nothing but a temporary fixture, that it was, by some miracle, only a cruel jape her father played on her, though it was very unlikely given how much a serious person her father was—but the moment Rhaenyra said the word out loud she knew it was true and very much real no matter how much she wished it wasn’t so. 

“I don’t have a husband, and even if I did, I couldn’t get him pregnant either.”

“Shame. Almost thought you could reproduce like a seahorse,” Rhaenyra was biting back another grin as she looked down on the kid. When she looked up again, she had the audacity to wink and said, “wouldn’t really be hard to imagine though.”

The words infuriated her more than they should, sending electrical jolts throughout her body that made her instinct flare to inflict pain—to tear a cuticle, to tear that aggravating smirk off Rhaenyra’s face; she couldn’t decide which and instead she huffed out an indignant breath. 

(They weren’t always like this. 

They’d first met five years ago through a mutual friend’s birthday party at a pub.

Hightower and Targaryen had history that dated back generations: betrothals, partnerships, campaigns, weddings, funerals, galas, and more campaigns. Despite running in the same social circles and with both their fathers being friends, it was actually a kind of miracle that they hadn’t been properly introduced yet. Alicent had been only twenty-three, fresh out of university with a number of internships under her belt already and Rhaenyra the rising superstar student who had almost zero working experience. A first meeting and a first slap. 

It had been a rash impulse, a sudden rush of adrenaline and a momentarily lapse of every piece of etiquette Otto’d ever been drilled her into when Rhaenyra drunkenly flirts and corner her in the bathroom—practically begging to be taken right there. She’d had to stood on her heels to drive Rhaenyra back against the bathroom wall and when she froze in front of her, dazed by her own actions, she’d watched a blush creeping up her cheeks under the fresh mark Alicent had just left her with. 

Then came the morning spent awkwardly riding a lift together in her father’s building. She’d later learned that Rhaenyra would start the junior position like Alicent did when she first started after she broke a huge fight with Viserys Targaryen that drove her here out of pure spite, in which Alicent’s own father gladly took her in. Rhaenyra’d never mentioned about the slap and Alicent didn’t apologize either. The rest was history.)

“Why are you here, Rhaenyra?”

“I wanted to ask your opinion on the Harrenhal Acquisition,” still grinning, she pointed with the folder that she’d been holding down by her side in the direction of the pram. “But it seems you were occupied.”

“I can take a lo-“

As usual Rhaenyra’s insolence interrupted her, “what’s his name?”

Her hand found their way in massaging her temples, a headache already forming not from her work but from the long conversation that Alicent figured they would be having. 

“Daeron.”

She was cooing at the kid openly now, and she gave Alicent a little smile to let her know she was teasing when she said, “fucking Hightowers and their posh names.”

Alicent’s first instinct was to yell and she scoffed at her, “you don’t get to have an opinion on that, Rhaenyra.”

Did you hear how ridiculous your name was on my mouth? 

“Fair enough.” A shrugged. “Can I hold him?”

She yanked the folder free of her arm. “Whatever, let me have a look at this.”

Alicent couldn’t find the middle point to focus her eyes on the papers; instead she discreetly looked at Rhaenyra half expecting her to look utterly ridiculous and awkward with a baby in her arms. Rhaenyra was entranced—Alicent carefully watching for any miniscule shift in her face found herself entranced for entirely different reason; Daeron in return was utterly fearless though he was certainly no match with the woman in front of him. In another life, perhaps, she could almost imagine Rhaenyra with a kid of her own. It would suit her, Alicent thought, if not a bit oddly. 

Intrigued by what would happen next Alicent closed and dropped the paper to her desk and focused on Daeron and his new companion. 

Leaning down so her face was close to the kid’s face Rhaenyra sighed, “he has your eyes.”

The moment was broken and she found herself stuttering. “He’s my—“ What exactly? Nephew? Cousin? The notion was so ridiculous that she couldn’t help it when she exclaimed, “he’s not my son.”

“What?” Rhaenyra froze, then tilted her head so slowly toward her like she’d had confessed an unspeakable crime. Then that same infuriating smile that seemed to be fixed permanently on her face returned, and Alicent knew in an instant she’d hear the most ludicrous line she’d heard coming from her for the day yet: “did Daddy Dearest not pay you enough for you to take a second job?” 

Alicent could barely restrain herself from rolling her eyes at her. She looked down and picked at the folder again, anything to busy her hands as she trample the urge to strangle the woman who’s still holding the kid. 

“Ha. Ha. Very funny but I’m not actually babysitting.” Though she supposed she was, for the next eighteen years of his life at the very least. 

“Oh.”

It was clear that she had more questions on the tip of her tongue, but whatever emotion Alicent had supported on her face made her wisely give it a rest and for once Alicent had managed to penetrate Rhaenyra’s thick skin and even thicker head. It made her giddy—to have such a power on her, and Alicent was on the verge of forgiving her when the kid squirmed on Rhaenyra’s arms. 

“Uhm, here,” she handed the kid to her, evading the feeling when their fingers made contact behind Daeron’s head as Rhaenyra awkwardly folded her arms across her chest. 

“I’ll email you my thoughts this afternoon,” Alicent said as she turned her back to rummage through the changing bag. 

It was a clear dismissal and Rhaenyra treated it as such for once. 

Rhaenyra moved off in the direction she came from before. The click of her heels and the beginning of Daeron’s crying were the only sounds Alicent could hear as she turned to take one last look at Rhaenyra leaving and found her watching her too as she backed out of her office. 

Before she closed the door fully she mouthed the words to her. 

“He’s cute.”