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vaokses · 4 months ago

Text

How long this love can hold its breath

Series Masterlist / General Masterlist

Pairing: Aegon x Rhaenyra's Daughter!Reader

Summary: It has been years since your mother took you from King's Landing to join her in Dragonstone. Years since you and Aegon have seen one another. Years in which he has refused, time and time again, to marry, even as you tour Westeros meeting suitors in search of a husband of your choosing. That refusal can easily be undone with a few words: it was you she chose, Aegon.

Word Count: 3.1k

Warnings: Alicent's abuse of Aegon. Alcohol/drunkenness. Mentions of sex/prostitution. Usual Targaryen incest stuff. Arranged marriage stuff. Angst. Hurt and kind of no comfort for now.

Some AU/Setting stuff: Reader is a bastard of Daemyra (claimed by Laenor of course), firstborn child of Rhaenyra and heir to her mother's claim. She rides Vermithor. As you'll figure out thorugh this one shot, she and Aegon had a thing when she was still in King's Landing. How relevant or impactful that 'thing' was depends on who of the two you ask. I've stretched the timeline a bit. Rhaenyra spent a few years more in King's Landing (making Aegon around 16/7 when she leaves, and the Reader, the eldest of the Velaryons, around 14/5). Instead of six years in Dragonstone, the Blacks have spent around three there in this story. Viserys still lives (and is rotting slightly slower), Aegon and Helaena did not marry.

A/N: My first work in this fandom, so i'm a bit nervous. This is a bit of a prologue/alternate PoV for a series I have in the works, but I wanted to share it as a one shot since I think it also works as one. I hope you like this!

Title is from the quote "I've hoarded your name in my mouth for months. My throat is a beehive pitched in the river. Look! Look how long this love can hold its breath." - Sierra DeMulder

It feels as if he has just rested his head on his pillow when he hears the heavy doors being pushed open, and the familiar hurried steps of his mother as she enters his apartments.

He isn’t sure why he bothers by now in telling the guards not to let her in, since she insists on overruling his orders whenever she wishes.

Still half-asleep, Aegon reaches for the bedsheet covering his body, wary of any attempt she might make in her anger to pull it off him. Surprisingly, his mother stops a few steps away from the foot of the bed.

Aegon feels her piercing gaze on him, and aware the choice is between caving and chasing after her, asking her what it is she wants; or waiting for the anger at his unwillingness to follow the unspoken command -and the thrown object, or the stinging hit, that comes after said anger-; he drags his hands over his face in an effort to wake himself further and asks,

“What is it, mother?”

“Where in the Father’s name were you? Three days, Aegon,” He winces at the reprimand. In his defense, he truly didn’t think they’d notice. Helaena would, perhaps, but she wouldn’t seek him out either way. “You were gone for three days.”

“I wasn’t…far. I didn’t even leave King’s Landing.”

She starts letting out a sigh, laced with disappointment and annoyance, but stops herself short, instead turning her back to him and pacing a few steps away.

“I know where it is you go to…to satiate your vices, caring not for the shame it brings to your name and mine, behaving most unlike your station.”

“Then why did you ask?”

His mother won’t turn to look at him, her back turned to him and her hands joined in front of her.

“Your sister was here.”

His brow furrows in confusion.

“My sister is always here.”

“Rhaenyra was here, Aegon.”

“Oh. What for?”

Alicent turns on her side, considers him with eyes widened in afront and mouth curled in disgust. The question leaves her lips slowly, a threat and a dare all at once.

“Are you still drunk?”

He mulls over the question for a few moments, and realizes his thoughts are entirely too calm for him to be already sober. The numb haziness of the night before remains, a comfort.

“I think I might be,” He admits, eyes darting to the side and lingering on the pitcher of wine on a nearby table. He wonders if it is empty. “Slightly.”

When it seems his mother is intent on merely staring at him in disappointment, he motions for her to turn away and gets dressed.

He can’t help but feel unseemly, standing before his mother in rumpled clothes and disheveled hair, while she stands tall with not a strand of hair out of order, not a speck of dust on her dress. Then again, even at his best he hasn’t managed not to feel small, unsuited, by comparison.

Instead of letting those thoughts linger, aided by the comfortable haze the wine from the previous night -or nights, rather- provides him with, Aegon moves to sit on a table in one of the darker parts of the room.

Alicent follows quietly, but she doesn’t sit.

“I come here with news. You are to be married, n-…”

He shakes his head with a mocking laugh, the defiance as easy as breathing, after four years of holding the same stance. He might not have a say in much, but he does in this.

“No, I’m not.”

“Your father has approved of this union. As have I.”

He shrugs his shoulders.

“Then you are welcome to marry her yourselves. I shall hope for a long and happy marriage for you three.”

Sometimes, perhaps in foolish hope, in some hollow fantasy, he thinks his impertinence amuses his mother. He might imagine it, he’s quite certain he does, but sometimes he swears she furrows her lips to hide the faintest of smiles.

But of course, she shows no give, betrays not a flicker of amusement, of softness, of anything. Try as he might to earn any of them.

“I did not come here to entertain insolence.”

“Why did you come here, mother?” He asks, not able to reign in the restless movements of his hands, fingers tapping an irregular rhythm on the table. “My stance hasn’t changed. And it won’t.”

The restlessness building within her is betrayed in the small movements of her hands that increase in intensity the longer she looks at him. With a sudden movement, she slams a hand on the table between them and leans closer.

“You cannot go on like this, Aegon, shrinking your duty because of the denial of a caprice of your youth.”

“It was the one thing I asked for. I haven’t asked for anything since, nor did I ask for anything before.”

His mother scoffs in response, looking away.

“And that is reason enough for your wish to be granted?” She asks, derisive, almost jeering. Alicent leans back, straightens her stance again. Not too unlike Aemond adjusting his posture to strike with his sword during training, he supposes. “You have gone through your entire life doing as you please, not considering the cost to your family, to your House, to me, and you expected to be rewarded?”

But he has considered the cost, has had no choice but to consider it, when every choice, every action, it seems almost every thought, is heavy with the impact it might have on his name, on his family. He has considered the cost, but try as he might no choice, no action, has been enough.

“It would have…It would have changed things. If you had said yes,” He argues, an argument repeated, in his head if not aloud, a thousand times over in these passing years. And yet restlessness builds within him regardless, and he finds himself grasping at the table to keep his hands from fidgeting. “It was the smart choice. You know father would have been for it. You could have kept Vermithor on our side, and given them no choice but to play by our rules with their daughter here. We might have won this war you want so b-…”

“All I have wanted is to make sure your lives are not forfeit when your father dies. It is not war I want.”

“Then why did you say no?”

She shakes her head as she looks away again.

“The matter is settled. Long settled.”

“Yet you never told me why.”

He wants to hear it. More than an apology for denying him a chance at happiness, more than an admission that beyond the feelings of any involved it was the smartest choice, more than anything, he wants to hear her tell him why.

She didn’t even hear his reasons, she didn’t even consider proposing the union to your mother, or Viserys. She dismissed him, and denied him, without even a second thought.

He wants to know the reason why. If it was because she knew of you something he didn’t, and was certain you would have rejected him even at the cost of your home and life as you knew it, he wants to know. If it was because she believes him so monstrous that she wished to protect even the daughter of her lifelong adversary from him, he wants to know.

If it was because in his weakness and his failings he has made himself into something even his own mother wishes to see punished, or because there was something he did -because it had to be something he did, there cannot be so many that were supposed to love him and refuse to for it not to be something he is doing wrong, something about him that is wrong- that not only managed to make his mother’s love for him vanish, but also earned him her scorn, he wants to know. He thinks knowing that to be the truth would splinter him in a way he isn’t sure he’d be able to recover from, but he is tired, and alone, and he wants to know why.

He searches his mother’s gaze, desperate for an answer, any answer. She looks back, and yet all that is reflected back at him is contempt, disappointment, and what he fears is disgust.

“It has been years, Aegon. You are being senselessly stubborn, holding onto this…this grudge against me.”

He makes a face at her words, and grabs the pitcher in the table before him only to find it empty, the only wine remaining being that still in the half-filled cup.

“It is not a grudge, I-..”

“Weakness, then,” She sentences, and he doesn’t bother hiding the flinch at her words. His gaze lowers to the table before him. “You’re being a fool, if you think after all this t-…”

His eyes are set on the half-full cup of wine before him, and he doesn’t dare move his gaze as he interrupts, “I am not marrying, mother.”

She considers him in silence, and though for a moment he thinks a hit is to come -he doesn’t usually get away with interrupting her-, followed by her footsteps leaving the room, his mother takes a deep breath and insists,

“It is not me or your father who request this of you. It is your King who commands it.”

“The King, or his Hand?” He retorts. He grabs at the cup and downs the remaining liquid, making a face at the taste of stale wine, and presses on, “I’m guessing a Baratheon, to earn Borros’ support? Or a Tully, to secure the Riverlands?”

For the briefest of moments, when his mother’s lips press into a thin line, hands fidgeting where they rest joined before her, he thinks he finally got the upper hand. That he proved he isn’t as blind to their plots and their increasing panic at Rhaenyra’s influence as he may appear. That he proved her wrong, that he showed he isn’t as incompetent as they’d like to think, that he…

“A Velaryon,” Alicent admits, and any pride, any satisfaction, die out like flames in a room without air. His lips part, he knows not for what since all that leaves them is a choked breath, the beginning of a question, of a name. Aegon searches his mother’s gaze, attempts to find any truth, any certainty, but Alicent looks away. Her next words sound as if heard from underwater. “To keep you from certain execution when your sister ascends the Iron Throne.”

“Do not toy with me, mother,” He means for it to sound like an accusation, like a demand, like anything but a plea, and yet that is what leaves his lips. Betrayed by the waver in his voice, by the iron grip on the glass, he goes on, “She’s touring the whole of fucking Westeros in search of a husband as we speak.”

“She has made her choice, Aegon. It was you she chose,” She promises, and her voice is low and warm and almost comforting, so why does it feel wrong? Why does it make him want to crawl out of his own skin? “As for the tour, it will continue as scheduled. Rhaenyra deserted her own tour before time was due, she knows better than to repeat her mother’s mistake.”

Breathable air is lacking by this chair, in this room, and he stands up, wincing at the too-loud sound of the chair scraping against the ground.

He eyes a pitcher of wine in another table, and crosses the distance with quick strides, refilling his cup and draining half of it before turning to his mother again.

“Why tell me now? I-If the tour is to continue,” If she can still change her mind, “Why tell me now?”

“Your grandsire and I believed you might take this opportunity to amend your behaviors,” Alicent tells him, “So you might save your future wife the embarrassment, so you might protect her honor, seeing as you do not care for ours or your own.”

She hasn’t said your name yet, he notices.

Neither has he, but he has forgotten when it was the last time that he said it aloud. Intentionally, that is, he doesn’t count any time he let it slip past his lips when deep in his cups or buried inside some whore with the wrong shade of silver in her hair -and the wrong eyes, and the wrong voice, and the wrong smile, and the wrong touch-.

Aegon can’t even remember when it was that he decided he wouldn’t utter your name again, all he knows is that through the years what started out of spite, as a way to deny the wound and the absence; has become something else. It has become to him something like a secret, something to be hoarded, to be kept his alone.

Because there’s pride, and satisfaction, and something rotten but his, in having known you in ways no other did. In remembering you how he is certain -he has to be, it is of the few things he has left- no one has known you.

And so he doesn’t speak your name. Lest in sharing any of the warmth of a bond long gone he loses it, dying embers to a strong wind; lest in admitting old truths he is left behind also by the part of you that he keeps safe, a secret only his.

But now in his head resonate so loudly that they drown anything else -like thunder, like the beat of Vermithor’s wings taking you far up into the sky- his mother’s words.

It was you she chose.

Thinking of you has always meant the resurgence of the memory of the goodbye you refused to grant him, of waking to the reverberating cry of Vermithor as he took to the skies with you on his back and flew you away to Dragonstone; or the memory of your disappointment and your sorrow as he avoided your gaze and your words when you met again in Driftmark.

Yet now the memory that comes forth in his mind is another.

You smiled at him, daring and entirely too proud. But how could you not be, when you both knew he would oblige? How could you not be, when he hadn’t been able to tear his gaze from your lips since you had asked him for something as simple as a kiss? And your voice was softer than he’d expected -or perhaps he remembers it softer than it was, perhaps he sees something else when desire was all there was-, warmer than it had ever been, when you whispered, I want it to be you.

And what harm can your name do that his own mind hasn’t inflicted upon him already? What ruin can the uttering of such a familiar word bring that the memories haven’t wrought already?

So he says your name. Willingly, rationally, for the first time in years.

He thought the foolish refusal to utter your name aloud kept you distant, kept the memory of you, the idea of you, as something far from him, gone from him. But he realizes now, with the shape of your name parting his lips and the taste of memories staining his tongue like ash; that you have been a distant memory, a distant dream, for a very long time.

And the knowledge that you chose him, the helpless hope that blooms somewhere in his chest, they cannot do a thing against the horrifying certainty that the future he wanted, the future he mourned, is lost to him regardless of your choices now.

What can he give you now, that that Tyrell knight the rumors say you were so enamored with cannot? How can he not fail whatever expectations you have of him, as he has failed all others? How could you want him now, as what he has made out of himself in these years you’ve spent apart?

It was a comfort, he realizes now, thinking you lost. The comfort of knowing he couldn’t fail you, couldn’t earn your scorn when he had merely your indifference.

A bitter, wretched little laugh leaves his lips then, and he turns his head -to hide, perhaps, the tears brimming in his eyes, the weakness his mother so loathes to see from him- and looks out the window towards the distant skies.

Alicent doesn’t move, merely stands taller, prouder, and presses,

“Isn’t this what you wanted?”

Of course, this is what he fucking wanted, but nearly four years have gone by since he asked to be allowed to marry you and was refused. Even if some part of him wants it, wants you, still, it matters not.

It is what he wanted, before. Before everything got worse, before everything got louder, harder. Before he got worse. Before you forgot about him.

His mother approaches him then, and though he jumps when he sees her reach for him out of the corner of his eye, she grabs onto his forearm and speaks again, forceful, determined,

“Listen to me, Aegon. Your sister has secured her hold on the Seven Kingdoms, both through the strength of her dragons and through her eldest children’s diplomacy with the noble Houses,” His mother tells him, but he cannot hear her, not over the warring thoughts of finally, finally, finally, and too late, too late, too late. “Rhaenyra has allowed for this to happen because she wishes to extend an offer of peace, and you cannot squander this opportunity.”

He turns to her and asks, quietly, forlorning, “Why now?”

“What?”

“Why now?”

Why now, that everything is worse? Why now, that he has become this?

For a moment, a flickering moment gone in the blink of an eye, he thinks he sees sadness, sympathy, in his mother’s warm gaze. For a moment, he believes she will offer words or touch in the way she hasn’t before, in comfort or in reassurance.

But her gaze falls from his, and her grip on his arm -too tight, almost bruising, yet wanted, needed, if it is all he can get- loosens as she lets go of him.

“The betrothal will be announced when the tour is over. The wedding in a week’s time from then.” She tells him, detached, not unlike a messenger delivering a missive.

And with that she leaves his apartments. The door closing echoes in his mind, and he is left behind with a loneliness he doesn’t know where to put, and a hope he doesn’t know how not to fear.

Thank you for reading! I hope you liked it, and I would love to hear your thoughts!

I am endlessly fascinated by the greens and their deeply weird dynamics, and I hope I did them a modicum of justice, even when changed in this AU and despite the influence of fanon in my interpretations of them.

#aegon targaryen x reader #aegon ii x reader #aegon x reader #aegon x you #aegon targaryen x targaryen!reader #aegon ii fanfic #fics by me

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