Work Text:
stand to face me beloved
and open out the grace of your eyes
- sappho
Blood still pools from Lord Beesbury's head. Alicent looks upon him as her father and the remaining council fill the air with poison and treachery and imagines Rhaenyra in his place, her pretty, silver hair colored red and fanning out on the table at which they sit and talk so easily of murder, at which they have been sitting for weeks and months and perhaps even years without her, deciding on this course of action all along with Alicent none the wiser. Did they meet under the cover of night while Alicent held Rhaenyra's wrist in her hand, imposing upon her to stay? While they, woman grown, made little girl promises that would never come to fruition?
Now they see you as you are, Rhaenyra had said to her once, her eyes a maelstrom of fury and emotion in the candle light—that fateful day something inside of Alicent at last unraveled, something dark and twisted and anguished rising like a vengeful wraith within her, and in that moment Alicent was a dragon too, a Hightower mouse no more, until the spilling of Rhaenyra's blood broke the spell over her and returned Alicent to reality, her stolen dagger—sullied now—clattering to the floor.
She thought she knew of anguish and hopelessness then, acquainted with all its different shades and colors after night after night in her marriage bed, lying limp under a man more dead than alive, but it pales in comparison to what she feels now, listening to her father's plans of a world without Rhaenyra in it. The thought is inconceivable and Alicent feels almost violently ill. Bile rises to her throat and she chokes it back, chokes it all back, but Alicent sees now too, perhaps more clearly than she ever has. She looks round the room, at all the duplicitous, scheming faces, and lingers on her father, most duplicitous of all. He looks back and there is no feeling for her behind his eyes, only cold calculation and a glimmer of long awaited triumph. She was sold for this, Alicent realizes, more starkly than ever; has toiled away her youth for this, birthed sons and daughter and looked upon Rhaenyra from a cold, aching distance, if she ever had a chance to look upon her at all, and cursed her name and spilled her blood and held her wrist and had her hand held tenderly in return, her first wanted touch in over a decade.
But no more; the past is well and truly behind them, a door forever barred shut. No light shall creep out from under it, reaching for her with its spindly fingers. No promise of warmth for her hollow bones. Rhaenyra will not bend the knee and, even if she may yet live, Alicent knows it is only a matter of time before she rains blood and fire down upon them. The line will be drawn permanently between them; Rhaenyra will not look upon her kindly ever again, but Alicent thinks that might be a fate she can gladly suffer, if only to have a world in which Rhaenyra is alive.
This is how the world ends, Alicent thinks, not knowing that there could be so many ways you could lose a person, that you could love them and hate them and lose them and find them and ache with the promise of something that will forever go unfulfilled.
In her dreams, Rhaenyra sits upon the Iron Throne, her back straight and proud, the curve of her neck graceful. She is adorned in red and black and sits as if there is no other place in the world she was meant to be, looking every inch a Targaryen queen. You will make a fine queen, Alicent had murmured what now feels like a lifetime ago, voice throaty, and had meant it despite all their differences, despite all the years between them. It had been, in truth, a relief, but now—now, it is just one more thing that will never be.
Alicent is on her knees before her, the green silk of her skirts spread upon the floor. A willing supplicant here if nowhere else. Rhaenyra looks upon her silently, beauty and wrath in her deathless face.
"Rhaenyra," Alicent murmurs and watches, breathless, as fury sets Rhaenyra's eyes alight; like a dragon, Rhaenyra was never more beautiful and terrible than when she burned, but Alicent burns too, with something she dare not name, not even here.
"Who are you to address me so familiarly?" Rhaenyra says, imperiously. "Is it not enough to steal my birthright, you also wish to take the lives of me and my children?"
"I only wished to do what is right," Alicent says, throat tighter then ever. "To honor the king's dying wish, to uphold the law. This—I did not wish for this. Could never think to wish it. Rhaenyra, you must believe me—"
Rhaenyra laughs, no warmth whatsoever in the sound, cold and haughty. "Could never think to wish it, she says. Such poison you deliver with your pretty lips and me more the fool to believe you. Did you not wish to carve out my son's eye from his face? Did you not once spill my blood upon another throne room's floors?"
The old wound flares but Alicent almost wants to laugh under the sudden fury. Only Rhaenyra can inspire such conflicting, tumultuous emotion; can inspire such depth of feeling. She welcomes it almost as much as she resents it. "My son was the one to lose an eye, if you recall," Alicent says through clenched teeth, "and that is not the matter at hand—Rhaenyra, you must listen—"
Rhaenyra leans forward and Alicent cuts off at once at her sudden proximity, swallowing dryly. In her dream they are close enough to one another for Rhaenyra to thread her fingers through the hair at the back of Alicent's skull; it's loose, making it all the easier for Rhaenyra to grip harshly, for Rhaenyra to wrench her head forward until all she can see and feel is Rhaenyra's hot breath on her face, and Alicent gasps, eyes blown dark and wide. Her stomach turns but it's nothing like the disgust she felt when she would feel Viserys' death sour breath upon her face. Something else sits low and hot in her belly.
"My queen," Rhaenyra hisses. "You shall call me as such or call me nothing at all."
And Alicent—she burns, burns, burns.
"You are not the only queen here," Alicent snaps; "I shall call you as I like, Princess," and a shadow of that vengeful wraith rises again within her as she succumbs to her unnamed desires at long last, as she grips Rhaenyra's arm tightly in kind, relishing the flicker of shock on Rhaenyra's face as she rucks up one of her long, flowing sleeves and brings her arm up to her mouth, pressing her lips to the raised silvery skin on her forearm. Alicent's month is hot and wet on the scar she gave Rhaenyra, Rhaenyra wearing on her body a wound Alicent only carries on the inside, this sole, sad, tangible proof of what they have become. Alicent wonders: does Rhaenyra ever trace the shape of it with her fingers the way Alicent is doing with her mouth? Does she think of Alicent as she does? Does she yearn? Does she regret?
Alicent drops her arm when she is done, eyes stinging, throat strangely tight. Rhaenyra has maintained her grip on Alicent's hair all the while but it has gentled, slackened; she smooths a calloused thumb over Alicent's cheekbone, under her right eye, and Alicent's eyes squeeze shut, unable to bear this new-old gentleness in the wake of everything that lies between them. When she is brave enough to open them, the world immediately narrows down to the wetness glistening on Rhaenyra's fingers, and Alicent touches her own eye in disbelief, not even realizing she had been crying, silently but surely.
"Who do you cry for, Alicent Hightower," dream Rhaenyra whispers, somehow cruel and achingly tender all at the same time. "Me or yourself?"
The dream changes before Alicent can answer. They are in the shadow of the Weirwood tree, Alicent's head upon Rhaenyra's lap, her tears still wet on her cheeks. She startles at Rhaenyra's face, as young as she once knew it. They are as they once were, the girls they can never again truly be, and Alicent reaches a hand, up, up, heart in her throat, while Rhaenyra tilts her head down with a smile, leaning into the tentative touch.
"Rhaenyra," Alicent says, the sound wrenched out of her, and her voice is unfathomably young to her own ears. Girlish. When was the last time she said Rhaenyra's name in this voice? Since she has beheld this face with her own eyes, much loved and much hated and more familiar to her than the new-old face Alicent would glimpse if she were to look in a looking glass?
Rhaenyra's smile deepens, that impish tilt that had long disappeared from Alicent's sight since her father decided her fate. "Hello," she says, old mischief brightening her eyes and face and voice, and that, more than anything, makes the beginnings of a sob catch in Alicent's throat. "Long time no see."
Alicent hides her face in Rhaenyra's skirts while she weeps, a wave of grief so great and so profound crashing over her and giving her no choice but to bow under the force of it, to let it envelop her completely. She sobs, letting loose years and years of suppressed feeling, while Rhaenyra gently runs her fingers through her hair all the while, making soft, comforting noises as if Alicent were not a woman grown, as if she were a babe once more.
"Ssh," Rhaenyra whispers. "Hush now. You know I hate to see you cry."
Dreams are strange, powerful things. Alicent knows, in her heart of hearts, that this is all a lie, a farce—that this, them, can never truly be. And yet she can't bring herself to care, lifting her face from Rhaenyra's skirts so that she might behold Rhaenyra once more with her own eyes, to sit up and face her and frame that loved face in her hands, to lean in and capture that mouth at last with her own. Rhaenyra kisses back, curling her fingers around Alicent's nape, the touch so at odds with how she had touched her there before; softly, delicately, like she was afraid Alicent would break under a more firmer touch, but Alicent aches and aches and wants it all, the tenderness and the heat, wants to crawl into Rhaenyra's chest and make a home for herself there, to hide from this world so dead set on keeping them apart.
"You can't die," Alicent breathes, fiercely, in between kisses, and her voice has changed, deepened; she and Rhaenyra are young girls no longer but Alicent hardly pays any mind. Such is the nature of dreams. "I won't let you."
"The world cares very little for what we want," Rhaenyra says and draws Alicent's lower lip between her teeth and bites, a sweet sting that makes Rhaenyra smile against Alicent's mouth when she gasps, a familiar heat winding its way through her. Rhaenyra draws back a hairsbreadth so Alicent can bear witness to the gravity in her eyes. Murmurs: "As you well know. But I will not go quietly. Know that if nothing else."
"I know," Alicent murmurs back, love and grief and dread and inexplicable longing tightening her throat and she kisses Rhaenyra soundly, her hands tightening on Rhaenyra's face in kind. She hadn't known it could be like this; wants to know it, really and truly, to lift Rhaenyra's skirts and settle in the circle of her spread thighs, to feel her skin against skin, heart against heart, finally, finally, nothing between them. "Of course I know. Oh, gods, Rhaenyra—"
But all dreams must come to an end as much as Alicent wishes otherwise. When she opens her eyes this time, there is no Rhaenyra smiling across from her, eyes bright, lips kiss bitten; no, she is greeted instead by the emptiness and solitude of her bedchambers. An island of a woman once more, set adrift amidst love and war. She touches her cheek and comes away with her drying tears.
When she looks at her pillow, it is wet.