Chapter Text
Alicent Hightower, Queen Dowager, does not have guards posted at her door.
She has not been thrown into the black cells like her father, nor dragged before Rhaenyra in chains. The keep however, remains what it has been for half her life — a prison by any other name. She’s not been free to roam, to go into the city even back then when Viserys was too sick to rule and she and her father did so in his stead; the furthest she’d gotten was to the Sept, accompanied by either a member of the Kingsguard or Goldcloaks; never by herself.
Not so much different from the Keep now; she’s still as imprisoned as ever, the color of the banners merely back to black. Part of her is even glad there’s so little green left to see around the holdfast.
Helaena at least, does not seem to be particularly pertrubed by the new order of things, happy to spend most of her hours in her chambers with Jaehaera, gathering insects and sketching in her little book. A girl who became Queen, but never a woman, lost in her own world — something Alicent would never admit out lout how she envies it.
Her trouble has always been the opposite; that she’s too aware of the world around her, her place in it and her vast limitations. Unlike her daughter, and unlike Rhaenyra; who’d rebelled against those same constraints all her life, never quite letting go of the ideas of her youth.
She thinks of chickens sometimes; a simple life, Helaena, Jaehaera and her, a small farm, far away from King's Landing — a place where no one recognizes them, or cares whether their blood runs green or black.
Helaena's always been good with animals, unlike her cousins back in Oldtown, who'd delighted in practicing bow and arrow with stray dogs who'd been unfortunate enough to wander to the Hightower. She imagines her daughter in a plain dress chasing chickens around the coop, gently moving them to gather their eggs in her woven basket, all the while Jaehaera plays with a dog in the yard, shrieking with delight instead of fear or sadistic enjoyment of seeing a thing bleed.
As for herself, Alicent imagines she might be useful in such a life. She’s always been good at nurturing things, or trying to be. Good at pruning them, at waiting, until the fruits of her labor grew into shape; a son into a king, a husband into a tool to fit in her father’s hand. In comparison to that, a garden would be easy, familiar work. Vegetables, herbs, fruits if the ground and the season allowed it.
A self sustaining life, far from the constraints of the crown, poorer in coin, but if anything this war has taught her, it's that peace has no price or perhaps that even if it had a price, it wouldn't be too high for Alicent to pay; she'd proven that, anyhow—willing to sacrifice her sons, her terrible boys, in order to end what she and her father set in motion so long ago.
Sometimes, she wonders if they'd have grown kinder, into good, proper men, if it had not been for her corrupting influence. Daeron had grown far away from the Keep, from his family, from her -- and was the kindest of them all.
What kind of mother makes monsters of her sons and then calls it necessity when she casts them aside?
Helaena has always been easier to love–not because she deserved more love than her brothers or meant little for the matters of the crown, but because for all her oddities, she never demanded more of Alicent than she could give her, even as a little child, seemingly seeing right through her, and loved her anyway.
Like all of Alicent’s children, Helaena bears her father’s coloring, his noble features and silver hair, unmistakably Targaryen, all bound together in a face that should have belonged wholly to Viserys, but never did—because like all her children, she reminded her, always, of Rhaenyra.
In the first years of her marriage, Alicent could barely look at them. Aegon in his cradle, squealing, Helaena with her unnerving gaze, Aemond soft and perturbed. All of them were proof of her duty, her worth in the eyes of the realm and her father both, but to Alicent, they were just echoes of her best friend whom she’d lost the moment Viserys picked her as his bride.
It made it easier to let the nursemaids take them and not look into Rhaenyra’s eyes and Rhaenyra’s face. The same nursemaids who’d tended to Rhaenyra before them, who knew what to do with royal children and were grown women and not girls hiding under the cover of womanhood like Alicent.
It became easier when she learned to hate Rhaenyra, and easier still when Harwin Strong appeared, and she bore his plain-featured sons.
Below her window, out in the practice yard, swords clash and clang, and the sound briefly transport Alicent back to the sight of her father’s head, lying in the pool of his own blood at the foot of the Iron Throne, Rhaenyra above it with his blood still cooling on her sword— a shameful end for one who’d been Hand to two Kings, but in a way a mercy that her father was spared the full depth of everything they lost, spared the sight of Rhaenyra sat on the Iron Throne, Viserys’ crown on her head. The very sight he’d schemed his whole life to keep from her, their enemy, victorious.
Ever since Rhaenyra went back on her promise and did not let her and Helaena leave, Alicent’s turned the same question in her mind over and over—if the absence of chains and guards was a kindness or a deliberate act of leaving her to her fate, in the event any of her more fervent supporters would decide to eliminate one of the Queen’s enemies to curry favor.
Still, Alicent finds she feels markedly less unsafe— even as it is a mockery of freedom, but able to wander about without ladies in waiting or a retinue of guards, feels like taking her first steps all over again.
Helaena mentioned at supper, that she left her book beneath the weirwood and that she wonders if any new insects will find its way between the pages by the time she picks it up again, it is Alicent who says that she will go and fetch it herself.
The offer is not met with protest, Helaena merely nodding, hand still in Jaehaera’s hair, and a warning to mind the worms in the wood.
Her daughter’s love for the Godswood is another thing that serves to remind her of Rhaenyra, that even her daughter would find solace in that place, the same place she and Rhaenyra used to spend so much time in as girls, away from all else.
Even when Rhaenyra left for Dragonstone, it felt too personal, too much like she’d be invading Rhaenyra’s space if she went there, so she avoided it, found solace at the Sept instead.
On her way to it, she passes by a pair of guards at the end of the hallway, hands resting on their pommels, but they do not move to stop her– or even pay her any mind. One of them is familiar, a man who’d once worn green on his sleeve, she remembers him standing guard at her father’s doors, his gaze always too piercing, but never quite on her face. It always used to make her skin crawl. She supposes she’s not as interesting now that the man he served is dead and he’s found another use for his sword.
The keep has not changed, the same stones and corners, but there is little comfort in the familiarity, especially after the reality of conquest. The godswood waits at the end of the corridor, quiet as it’s always been.
Alicent thinks she may allow herself the luxury of a few minutes there alone, to sit in the same place like back then, breathe in the air of the trees, like back when they were girls and the world had not yet made them enemies.
It proves to be a foolish hope.
Rhaenyra is there.
She may have been able to swallow Rhaenyra’s presence, back in the space that they used to share, even after what she’d done to her father, what she will do to her sons, could have turned back on her heel and walked way and not let her see the expression on her face, but, Rhaenyra’s not alone.
Rhaenyra’s under the weirwood tree, back to the path, Mysaria standing in front of her, her face tipped up, the Queen’s hand at her jaw, the exact same gesture, the gentle grasp of her— Rhaenyra touching Syrax’s snout, Rhaenyra turning her son’s face towards the light to inspect a scraped cheek, Rhaenyra at thirteen grasping Alicent’s jaw and looking deep into her eyes with a look that bared all of her and sent Alicent’s thoughts scrambling.
Mysaria says something too low for Alicent to hear, which causes Rhaenyra to nod her head, and for the first time, Alicent realises there’s no crown upon her brow or the sword at her hip, the same one she’s taken to carrying after ascending the throne.
It’s not the Queen that’s there, but Rhaenyra from Alicent’s youth, unburdened and entirely herself.
The look on Mysaria’s face stops Alicent in her tracks. She’s seen the White Worm before, presenting information to her Queen with the confidence of a woman who knows too much and reveals too little, has seen her directing the servants around the keep, but she’s never seemed as human as in that moment. Soft, even.
It’s natural, for a ruler to be close to their Spymaster—their biggest weapon and their biggest weakness all the same, but the way she’s looking at Rhaenyra makes Alicent feel uneasy, like there’s something predatory to it.
Rhaenyra bends her head, the other woman tips her chin up to meet her. The kiss is not rough or careless or even with a particular purpose to it as she may have assumed of Rhaenyra, a slow, familiar thing for no other purpose to it.
Before she realizes it, her hand is on her mouth covering her gasp. She’s frozen where she stands, unable to move, too sick from looking at them but at the same time unable to tear her gaze away.
It’s not disgust, or even anger — most of all, she’s in awe. She’s never imagined Rhaenyra could do this, would put her mouth on another woman like it’s not an affront to the faith or to the gods.
Her face’s gone hot, her heart beating at a hummingbird’s pace, nothing to do with the heat, and everything to do with the sight of Rhaenyra’s thumb caressing a jaw that is not and will never be Alicents.
She had thought the way that she used to look at Rhaenyra in their youth was a rot particular to her, a flaw not even her father’s teachings or the Septa’s lessons could train out of her. She had never quite considered that Rhaenyra may look at women the way Alicent has always feared looking at her. Her ever-repeating sin. A wish so depraved she’d prayed it away in the Sept for years, knees grinding into the stones—that Rhaenyra might once, just once in her life, look at her in that same, knowing gentle way of hers that used to make everything alright.
She knows Rhaenyra’s always been more brave than her, more reckless, but not even in her wildest dreams would she have imagined that they share…whatever this is. Alicent cannot let herself define it, not right now, where the object of her disgrace stands in plain sight.
For one moment, Alicent sees a glimpse of a life that never was. One where Rhaenyra might have turned towards her beneath this very same tree, shown Alicent that this starving thing inside her was not a sickness but a hunger that could be sated, a life where Criston Cole and Daemon never came between them, and a life, if not peaceful — because her father would have never stopped, would have at least been theirs.
She should turn back, she needs to turn back, cannot risk Rhaenyra turning her head and finding her there, but she remains rooted to the spot.
The kiss deepens, but not indecently so, not in a way that Alicent may call depravity and retreat behind it, dismiss as another one of Rhaenyra’s reckless habits, which just makes it worse—she’s known lust—from both her husband and Criston, has known herself to be someone men want—even when she didn’t want them to, but never this.
What she is looking at will clearly lead nowhere, Rhaenyra showing no sign that she may press Mysaria’s back against the tree and have her way with her, it looks instead like closeness sought just for the sake of comfort.
Alicent may have even been able to bring herself to call it affection, if she could only let herself acknowledge that Rhaenyra might feel affection for someone like Mysaria, for someone like Alicent.
The white worm pulls back first, and Alicent notices the dampness at her mouth, the smile that stretches across her lips. Rhaenyra remains close, seemingly content to just exist there with her.
Mysaria opens her eyes, and at once, they lock with Alicent’s at once. The look in those eyes is too exposing, recognition clear in the way her mouth moves, and Alicent goes still, like one of her cousin’s dogs used to when faced with the bow.
Her fingers graze the back of Rhaenyra’s neck, scratching at the short hairs there, but her gaze does not move away. She curls her fingers there, a claiming gesture and an arrow that strikes Alicent straight in the chest, cruelty perfectly wielded.
Alicent really should have guessed that someone who’s body used to be their main weapon, could learn to read people well.
She feels strangely naked, standing there behind them, with the recognition clearly swimming in Mysaria’s eyes.
The woman smiles, turning her face back towards Rhaenyra, unaware. Her eyes flick towards Alicent, as though to ensure she is still watching.
Her hand tightens at the back of Rhaenyra’s neck, guiding her down. The Queen goes willingly, and kisses her a second time. The second kiss is different, with more heat behind it, and Alicent recognizes with a start that Mysaria’s showing off, taunting her with what she is able to do.
Alicent’s vision blurs at the edges, and suddenly she’s fifteen again with Rhaenyra’s fingers beneath her chin, Rhaenyra’s hands on hers, and the sudden need to bruise her knees against the stone of the sept and atone for wanting something she has no name except for sin.
The book forgotten, she turns away before Rhaenyra can see her, gathering her skirts so that she may hurry as fast as her legs can carry her.
Behind her, she does not know if Mysaria says something to Rhaenyra, if Rhaenyra turns, or catches a glimpse of her. She cannot let herself turn back and find out.
Helaena had been right to warn her about worms in the wood, but it is Alicent’s rot that ruined the Godswood.