Work Text:
The mirror is cracked, rail-thin fractures blowing every which way on its surface. In these warped reflections, Alicent can see herself standing right in front, adorned in green and gold and ever the picture of a dowager queen, and the room, once the lodgings of the former heir to the Iron Throne. It is cold, frost lining every article of furniture in the room. A gale sweeps through an open window, making the heavy curtains flow and ebb like a tide. Moonlight filters through, sending harsh shadows onto the stone. Alicent sees this in the mirror and sighs.
The ache is bone deep. The walls hold memories, ones she'd prefer to erase rather than endlessly wallowing in the melancholy of times gone. This room, her room, has never truly belonged to Alicent. It holds its loyalty to its former master like an unyielding grip, its eyes on the dowager queen at every moment. She can feel it when she bathes, when she shits, when Cole is in her bed. The ever loyal servant, relaying Alicent's misdeeds all the way to Dragonstone. Its presence is heavy, and weighs down on Alicent far more than any of her fine silks and jewelry.
She can feel it now, more biting than the freezing air around her. It grasps at her hair and clamps down on her neck. She closes her eyes and the invisible limbs morph into pale, familiar ones, hands that have traced these paths before, a mouth that has tasted this flesh before. Alicent's feels it all, nausea and longing rising in her chest in alternating waves. The grasp travels downward, pushing into her chest, her waist, her thighs. Alicent's eyelashes flutter, even as the grip turns hard, the teeth turn sharp, the edges piercing into her skin like ice shards.
She opens her eyes, and she sees nothing but herself. Her expression shocks her; there is fear, and the deepest need she has ever seen on a person's face. She trembles, and in the stillness she hears fabric shifting behind her. She whips around, but only the curtains and her skirts move in the frigid air. She brings a hand to her throat, a finger skimming a still warm mark on the column of her neck.
Behind her, another noise, this one more insistent. The winds turn wild, the curtains now blowing near off their hinges. Alicent turns once more, and brown eyes meet purple. Rhaenyra seems to float like a memory, covering every inch of the mirror and cutting an imposing figure in red and black, attire fit for a queen. She is still taller than Alicent, but now she seems larger, more forebearing, like a shade with unfinished business. On her head, her father's crown perches over bone-white hair, the strands flailing wildly in the wind. Rhaenyra wears no expression, the coolness emblazoned upon her face as icy as the air around the pair. Alicent is horrified, of course she is; she had thought Rhaenyra had left after her intrusion in the Sept, but it seems she came to finish what her knife had started, though no move is made yet.
Alicent does not need to see herself in the mirror to know that she is now positively quivering in fear. It creeps into her and tears through her mind. She stares wildly into the eyes of her enemy, her curls coming undone in a way she knows must make her look mad. She takes a step forward, invading Rhaenyra's space, though she does not know why or what she is attempting to do. Rhaenyra watches her, and for a moment it is them in the silence, breathing each other's air.
Rhaenyra's hand moves suddenly, and Alicent closes her eyes. She prepares for the sharp pain of a knife slicing through fragile skin, but a half-minute ticks by and nothing comes. She opens her eyes again, and Rhaenyra has now inched closer, their noses almost touching. Alicent is too shocked to move or breathe or call for help, things she could have done plenty of in the time since this intrusion made itself known. Rhaenyra places her hand onto Alicent's cheek, the latter almost pulling away from the sheer cold of the skin. The hand moves, delicately tracing Alicent's jaw, before resting under the chin. It pulls Alicent's face up, so that the she is forced to stare at cold eyes that betray no hint of emoting. Rhaenyra pulls her face closer, and Alicent instinctively closes her eyes.
The kiss comes slowly onto her forehead, carrying an achingly familiar tenderness that shocks Alicent still. The sensation spreads into every limb in her body, a warmth in stark contrast to the ice around them. Alicent lets out a breath unwittingly, and keeps her eyes closed as the kiss travel down her face, pulling her closer. Their breaths meld as lips meet, and Alicent lets her body fall into the spectre capturing her. Soft and warm, it's all she can feel, and in that moment there is nothing else, no war, no killing, no distance between the two. It is as it was, and it almost brings Alicent to tears.
It ends quick, far too quick, and Alicent is pushed back. Rhaenyra keeps her at arms distance, a flush now spreading across her translucent skin. As familiar as the comfort, hurt now permeates through Alicent, and she sucks in a breath of cold. She sways, before dropping to her knees infront of Rhaenyra, their eyes never once straying from one another. Alicent kneels, half in submission and half in defeat, because this is what always happens. It always ends like this, and she isn't sure why it should be any different now. She looks away for a fraction of a second, and when she looks back Rhaenyra is gone, and it is just Alicent in a dark, cold room, reflected in a million different angles of her shattered mirror.
Alicent does not wake in a panic. It isn't cold, no windows are open, and she can see dawnlight filtering into the room. She can still feel Rhaenyra's lips, though, icy sharp on her skin, and her neck aches like the seven hells. She pulls the furs closer to her body and sinks back into the bed, watching the sun rise through the mirror at the other end of the room.