[ When Aegon dies, head twisted and blood blossoming beneath, Sunfyre's screams ricochet through King's Landing, heard over the festivities. The band plays louder.
Nobody notices the absence of the first and second son from the great hall, that the bride sits by herself, fiddling with her cape, the colors of the Targaryen and Hightower houses.
And nobody finds it suspicious when Aemond slips, silent, back into his seat.
But Helaena does.
She turns to him when the clamor goes up, hands cupped over her ears. Her eyes aren't accusatory, but they are knowing. ]
He always thought he could fly.
[ Said simply, quietly.
In the clamor, as the queen howls and the king yells and the women weep, she reaches for him. His hands shake in hers. She folds his reedy body into hers.
Thank you, she whispers in his ear.
Overnight, second son becomes first son. Spare to heir. Queen Alicent finds the proposition by Otto Hightower to remarry Helaena to her other brother reprehensible. So soon after Aegon's death, his body barely cold when he utters those clinical words.
She holds her only daughter near and nearer, clutched by grief and paranoia. An accident, it's said, but she doesn't believe it. She sees enemies everywhere.
Under the cover of night, her younger brother comes to the princess, slipping through the secret hideaways. Eventually, they find him there, in her bed, laying together, clothed and innocent. It doesn't stop either, in spite of the ear cuffs and the lectures.
Right until the queen sends the princess away. All the way to Oldtown, where she's raised in the sept, happier there than she was in the Red Keep. Here, it is peaceful, she tells him, when she picks up a quill. She just wishes he was there with her. ]
( Killing Aegon had brought him no joy. Even if he exulted in his new status as heir, it turned to ashes in his mouth when it meant he could not be married to Helaena and, later, could not share a bed with her. They were still children, really, and nothing had happened. Nothing at all.
Just like Aegon hadn't gotten the chance to hurt Helaena.
The Queen bundles Heleana up and sends her off to Oldtown, hides her in the Starry Sept in hopes that nothing Targaryen will ever touch her again and he is dragged into the Small Council, part of making decisions whether he wants to or not. Their father grows weaker and weaker every day and the Council seems to be holding its breath, waiting to make Aemond heir in truth and not presumption; Rhaenyra is still the heir in Viserys's mind.
None of those things are his concern. His concern lay in the letters he exchanges with Helaena, missives carried across the fertile Reach until they make it to Oldtown. He wonders what his sister does with those letters - does she keep them? Does she burn them? It matters little and less because her own letters keep coming and he keeps them all.
Their father dies late one night with only their mother in attendance. She leaves his sickbed and says that Viserys had formally named Aemond king and he is roused and presented to the Small Council to accept it (as if there were any other choice). There is to be a coronation within a fortnight but he cares not for any of that. He has made a decision and none of them can change his mind. He is the king. )
I need my own council. I need to fly.
( None of them question it but none of them can. None of them are Blood of the Dragon and know what it is like to need the rush of wind and the flap of wings surrounding them. He goes to retrieve Vhagar and this is how he flies to Oldtown by cover of night. It takes the night and half a day but then he is there and no one would deny the entrance of Prince Aemond, even if there's no way a raven would have gotten there yet. He asks that they present his sister and the septas guide him to a solar that has stained glass depicting all of the Seven; it dances rainbows over the upholstery. He stands when he hears them coming back. He motions for the septas to leave them alone and shut the door behind them. )
She wakes before the morning dew, sure of this very thing.
The princess does not deign to share this news with anyone. Well, no one of significance that would happen to like to know in advance. Just one of the minor serving girls that helps her with her hair in the mornings, braiding it, setting it into its simple everyday style.
Things are much simpler here, in Oldtown, than they ever were in the heat of King's Landing.
They hear Vhagar before they see her — her great wings, beating in the air, trees shaking with the torrent of her strength. She is a mountain set down at the gates of the city, hunkering down to grant her rider back to earth. Helaena waits, expectant, her heart pitter-pattering.
It cinches when he makes it to the sept and ascends the stairs, when they tell her he has asked for an audience. It's as if she can feel him the closer he gets to her. In a hurry they dress her properly, as close to regality as is permitted in her wardrobe; no one from King's Landing has come in a while. There is dirt under her fingernails they scrub away, as if her brother will report back to Mother of mistreatment.
And then they are mere footsteps apart. She rounds into the solar, walking too quickly to be proper, and stops at the threshold. His visage fills her sight, her chest. ]
Aemond.
[ Her eyes dart from him to the lowered heads of the sisters, and at once back to him. Her eyes devour him — the sibling she has not seen in so many years, unable to break away from that golden cage.
She pads across the room, visibly flustered with childlike joy, but stops before she reaches him. Her hands crook into the air, reaching out, as if willing him to cut the last sliver of distance first.
He's the only person she's ever cared touch from. She did not have to tolerate his presence as with others — she wanted him near. He was always so close, and then so far. ]
( Aemond hasn't seen her in years. Helaena is more beautiful than he remembers; Oldtown has suited her. He thinks the slower rhythm of the sept has probably brought her some manner of peace that she would never have in King's Landing. He almost feels bad that he has come to take her away from this peace and calm.
They need dragonriders. He needs her.
When she enters the solar, Aemond waves the servant girls away and he is then blissfully alone with Helaena in a way that he hasn't been in years. )
I come with news, Sister. Our father has passed and I am now king. I wanted to tell you myself before you learned of it from a raven.
( That is only the first of many changes that will affect their lives in the short future - he is king now and entitled to choose whatever queen he wishes. His queen resides in the Starry Sept in Oldtown. He means to drag her from peace to chaos but he will be by her side. He extends his hands to her. )
I am sorry you had to learn of it this way and not have had a chance to see him in so long.
[ He delivers the message subdued, but with such frankness. Helaena stills.
It is news, yet it is not. They have all been waiting for this day, every one of them, when the other shoe dropped and King Viserys perished. A waiting game, so much suffering in the process. His death was a reprieve. It must have been.
She feels confident he is happier with the Stranger than he was in life.
Still. It is difficult to truly grasp. That the man that hovered and determined all of their lives is now gone. The man she called Kepa, then Father. Memories trickle through her mind, a ghost of grief.
She blinks, slowly, uncertainty writ across her dreamy features — if starlight could be living flesh, it would be the soft curves of her face. Then, a mute somberness overcomes her, drawing her mouth.
She begins to understand. Truly understand. ]
I am sorry, too.
[ She doesn't know what for. Helaena lingers, momentarily disconnected from the world, before she comes to. She looks at his outstretched hands, a ring on one of them with the Targaryen insignia. And she takes them, her smaller fingers folded into his, and lowers herself into a curtsy in front of him.
She did not want this for him, she does not, but it has begun.
King. Aemond is king now. She keeps her eyes on him as she bows, some shade of unsure, morose, but accepting. ]
( It doesn't feel real until Helaena curtsies to him and then he realizes that even this relationship, this secret and cherished relationship, will change too. It has already changed. In the matter of one breath to the next he has changed from brother to king and there is a gulf between them that will never be spanned again.
He doesn't want that. He wants what they had before Mother sent her away from him. Aemond hadn't been good enough for Helaena, too dangerous for her more likely considering he's a confirmed kinslayer once and there are rumors about Aegon even if his mother and father had tried to quell them all. He motions his hand impatiently. )
Not that. Not from you. In public, yes, but not when we're alone. We're the same, Helaena. We're no different than before.
[ Much is different. They aren't the same, either of them, at least not as they were when she was young, barely a woman, and he not yet a man.
She might have said these things, another time. Not now. She lifts out of her curtsy, hands drawing to her side. Her gaze rests on him, evaluating.
Briefly, she shifts her weight, not sure what to say, what to do with herself.
But then.
Then, with a sharp intake of air, Helaena takes the initiative — she spans the difference, that gulf — and wraps her arms around him. Lightly at first, then grasping. Almost too hard, too close to violence for one that looks so gentle and insubstantial herself.
It's the first hug she's given in many moons, probably her last to Daeron on one of his visits. She avoids touch much of the time. Preference, some latent disgust of having another's skin on hers. Even as a small child, she often tried to navigate away from their grasping mother. Queen Alicent always tried to get so close. She seemed jealous of every interaction between her middle children, her favorite of the four, eager to separate them as they aged, ventured too close to adulthood and further from her.
Her face presses into his jerkin, the ebony jacket that covers it. He smells just as he used to, beneath the musk of adulthood. Dragon, sweat. Baby brother. So dear to her.
She closes her eyes. If he holds her in kind, her face will rest into the warm crook of his neck. ]
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no subject
Nobody notices the absence of the first and second son from the great hall, that the bride sits by herself, fiddling with her cape, the colors of the Targaryen and Hightower houses.
And nobody finds it suspicious when Aemond slips, silent, back into his seat.
But Helaena does.
She turns to him when the clamor goes up, hands cupped over her ears. Her eyes aren't accusatory, but they are knowing. ]
He always thought he could fly.
[ Said simply, quietly.
In the clamor, as the queen howls and the king yells and the women weep, she reaches for him. His hands shake in hers. She folds his reedy body into hers.
Thank you, she whispers in his ear.
Overnight, second son becomes first son. Spare to heir. Queen Alicent finds the proposition by Otto Hightower to remarry Helaena to her other brother reprehensible. So soon after Aegon's death, his body barely cold when he utters those clinical words.
She holds her only daughter near and nearer, clutched by grief and paranoia. An accident, it's said, but she doesn't believe it. She sees enemies everywhere.
Under the cover of night, her younger brother comes to the princess, slipping through the secret hideaways. Eventually, they find him there, in her bed, laying together, clothed and innocent. It doesn't stop either, in spite of the ear cuffs and the lectures.
Right until the queen sends the princess away. All the way to Oldtown, where she's raised in the sept, happier there than she was in the Red Keep. Here, it is peaceful, she tells him, when she picks up a quill. She just wishes he was there with her. ]
no subject
Just like Aegon hadn't gotten the chance to hurt Helaena.
The Queen bundles Heleana up and sends her off to Oldtown, hides her in the Starry Sept in hopes that nothing Targaryen will ever touch her again and he is dragged into the Small Council, part of making decisions whether he wants to or not. Their father grows weaker and weaker every day and the Council seems to be holding its breath, waiting to make Aemond heir in truth and not presumption; Rhaenyra is still the heir in Viserys's mind.
None of those things are his concern. His concern lay in the letters he exchanges with Helaena, missives carried across the fertile Reach until they make it to Oldtown. He wonders what his sister does with those letters - does she keep them? Does she burn them? It matters little and less because her own letters keep coming and he keeps them all.
Their father dies late one night with only their mother in attendance. She leaves his sickbed and says that Viserys had formally named Aemond king and he is roused and presented to the Small Council to accept it (as if there were any other choice). There is to be a coronation within a fortnight but he cares not for any of that. He has made a decision and none of them can change his mind. He is the king. )
I need my own council. I need to fly.
( None of them question it but none of them can. None of them are Blood of the Dragon and know what it is like to need the rush of wind and the flap of wings surrounding them. He goes to retrieve Vhagar and this is how he flies to Oldtown by cover of night. It takes the night and half a day but then he is there and no one would deny the entrance of Prince Aemond, even if there's no way a raven would have gotten there yet. He asks that they present his sister and the septas guide him to a solar that has stained glass depicting all of the Seven; it dances rainbows over the upholstery. He stands when he hears them coming back. He motions for the septas to leave them alone and shut the door behind them. )
Sister. Are you well?
no subject
She wakes before the morning dew, sure of this very thing.
The princess does not deign to share this news with anyone. Well, no one of significance that would happen to like to know in advance. Just one of the minor serving girls that helps her with her hair in the mornings, braiding it, setting it into its simple everyday style.
Things are much simpler here, in Oldtown, than they ever were in the heat of King's Landing.
They hear Vhagar before they see her — her great wings, beating in the air, trees shaking with the torrent of her strength. She is a mountain set down at the gates of the city, hunkering down to grant her rider back to earth. Helaena waits, expectant, her heart pitter-pattering.
It cinches when he makes it to the sept and ascends the stairs, when they tell her he has asked for an audience. It's as if she can feel him the closer he gets to her. In a hurry they dress her properly, as close to regality as is permitted in her wardrobe; no one from King's Landing has come in a while. There is dirt under her fingernails they scrub away, as if her brother will report back to Mother of mistreatment.
And then they are mere footsteps apart. She rounds into the solar, walking too quickly to be proper, and stops at the threshold. His visage fills her sight, her chest. ]
Aemond.
[ Her eyes dart from him to the lowered heads of the sisters, and at once back to him. Her eyes devour him — the sibling she has not seen in so many years, unable to break away from that golden cage.
She pads across the room, visibly flustered with childlike joy, but stops before she reaches him. Her hands crook into the air, reaching out, as if willing him to cut the last sliver of distance first.
He's the only person she's ever cared touch from. She did not have to tolerate his presence as with others — she wanted him near. He was always so close, and then so far. ]
Little brother. You came.
no subject
They need dragonriders. He needs her.
When she enters the solar, Aemond waves the servant girls away and he is then blissfully alone with Helaena in a way that he hasn't been in years. )
I come with news, Sister. Our father has passed and I am now king. I wanted to tell you myself before you learned of it from a raven.
( That is only the first of many changes that will affect their lives in the short future - he is king now and entitled to choose whatever queen he wishes. His queen resides in the Starry Sept in Oldtown. He means to drag her from peace to chaos but he will be by her side. He extends his hands to her. )
I am sorry you had to learn of it this way and not have had a chance to see him in so long.
no subject
It is news, yet it is not. They have all been waiting for this day, every one of them, when the other shoe dropped and King Viserys perished. A waiting game, so much suffering in the process. His death was a reprieve. It must have been.
She feels confident he is happier with the Stranger than he was in life.
Still. It is difficult to truly grasp. That the man that hovered and determined all of their lives is now gone. The man she called Kepa, then Father. Memories trickle through her mind, a ghost of grief.
She blinks, slowly, uncertainty writ across her dreamy features — if starlight could be living flesh, it would be the soft curves of her face. Then, a mute somberness overcomes her, drawing her mouth.
She begins to understand. Truly understand. ]
I am sorry, too.
[ She doesn't know what for. Helaena lingers, momentarily disconnected from the world, before she comes to. She looks at his outstretched hands, a ring on one of them with the Targaryen insignia. And she takes them, her smaller fingers folded into his, and lowers herself into a curtsy in front of him.
She did not want this for him, she does not, but it has begun.
King. Aemond is king now. She keeps her eyes on him as she bows, some shade of unsure, morose, but accepting. ]
Your Grace.
no subject
He doesn't want that. He wants what they had before Mother sent her away from him. Aemond hadn't been good enough for Helaena, too dangerous for her more likely considering he's a confirmed kinslayer once and there are rumors about Aegon even if his mother and father had tried to quell them all. He motions his hand impatiently. )
Not that. Not from you. In public, yes, but not when we're alone. We're the same, Helaena. We're no different than before.
no subject
She might have said these things, another time. Not now. She lifts out of her curtsy, hands drawing to her side. Her gaze rests on him, evaluating.
Briefly, she shifts her weight, not sure what to say, what to do with herself.
But then.
Then, with a sharp intake of air, Helaena takes the initiative — she spans the difference, that gulf — and wraps her arms around him. Lightly at first, then grasping. Almost too hard, too close to violence for one that looks so gentle and insubstantial herself.
It's the first hug she's given in many moons, probably her last to Daeron on one of his visits. She avoids touch much of the time. Preference, some latent disgust of having another's skin on hers. Even as a small child, she often tried to navigate away from their grasping mother. Queen Alicent always tried to get so close. She seemed jealous of every interaction between her middle children, her favorite of the four, eager to separate them as they aged, ventured too close to adulthood and further from her.
Her face presses into his jerkin, the ebony jacket that covers it. He smells just as he used to, beneath the musk of adulthood. Dragon, sweat. Baby brother. So dear to her.
She closes her eyes. If he holds her in kind, her face will rest into the warm crook of his neck. ]
Will you stay long?