Archive of Our Own ^beta

You're growing tired of me
You love me so hard and I still can't sleep
You're growing tired of me
And all the things I don't talk about
Sorry, I don't want your touch
It's not that I don't want you
Sorry, I can't take your touch
It's just that I fell in love with a war
Nobody told me it ended
And it left a pearl in my head
And I roll it around every night
Just to watch it glow

Age 25

Viserys Targaryen dies on a warm Tuesday in April, just a month before Alicent’s twenty-sixth birthday.

It starts out as an ordinary day. Alicent wakes up before her alarm to sunlight coming in the window, casting itself across her face. She feels arms around her waist, the warm press of a body behind hers, cradling her. This is how she wakes up most mornings. 

Wanting to see Rhaenyra’s face, she turns in her arms, which wakes her girlfriend up. As soon as her eyes flutter open, Rhaenyra is smiling, blinking blearily at Alicent. “Hi,” she says.

Alicent smiles back. “Good morning.” These are her favorite days, when they both wake up before the alarm and can just lay under the covers for a few minutes, sharing warmth and looking at each other.

Rhaenyra leans forward, pressing a gentle kiss to Alicent’s mouth. Alicent reciprocates and Rhaenyra’s hand comes up to cup the side of her face, thumb stroking tenderly along her cheek. 

When they break apart, Rhaenyra is looking at her intently, eyes searching. “How do you feel today?”

Alicent appreciates the question, appreciates Rhaenyra checking in. She’s been having a bit of a hard time this week, as she always does this time of year. The warmer weather and the longer days signal the coming of summer and, although for most it’s the best time of year, when things become lighter and happier, for Alicent it just reminds her of the worst few months of her life.

She smiles softly, reaching up to cover the hand holding her face. “I’m okay,” she answers honestly.

The rest of their morning is just as normal. They shower together, they drink their coffee across from one another at the kitchen table, and are both out the door and off to work by 8:30. 

There is no reason to suspect that it will not be an ordinary day.

—

When Alicent passes through the doorway of their apartment after work, the first thing she hears is sniffling. “Rhaenyra?” She calls out, continuing into the living room.

Rhaenyra is huddled on the couch, knees pulled up to her chest. She looks up, hastily wiping away her tears, an expression on her face that Alicent can’t quite place.

“What’s wrong?’

Drawing a shuddery breath, Rhaenyra tells her: “My dad’s dead."

All at once Alicent’s senses kick into overdrive, the world seeming to rush toward her, everything too bright and loud, and then just as quickly it rushes away, her vision tunneling to a pinprick, and all she’s left with is a ringing in her ears and a tingling in her fingertips and a pounding in her chest. She can’t see, can’t hear, can’t speak. She can hardly think. She feels numb.

Then hands are grasping her gently by the shoulders, guiding her down until she’s sitting. She lets it happen, tries to focus on her breathing. 

Her vision clears and she sees Rhaenyra’s worried face across from her. “I’m so sorry,” she’s saying. “I shouldn’t have just sprung that on you.” She’s wiping hastily at her tears, rubbing a bit frantically at her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.” Alicent finds her voice. “Don’t apologize.” Her senses are coming back to her, her heart rate slowing down and one thought rising above the chasm in her mind: Viserys is gone. 

She can’t quite place how she feels about it. There have been so many times in the past decade where she wished he was dead. There were times she prayed to the gods for it. At those times, she thought his death would bring her relief, peace, a feeling of safety she lost permanently when she was fifteen. She always thought it would be clear and final: He can never hurt you again. But right now, she feels nothing.

Then she looks up at Rhaenyra, her red-rimmed eyes, her downturned mouth. Guilt smacks her in the chest, so debilitating it nearly knocks the breath out of her. Rhaenyra’s father is dead. “I-I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

“What?” Rhaenyra’s frown deepens and Alicent can finally place her expression: guilt. A mirror of Alicent’s own.

Of course.

Alicent inhales slowly, exhales slowly. “However you’re feeling, I promise it’s okay. No matter what he did, he was your father.”

Rhaenyra’s brow furrows. “Fuck him. He was dead to me already.” She practically spits the words out as if it’s that simple.

“I know,” Alicent assures her. “But he was your father. Whatever you’re feeling is okay.”

Her eyes soften, and she pulls Alicent into an embrace. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.” Alicent feels the words mumbled into her hair. 

She doesn’t know if she’s okay or not.

—

It becomes clear to Alicent that she is not okay when she wakes up with a gasp in the middle of the night, pulled from a recurring dream she hasn’t had in a long time. It’s the one where she’s back in that house, trying desperately to find Rhaenyra, but she keeps entering that room, his study. No matter how many doors she tries, no matter how many corners she turns, it’s never Rhaenyra, it’s always him. Only this time, she tried to speak to him. She tried to yell at him. She’s not sure what she would have said, but no sound came out of her mouth. He looked at her, and she couldn’t speak.

She’s panting, gasping for air, and she hates this. Hates waking up to a panic attack. She presses her hand to her chest and tries to ground herself, remembering all the methods she’s learned over the years.

Then Rhaenyra is there, taking her other hand and pressing it to her own chest, allowing Alicent to feel her steady breaths. This is what has always worked best. She closes her eyes and lets herself just feel and after several minutes, her breathing has calmed and her mind is no longer racing.

She blinks her eyes open and Rhaenyra is looking at her with no judgment, face wide open in that way of hers that she’s always had. “What do you need?” she asks.

Alicent doesn’t answer verbally, simply laying down on her side, pulling on their still intertwined hands, and Rhaenyra understands because of course she does, she always has. Wordlessly, she wraps herself around Alicent, holding her tight.

As she tries to fall asleep, Alicent’s mind wanders back to her dream. As many times as she’s had that dream over the years, it had never deviated before. She’d never tried to speak to him before. She thinks about this, about what it could mean. 

She had had the opportunity to give a victim impact statement at sentencing. She declined. At times, in the years since, she has cursed herself for this decision. Sometimes she hates herself for giving up the chance to stare him in the eyes, that man who hurt her, violated her, and scream: “You took everything from me!”

But then she thinks of herself at the time, fifteen and suffocating, and she can’t be angry with that broken little girl. So few people ever treated her gently, it’s the least she can do for her past self.  

As she thinks about Viserys in that room, about how her dreamself opened her mouth to speak, to yell, she feels something break inside of her. 

He’s dead. He can’t hurt me, she thinks. 

And then, I will never get the chance to tell him how he hurt me.

She doesn’t fall back asleep that night.

—

It gets worse from there. 

It’s not like it used to be. She doesn’t shut Rhaenyra out, doesn’t go away inside herself. She starts seeing her therapist twice a week again and she fights tooth and nail against the wave of self-hatred and hopelessness that she would have allowed to carry her away if it were a few years ago. 

But, still. It gets pretty bad.

She can’t really sleep. If she manages to fall into a restless unconsciousness, it’s only for a couple hours, and then she wakes, feeling crushed by things she never got to say. She has to call in sick to work. She can’t function properly with the lack of sleep she’s getting, not to mention that being around anyone who is not Rhaenyra makes her feel like a livewire, like all her nerve-endings are exposed and if someone just looks at her wrong, she’s liable to explode.

At night, laying in bed, held by Rhaenyra, trying her hardest to fall asleep, she goes around and around with herself. Why didn’t I give a victim impact statement? Why didn’t I take the chance? 

Some nights it’s too much, and she gets out of bed and goes into the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen, and cries. She goes away because she doesn’t want to wake Rhaenyra, but she often does, and this always ends with Rhaenyra holding her wherever she finds her, soothing her until she can calm down.

“I should be over it by now,” Alicent whispers around three in the morning on one of those nights after the tears have subsided and she lays curled in Rhaenyra’s lap. Her voice is angry, furious, all that impotent rage, unable to lash out at the true targets, instead turned inward on herself. “It’s been a fucking decade. I should be able to handle myself.” 

“No,” Rhaenyra tells her, rocking her a bit, and she doesn’t really have to say more than that. It’s the reassurance Alicent was looking for, and Rhaenyra knows this. Sometimes she just needs a reminder that her reactions are justified after so many years of convincing herself that it was all an overreaction, that she needed to control herself.

And Rhaenyra is so worried. She doesn’t need to say it, Alicent can tell. She can tell by the tension in her posture, the furrow in her brow, the way she tries to make Alicent laugh and strokes her hair and insists upon driving her to all her therapy appointments. With each kind action, Alicent feels her guilt ratchet higher.

Rhaenyra’s father is dead. Why are you making it about you? 

But it’s not like it would have been in years past. Alicent talks to Rhaenyra and she’s honest with her, even about the parts she would rather not say. 

Rhaenyra listens, and she talks to Alicent too. It wasn’t always like that.

Age 21

Alicent can’t get out of bed. There is a heaviness weighing her down amidst her sheets, under her blankets. It’s a familiar heaviness, something she’s grown accustomed to, but this time it is preventing her from so much as sitting up. She doesn’t know why.

There have always been bad times. Times when Alicent feels that sense of shame, that guilt, that disgust with herself that is always there creep up in a way she can’t ignore. Times when she begins having that recurring dream again. She becomes quieter, more withdrawn during these times, and she pulls away from Rhaenyra in particular, unable to stand being in her presence when she feels this way. Sometimes, during the bad times, her friend’s gaze is enough to choke her with guilt so thoroughly she feels like she could die.

Still, she manages. The bad times never really last more than a couple days, during which she drags herself through life in a fog, becoming quieter than she ever has been. Rhaenyra, who has been her roommate for the past two years, knows to just leave her be during these times. She’s learned that Alicent does not take kindly to her hovering when she gets like this, that she prefers to get through it on her own.

But something has changed now, at the beginning of their last year of university, and Alicent can’t quite understand why. All she knows is that yesterday a professor asked her what her plans for after graduation were and she had to make up an excuse to leave so that she could have a panic attack in the privacy of a bathroom stall. And then she felt that creep of shame and guilt and disgust threatening to swallow her and the next day, she couldn’t get out of bed.

It has been a day and a half and she knows Rhaenyra is beside herself with worry. She has knocked on Alicent’s door every hour since she came back to their apartment and found Alicent under the covers, silent and immoble. She asks her what she can do, begs really: “Please, just tell me how I can help, Ali. Please.”

Alicent can’t make herself respond and she hates herself more for it each time Rhaenyra walks out of her room, hopelessness apparent in her posture.

She doesn’t know how to tell Rhaenyra the truth. She doesn’t know how to voice her shame, her guilt, her disgust. She doesn’t know how to say to Rhaenyra that she can’t bear for anyone and for Rhaenyra, in particular, to look at her. 

So instead of saying anything, Alicent goes away inside of herself, stays in bed, and drifts in and out of consciousness, trying desperately to keep her mind away from the dark places it wants to go.

She feels better after two and a half days and immediately seeks Rhaenyra out. She finds her sitting at their kitchen table and collapses on top of her, burying her face in the crook of Rhaenyra’s neck, grateful, not for the first time, that this sort of touch has become second nature to them again, just as it was when they were kids. It’s bittersweet because although the touch comforts her, it also reminds her of what she desperately wants from Rhaenyra but can never have, can never even speak aloud.

Still, she won’t deny herself the touch. She won’t deny Rhaenyra either, not when she can physically feel her relief.

—

What she hoped was a fluke becomes a pattern. Things will be good for a period and then something will happen, or sometimes nothing at all, and she will start to feel that overwhelming feeling of shame, guilt, disgust with herself. And she will go away inside of herself.

During the bad times, she blames herself. Alicent had always known, in the abstract, that what happened wasn’t her fault. It’s not that she’s somehow absolved Viserys and Otto in her mind. But what was the explanation? For years, she obsessed over it: Was he sick? Did he always see me that way? Did Aemma’s death break him? Did I do something to bring it on? Was it my fault? 

Then her thoughts move from Viserys to her own father and it gets worse, the explanations feeling even further away, even less concrete. He wasn’t sick. Why did he let it happen? What kind of daughter was I that he thought that was all I was good for?

Then there’s the matter of her own actions. Why didn’t I tell anyone? Why didn’t I fight back? Why didn’t I protest, even once?

This fervent search for some explanation always leads her down a path of shame. Consumed by her shame, she shuts herself away inside.

On the days and nights she lays there, she thinks the most vicious thoughts toward herself that she has in a long time. You don’t even know how to be a person, she berates herself. You will be a burden all your life. 

She knows she’s torturing Rhaenyra, making her sick with worry, and this only makes her self-hatred grow.

She knows this because Rhaenyra is there, despite Alicent’s stony silence, her lazy gaze that can never focus on Rhaenyra during the bad times. 

Rhaenyra is there, bringing her water, bringing her food that Alicent barely touches. Rhaenyra is there, attempting to coax Alicent to come into the living room to watch a movie or read a book or anything. Rhaenyra is there, trying to get her to talk about how she’s feeling or about anything really, just trying to get her to say one word. 

Alicent wants to respond. She wants to get up and go to Rhaenyra, but she can’t and she thinks, What is wrong with you? What kind of friend are you? You don’t deserve her. Rhaenyra will realize who you are, who you have always been. She will find out the truth and she will hate you. She will leave you. It makes the guilt and shame curl in her stomach, her chest, acidic and vile.

When she’s better again, she goes to Rhaenyra and Rhaenyra’s relief is palpable and they don’t talk about it.

The pattern is hard on her and she knows it’s hard on Rhaenyra, but it typically only lasts a few days, and by the time it’s over, Alicent can never muster the energy to try and interrogate what is happening to her. 

Rhaenyra tries to broach the subject once, tries to insist that Alicent start seeing someone, tells Alicent that it had really helped her, but Alicent shuts her down. 

Therapy is what all the detectives and social workers told her she should seek when the trial was going on. But then she went to live with her family in Oldtown who, being ardent followers of the Faith, didn’t put her in secular therapy, instead encouraging her to seek the word of the Seven and the council of Septas and Septons to heal. Some of the religious elders were kind, some of them tried their best, but Alicent only found herself more ashamed, more confused by it all. She consulted the texts, she prayed to the mother, the maiden, every damn one of them and it did nothing for her. Finally she decided that either the gods weren’t real or her sins were just too great and they had abandoned her. 

She never got to try therapy and she doesn’t see a point in it now. What is the use of opening everything back up for some stranger? It happened. She’s the one that has to deal with it. 

Rhaenyra hasn’t brought it up since. They settle into an uneasy routine.

—

The Spring term has begun and the bad times are becoming more frequent and lasting longer. Other people begin to notice, people who, unlike Rhaenyra, have not even the slightest inkling about the rot that has been festering underneath Alicent’s skin since she was fifteen. 

She gets emails from professors, some concerned, some irritated. She gets texts from friends who are confused and concerned. Her grades begin to slip.

It’s during the longest bad time she’s had yet, an entire week, that Rhaenyra comes into her room and sits on the bed next to her. Alicent shifts so she can see Rhaenyra’s face, surprised by the determination she finds there. It’s so different from the tentatively hopeful or dejected acceptance she’s used to seeing during the bad times.

“You’re getting up,” Rhaenyra says.

Alicent stares back at her, confused. This has never happened before.

“You’re going to get up, take a shower, and eat something at the kitchen table,” she continues.

Shocked into speech, Alicent finds herself responding, “No,” her voice is raspy from disuse. 

The determination falters for a split second as Rhaenyra is surprised by her speaking. Clearly she had been expecting that same stony silence. But she just nods. “Yes, Alicent. You can’t keep doing this. It’s not good for you. Staying in bed like this only makes it worse.”

“No.” It’s the only word coming to Alicent’s mind and so she says it and then she rolls over because she can’t stand to look at Rhaenyra right now, but she can still feel Rhaenyra’s eyes on her and that is infinitely worse.

Suddenly the covers are wrenched off of her and gentle but firm hands are gripping her shoulders, pulling her into an upright position, and she’s so shocked she can’t even find it within herself to protest. She just turns and stares at Rhaenyra with wide eyes and Rhaenyra stares back, that same determined expression unchanging on her face. 

“Alicent,” she says. “You need help.”

A strange sensation begins to come over Alicent, bubbling up inside her with a rapidity that totally disarms her and she’s confused until she realizes what it is: rage. Something about the way that Rhaenyra says it, so matter-of-fact, as if it’s so easy. An easy solution to a simple problem. But everything has always been easy for Rhaenyra. She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she could have anything she asked for.

She had a father that loved and protected her. He loved and protected her while he hurt Alicent, whose own father let it happen, encouraged it, because she was most useful to him as a bargaining chip. Alicent has never been loved, she has never been protected, and Rhaenyra has no idea what that feels like, and she thinks she can intrude on Alicent’s attempts to deal with this fact in the only way she knows how. She thinks she can waltz in and just tell Alicent to get help, like it’s so easy.

Something mean and vicious rises within Alicent and she finds herself wanting to reach out and grasp skin and hair and yank. At the same time, the guilt and shame are still there, warring with the rage, telling her to shut up before she makes things worse for herself.

This time, for the first time in the past five years, the rage wins and she wrenches herself out of Rhaenyra’s grip and says: “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Rhaenyra’s determined expression drops into one of bewilderment and sick satisfaction curls in Alicent’s gut.

She barrels on, not even conscious of what she’s about to say as it spills out of her. “You say that like it’s so fucking easy. Like you know what I need. You don’t know what I need because you have no fucking idea what it’s like!”

Then Rhaenyra is staring back at her with what looks to Alicent like anger of her own. “Because you won’t talk to me! Because you completely shut me out!”

“I’m dealing with it how I need to deal with it,” she spits.

“And it’s not healthy!” Rhaenyra fires back.

Alicent feels her head swim, her vision cloud at the assessment, no matter how true it is. She doesn’t know what is happening, but she feels off-balance, tilted, completely untethered from the world around her. It’s like the cord holding her down, weighing her to her bed has snapped and now she’s hurtling through space toward something. She doesn’t know what that something is but she knows it’s bad. Somewhere, in the sea of rage, dread is creeping up now. Another voice inside her head is begging for her to stop.

The voice is too quiet, so she opens her mouth and keeps yelling: “How the fuck would you know? I’m the one that’s been dealing with this! You got to just go off and live your fucking life! You walked away unscathed!” Stop, the voice screams then. Stop! But she can’t. It’s like the stopper in a drain has been pulled and everything is rushing out at once, in all directions. All the hurt finally has a target other than herself and now it’s hitting the only person in her vicinity, the only person who has stuck by her. 

Then she opens her mouth and she says something she has thought so many times over the years and never voiced, something that has always been directed at herself, something she repeats to herself over and over in her darkest moments, now inexplicably turned outward on Rhaenyra: “You just let it happen!” 

Rhaenyra inhales sharply, almost a sob. Her eyes are wide and her breathing is coming quickly. Quickly, she turns and walks out of Alicent’s room.

At once, Alicent deflates, the rage rushing out of her as if she’s a balloon that someone has popped. Replacing it is that familiar guilt and shame, now magnified tenfold. 

Fuck.

What have I done?

For the first time, the shame propels her and she leaps out of her bed, rushing after Rhaenyra and into the living room where she finds her, hunched over and clutching her chest. She’s gasping, taking short little heaving breaths that keep getting cut off and Alicent recognizes a panic attack instantly. It looks just like her own.

The sight causes everything else to fall away and she springs into action. She does what Rhaenyra has done for her since they were twelve and Alicent had her very first panic attack after Otto yelled at her for interrupting a phone call. She approaches slowly, makes sure she’s in Rhaenyra’s eye line, and takes her hand in her own, pressing them to her chest. She inhales and exhales deeply, trying to model the correct breathing for Rhaenyra to imitate. It feels strange, their roles flipped like this. But she finds that comforting Rhaenyra is easy, a task she can do.

When it seems like the panic attack has abated, Alicent opens her arms and Rhaenyra crashes into her, holding onto her tightly.

It’s only then that the crush of emotion falls back down on her and she feels tears welling up in her eyes, a sob clawing at her throat. “I’m sorry,” she chokes out. “I’m sorry.”

Rhaenyra begins to rub her back, shushing her softly. She can feel the other girl’s tears on her own skin.

Alicent’s knees give out and they both collapse onto the floor, holding onto each other for dear life. “I’m sorry,” Alicent repeats, a plea for forgiveness that feels like her only lifeline at the moment.

They sit there like that for hours. The sun dips below the horizon, casting their living room in darkness and Alicent is still repeating the same words: “I’m sorry.”

—

The decision to leave is not easy, but she knows that it’s right.

This will be better for her and better for Rhaenyra too. She knows her distance, when she goes away inside herself, is hard for her to deal with. She knows that when she’s silent and far away, Rhaenyra feels at loose ends, feels useless, and ends up consumed with worry. This, in turn, makes Alicent feel guilty for dragging Rhaenyra into her mess and she makes herself smaller, further away, trying to avoid causing hurt and only causing more. 

It’s a toxic and vicious cycle and it’s hurting them both and this is what she tells Rhaenyra, tears streaming down her cheeks as she tries to make her understand that she doesn’t want this either but she has to do it.

“You were right,” she tells her, voice trembling. “I need help.” Admitting this is the most difficult thing she’s ever done. “And I think I need to go away somewhere to get it. I think I need to be somewhere where nobody knows me.” What she means, but doesn’t say because it would come out all wrong, is that she needs to be away from Rhaenyra so she can figure out where exactly she fits in the mess in Alicent’s head. She needs to figure out why her anger became directed at Rhaenyra, and needs to figure out why, when she’s at her lowest, Rhaenyra’s attention, her eyes on her, makes Alicent want to throw up or crawl out of her skin.

“I love you,” Alicent says, and nothing has ever been truer. “But it can’t continue like this. For both our sakes.” It feels like a breakup and it is, in a way.

Rhaenyra is crying too, but it seems like she’s past begging Alicent not to leave, which is what she had been doing for most of the conversation. “I love you too,” is all she says.

“I know I’ve been hurting you,” Alicent continues with difficulty. “And I’ve been hurting myself too and I–” she breaks off, looking down at her lap where her hands rest, the skin around her fingers picked raw. “I need to figure out how to stop doing that.” She looks back up at Rhaenyra, two teary pairs of eyes meeting.

Taking a shuddering breath, Rhaenyra nods. “Okay,” she says. “You do what you need to do.” She grabs both of Alicent’s hands in hers. “But I’m going to be here waiting when you get back. You can’t get rid of me that easily, Hightower.”

A watery and incredulous laugh escapes Alicent.

Rhaenyra brings their intertwined hands to her lips and presses the softest, gentlest of kisses to Alicent’s bloody fingertips. She lifts her eyes to meet Alicent’s again and there’s that familiar look of determination in them, the look that hasn’t changed in all the years Alicent has known Rhaenyra. That look has strengthened and infuriated her at different times. Right now it’s a comfort. “Promise me that you’ll come back,” Rhaenyra says.

“I promise,” Alicent replies, and she means it. If there’s one thing she is certain of now, it’s that she will always find her way back to Rhaenyra.

Age 18

This cannot be real, is the first thought that Alicent has when she sees Rhaenyra on her very first day of university.

It’s actually the only thought she has for quite some time as she takes in the sight of the girl she hasn’t seen in three years, but who has occupied her thoughts essentially the same amount as she did when they were inseparable. 

Her mind is blank and she just stares. There are marked differences in how Rhaenyra looks from when Alicent last saw her. She is taller, definitely taller than Alicent now, and her bright blonde hair is cut short, shorn in shaggy locks at the tips of her ears. But still, there is so much that is the same. Her sure way of carrying herself, her confident-bordering-on-arrogant saunter, the easy expression on her face. It’s the similarities, not the differences, that disarm Alicent.

There have been so many times over these three long years that she has wished Rhaenyra was in front of her, wished she could see her again. There have even been times she held the phone in her hand, Rhaenyra’s contact open, fingers poised to call her, but she never could, reminding herself you ruined her life. She hates you.

It’s her only explanation for why Rhaenyra never called her either.

Now that Rhaenyra is right in front of her, just a few feet away, Alicent finds that she is terrified. 

She feels paralyzed, frozen to the spot.

Frozen as she is, she doesn’t move fast enough when Rhaenyra turns and spots her, those familiar blue eyes widening in shock. This is what seems to free Alicent from her stupor and she turns, hurrying away as quickly as she can, carried by pure adrenaline as she pushes the doors of the building open and spills out onto the sidewalk.

“Alicent! Wait!” She hears, and then the sound of feet running after her.

Alicent’s mind races as she tries to think of what to do. Should she quicken her pace? Should she run to the train station and go back to Oldtown and drop out?

No, that’s ridiculous. She’s enrolled here and, clearly, so is Rhaenyra. She will have to face her eventually.

With that in mind, she turns, keeping her expression carefully guarded, her heart hammering in her chest, and comes face to face with Rhaenyra for the first time since she was fifteen. 

The other girl slows to a stop in front of her, about a foot away, and Alicent almost wants to cry at the familiar open expression on her face. Rhaenyra has never been very good at hiding her emotions and she looks nervous. “Hi,” she says.

“Hi,” Alicent replies, her voice shaky. 

“You’re going to school here?” Rhaenyra asks, then chuckles a bit awkwardly at herself, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jeans. She’s tense, holding herself stiffly, that easy confidence having seemingly vanished. “I mean, obviously you are. I am too. Going to school here, that is. I guess that’s pretty obvious too.”

Alicent is taken aback at Rhaenyra’s rambling. She really is nervous, seeming just as unsure of the whole situation as Alicent feels. She’s not acting like she hates her.

“I am,” she says, even though it’s redundant. Grasping for something else, she stutters out, “How are you?”

“Fine,” Rhaenyra answers quickly. “You?”

“Fine,” Alicent echoes, even though it’s not really true.

An uncomfortable silence stretches between them and Alicent finds herself unexpectedly distraught at it. This is the person she used to be closest in the world to. There was a time when no one knew her better than Rhaenyra, and she knew her just as well. There are so many things she wants to say.

I’ve missed you so much.

I’m sorry.

I’ve thought about you every day for the past three years.

I’m so scared that you hate me and I wouldn’t blame you if you did.

“You cut your hair,” is what she says instead.

Rhaenyra blinks, clearly a bit surprised, and then breaks out into a grin, her posture relaxing. “I did,” she runs a hand through it absentmindedly. “Do you like it?”

Now it’s Alicent’s turn to be surprised and she finds herself stuttering and blushing in a way no one but Rhaenyra has ever made her do. “It-it looks good,” she says.

Rhaenyra’s grin widens and then her face goes a bit softer and she stares at Alicent in a way that comforts her despite the fear and the doubts still coursing through her. 

“Listen, would you want to go somewhere and talk sometime? It’s been so long and I just feel like… we’ve never gotten to really talk about… everything,” Rhaenyra says.

A part of Alicent, a part that still feels like she did at fourteen, before anything changed, wants to say yes. She wants to hug Rhaenyra and let everything she’s never said spill out of her. But then she thinks about what Rhaenyra said, how she wants to talk about “everything.” 

What will that entail? What will Rhaenyra have to say to her? How much is Rhaenyra expecting Alicent to open up?

Suddenly, Alicent feels nausea pooling in her stomach and it doesn’t matter how kindly Rhaenyra is looking at her, or how earnest she sounds. All Alicent can think about is what it would be like to try and talk about what happened with Rhaenyra. She has thought about it constantly for the last three years, about getting the chance to explain herself, to apologize, and to ask for forgiveness. Still, she never really thought she would get that chance and now that she is being presented with the opportunity, she is overwhelmed by her own inadequacy. How can she possibly explain? How can she physically make herself say the words? And when she has explained, what then? Will Rhaenyra really want to be around her once she gets a real look at the rot that festers inside of Alicent?

She will hate you.

Her breathing picks up and she recognizes the telltale signs of an impending panic attack. All she can think is that she needs to get away from Rhaenyra right now.

“I–I don’t–” she stutters, drawing ragged breaths.

Rhaenyra’s brow furrows in concern and she makes a little motion like she’s going to reach out to Alicent, which of course causes her to flinch back. This, in turn, makes Rhaenyra recoil, looking a bit panicked herself.

“Sorry, I’m just–” Alicent breaks off again, desperately searching for a way out of this situation. “I don’t think I can,” she manages, turning on her heel and hurrying away.

Once she’s alone, having her breakdown in the privacy of her own room, she berates herself. She probably thinks you’re a freak.

There’s no way Rhaenyra will want to talk to her now. It’s probably for the best.

—

Alicent doesn’t see Rhaenyra again until two months into the semester. They don’t have any classes together and she hasn’t spotted Rhaenyra around campus since that first day. She oscillates between relief and disappointment.

It’s a Friday night and Alicent is going to a party, dragged along by her tentative new group of friends who she met through Alys Rivers, the girl who sits next to her in her history class. When they first invited her, Alicent’s instinct was to decline, the thought of being in a crowded room of strangers making her anxious. But she desperately wants a sense of normalcy and she knows that the only way to achieve that is to force herself out of her comfort zone, so she agreed.

This is how she finds herself in the kitchen of someone’s apartment, squeezed into a circle with her friends while she sips on a Truly. It’s loud, the music cranked as high as it can go, the sounds of overlapping voices coming together into what she would describe as a cacophony. She’s not having very much fun, but she’s not having a bad time either, and she thinks she’ll feel easier once she has more of a buzz than half a seltzer can give her.

“Do you want to go dance?” Alys asks, voice loud in order to be heard over the din.

“Sure,” Alicent replies. She does like to dance.

Alys takes her hand and pulls her into the living room, which is even more packed. They begin to sway together, dancing to whatever pop song is playing through the speakers. 

Suddenly, in the corner of her eye, Alicent sees a flash of bright blonde that looks suspiciously familiar. She turns to get a better look and this is when she sees Rhaenyra.

She’s dressed in a simple outfit, jeans and a fitted white tee that she looks unreasonably good in. Rhaenyra has never needed flashy clothing to look good. She’s laughing at something the girl she’s with is saying, head thrown back and Alicent feels her throat go dry at the sight. She still laughs the same, with her whole body.

Alicent’s eyes are glued to Rhaenyra as the other girl begins to dance, moving easily and freely, completely unselfconscious in that way Alicent always envied and admired in equal measure. The color-changing light the host has set up hits Rhaenyra, illuminating her in blue and Alicent looks at her smile, her eyes, her hair, her hands, and swallows.

She feels a fluttering in her chest, a fluttering she recognizes but hasn’t felt since she was fifteen.

Fuck.

Alicent leans over to Alys, mumbling an excuse in her ear, assuring her she can get home on her own, and promptly flees. 

Just as she is about to close the door behind her a hand catches it and someone steps out after her. It’s Rhaenyra because of course it is.

She’s looking at Alicent with concern and she asks, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Alicent replies. 

“Are you leaving?”

She nods.

“Oh.” Is Alicent reading into it or does Rhaenyra sound disappointed? “Well, are you walking? Let me walk you home.”

Rhaenyra is looking at her so earnestly, she can’t outright refuse. “It’s only five minutes, I’ll be okay.” She says.

“I don’t mind,” Rhaenyra assures her and her face is so pleading Alicent finds herself agreeing.

“Okay.”

They make it out onto the street and begin to walk in silence, but it doesn’t feel as awkward as it did when they first spoke at the beginning of the semester. They continue like that and Alicent is still a bit anxious, but not as panicked as she felt then.

When they reach her apartment building, Alicent turns to thank Rhaenyra and finds her looking at her with an unreadable expression.

“I’m sorry,” Rhaenyra blurts out.

She did not expect that. “What?”

“I’m sorry about what happened a couple months ago, what I asked,” she’s speaking quickly, rambling again. “I shouldn’t have asked you to talk about…anything, but…” she trails off, looking distraught. 

Alicent is torn between wanting to turn and run inside, escape this whole confusing situation and wanting to do something bizarre and stupid, like hug Rhaenyra. She settles on silence.

“I really would love to just catch up with you,” she continues after a beat. “We don’t have to talk about anything you’re not comfortable with. I just…want to know how you’ve been these past few years.” She meets Alicent’s eyes, her expression nervous but expectant.

Alicent is a bit stunned. Rhaenyra seems so genuine, so contrite at the thought that she might have upset Alicent, and so sincere in her desire to reconnect, that it stuns her. Her base instincts are still screaming at her to reject the offer, to protect herself, but when she opens her mouth, inexplicably, Alicent just says, “Okay.”

The way Rhaenyra’s face completely lights up, every bit of trepidation vanishing, makes it worth it. She forgot how good it feels to make Rhaenyra happy. “Okay?”

She finds herself smiling a bit, still feeling slightly cautious. “We could get coffee or something. Catch up.”

“Great!” The other girl exclaims. “Is your number still the same? I can text you.”

Alicent nods. “Sounds good.”

“Awesome.” Rhaenyra clasps her hands together and rocks back and forth on her heels a bit. “Well, I’ll let you go inside. I’ll see you later, I guess?”

“Yeah,” Alicent gives her another smile. “Just text me.” She turns and goes inside before she can do something stupid, like throw herself into Rhaenyra’s arms.

As she lays in bed that night trying to fall asleep, a myriad of emotions swirl through her mind. Part of her regrets agreeing to it, a small knot of anxiety forming in her stomach, that same voice as always telling her you’re stupid. She’s being nice now, but if she knew everything, she would hate you.

Still, a part of her is excited. A part of her, recently reawakened, feels a very familiar longing for Rhaenyra’s presence.

Her mind wanders back to Rhaenyra at the party, head thrown back in laughter, dancing, lit up in soft blue. There’s that fluttering in her stomach again and Alicent can’t deny what it means. It means something Rhaenyra can never know and will never reciprocate.

She’s still just as in love with Rhaenyra as she was at fifteen and still just as unable to tell her.

Age 15

“And who did Princess Nymeria marry?” Alicent quizzes, looking down at Rhaenyra expectantly. They are studying for their history final, although it’s a bit like pulling teeth to get Rhaenyra to actually do the work. She doesn’t really mind. She knew this would be the case when she forced her best friend into it.

Rhaenyra, who is laying with her head in Alicent’s lap, plays with her rings absentmindedly. “A man.”

“What was his name?” Alicent pushes, holding back a smile at Rhaenyra’s non-answer.

“Lord something,” Rhaenyra elaborates.

Alicent examines her, admiring her friend’s beauty, the way the light hits her face, illuminating her striking features. The way it hits her hair, making it appear white. She takes in Rhaenyra’s expression and she thinks she knows why she’s so distracted. She knows Rhaenyra better than she knows anyone else in the world and she knows what has been occupying her mind lately. “You’re always like this when you’re worried. You’re worried your dad will pay even less attention to you if the baby is a boy.”

Rhaenyra’s mother, Aemma, is nine months pregnant and Alicent knows it has been eating at Rhaenyra. Viserys loves his daughter. He tells her so and is quick to fulfill any request, any desire she might have, but he has always been somewhat distant and it is no secret that he’s always wanted a son, that this is who he dreams of leaving the Targaryen empire to. Rhaenyra doesn’t much care about the company, but she cares about her father’s love and approval. Alicent can certainly understand that.

“I hope it’s a boy,” Rhaenyra says, avoiding eye contact with Alicent.

“You want it to be a boy?” She asks, incredulous.

“What I want,” Rhaenyra begins, “is to leave King’s Landing with you. I want us to go somewhere else, somewhere far away, maybe Essos, see things we could never see here, and eat cake,” she finishes, looking entirely too pleased with herself.

A part of Alicent wants to indulge in this fantasy for a minute. Rhaenyra has said similar things before and, if she permits herself to seriously consider it, it does send a thrill down her spine. The thought of going with Rhaenyra, just the two of them, is enticing. 

But Alicent is practical. She knows there are things that are expected of them. As much as she loves Rhaenyra’s impulsivity and her imagination, it sometimes frustrates her that she can’t see the expectations they will have to fulfill, whether they like it or not. Or maybe the expectations aren’t as rigid for Rhaenyra as they are for Alicent. “You’re really not worried?”

“Well, I’m very comfortable right now, so it’s a bit hard to be worried.”

Alicent huffs and stands, letting Rhaenyra’s head fall from her lap, finding her annoyance at Rhaenyra’s blasé attitude growing. 

“Where are you going?” Rhaenyra pouts.

“Home. It’s getting late.”

Rhaenyra stands, walking over to Alicent. “Princess Nymeria led the Rhoynar across the Narrow Sea on ten thousand ships to escape the Valyrians. When she got to Dorne, she married Lord Mors Martell, and then she burned her own ships to show the Rhoynar that they wouldn’t have to run anymore.”

As she speaks, Alicent opens the textbook she’s holding to check that Rhaenyra is correct and, sure enough, she has gotten every detail down. Alicent finds herself grinning, her annoyance evaporating as quickly as it came. Rhaenyra has that effect on her.

Suddenly, the other girl reaches forward, tearing the page out of the book and tossing it at Alicent.

“What are you doing?” Alicent asks, alarmed.

“So you remember,” Rhaenyra replies with a smirk that Alicent is so used to, raising her eyebrows slightly as if playfully attempting to provoke Alicent.

Still thinking about the potential trouble they could get into, Alicent stutters out, “If Mrs. Lannister sees this book, then–”

“Fuck Mrs. Lannister.”

“Rhaenyra!” Alicent exclaims in shock, though she can’t hold back a giggle or the grin that splits her face. 

This is typical. Alicent knows that Rhaenyra takes great pleasure in scandalizing her and, secretly, she enjoys it as well. It’s one of her favorite things about her best friend; her boldness, her bravery, her willingness to say whatever she’s thinking and feeling with no regard for how it might reflect on her. Alicent admires it so much, perhaps because she is so unable to do the same. 

Alicent is constantly overthinking her every word, her every thought, going over the ramifications ten times before she will let herself speak. She often cannot say how she’s feeling and can hardly ever tell anyone no. The only person she finds she can speak freely with is Rhaenyra, and this is why she loves being around her so much.

As they walk back into Rhaenyra’s house and make their way to her room, Alicent watches her friend, contemplating this. 

They’ve been best friends since they were six years old, ever since Otto began working at Viserys’ company and moved the family to King’s Landing. Since that first day they’ve been inseparable and Rhaenyra is the only person Alicent has ever been completely honest with. She’s the only one who knows how much pressure Alicent’s father puts on her, how terrified she is of disappointing him, and how much she craves his approval. Rhaenyra never judges her for it, but always tries to remind Alicent of her worth. She feels so lucky to have Rhaenyra.

Alicent is about to turn fifteen and she doesn’t feel like she knows much of anything besides the fact that Rhaenyra is her best friend, that she loves her more than anything in the whole world, and that she wants to be around her all the time. Sometimes she wonders if the way she feels about her, the intensity of it, is normal. Sometimes she feels an inkling of something she can’t quite place but, afraid of what it could mean, she shoves it deep down inside her. 

Looking at Rhaenyra now, she feels that familiar fluttering and so she looks away, waiting for her heart rate to go back to normal.

As if sensing that her gaze has been averted, Rhaenyra looks back at Alicent and grabs her arm, linking theirs together. She smiles at Alicent and Alicent smiles back. 

She hopes they will always be this happy.

—

A week later, Rhaenyra’s mother dies while trying to give birth to a son. The baby dies too. Alicent holds her best friend while she sobs, wondering how the gods could allow something so horrible to happen to someone as good as Rhaenyra.

—

It all begins a month later, in the first days of June, a week after her birthday and a month after Rhaenyra’s mother dies. 

The summer is off to a difficult start. Aemma’s death has left a hole in everything, an empty space that Alicent feels all over the Targaryen house, all over their main office building where her father works as the Chief Operations Officer, Viserys’ second. Most of all, she feels it when she’s with Rhaenyra and it breaks her heart. 

Alicent has never seen her outgoing, impulsive friend as sad as she’s been since Aemma’s death. She wishes she knew what to say to make it all better, but knows from the experience of losing her own mother that there are really no words that can do that. 

But it’s been a month and Rhaenyra seems to be getting at least marginally better. She’s back to making stupid jokes that make Alicent shake her head and roll her eyes, trying to hide a smile, or crass ones that scandalize Alicent, drawing a blush to her cheeks, which Rhaenyra takes great pleasure in. She’s back to dragging Alicent along on random little adventures throughout the city, spending their summer in corners of King’s Landing Alicent never would have thought of venturing to.

She’s back to grinning in that way that sort of takes Alicent’s breath away, completely disarming her. 

It’s after a day like this, spent with her best friend, spending as much time as they can together before Rhaenyra leaves to stay with her Aunt and Uncle in Driftmark for three weeks, that Alicent comes home to find her father waiting for her at the dining room table.

He smiles when he sees her and this is Alicent’s first clue that they are about to have an important conversation. Otto Hightower is not a cruel man, but he is not warm either and he doesn’t give his affection easily. Alicent has spent most of her life chasing it, trying to soak up the drops of approval she manages to elicit, but they are few and far between, as she always seems to be doing something wrong. So Otto doesn’t usually smile at her like that unless she has done something that particularly pleases him or he wants her to do something that will please him. As far as Alicent is aware, she hasn’t done anything praise-worthy recently.

“Alicent,” he says. “Come sit.” He gestures toward the chair across from him.

She obeys, sitting down and folding her hands in her lap, looking up at him expectantly. 

“There is something I want to ask you to do.” He gets right to it, he always does.

“What is it?”

“As you know,” he begins, “Mr. Targaryen has been going through a very hard time recently. Aemma’s death has…well, it has taken a toll on him.” 

His eyes are sad in a way Alicent has never seen. She nods, trying to show him that she is listening.

“I am beginning to worry about how he will cope with being all alone in that house, with Rhaenyra away for the next few weeks. So I thought you might go there tomorrow and offer him some company.”

Alicent is completely taken aback. Although she has spent probably close to half her childhood at his house, she doesn’t think she’s ever had a conversation with Viserys Targaryen that lasted longer than a few minutes. He has always been kind, if a little eccentric, and she has nothing but positive associations with him, but she doesn’t know him at all. It was Aemma who came to feel like a mother to her while he was hardly there. She only really knows him through gregarious toasts at parties and casual pats on the shoulder and perfunctory questions about how school is going in the rare times he is around when she arrives to hang out with Rhaenyra.

“Me?” She asks, bewilderment clear in her voice.

Otto nods. “I would do it myself, but I’m busy handling things with the company while he grieves.”

“But…” Alicent trails off. Contradicting her father never ends well, but surely he must see how ridiculous this is. What could she, a sheltered fifteen-year-old girl, possibly have to say that could comfort someone like Viserys Targaryen? “I wouldn’t know what to say.” She brings her thumb up to her mouth, biting at the cuticle. 

“Stop that,” Otto orders, and she does at once. 

Then he reaches across the table and takes her hands in his. It’s the most physical affection he ever offers. “Any company will be enough. Maybe you could read to him. You know how he loves his collection of books.” He looks at her with that paralyzing intensity that has always been so effective on her. “I really think this could help him.”

In the end she acquiesces because she has never said no to her father before. She’s not sure she knows how.

—

Viserys Targaryen is as kind and as eccentric as ever as he greets Alicent at his front door, as he ushers her inside, into his study, as he closes the door and thanks her for coming to keep him company. 

She tries to respond in ways that feel natural, but she has always been shy and she feels incredibly awkward as she settles on the sofa in his study, smoothing her long skirt over her legs and fidgeting with the hem. She scrambles in her mind for something to say, reminds herself she’s here to provide comfort, and decides she should try to be as sincere as possible.

“When my mother died,” she begins, “it felt like people only spoke to me in riddles. All I wanted was for someone to say they were sorry for what happened to me. I’m very sorry, Mr. Targaryen.”

His entire face softens, tears welling up in his eyes and he nods. “Thank you.” It sounds just as sincere.

She offers to read to him and he accepts. She’s grateful because reading means that she won’t have to come up with more things to say.

He brings her a book and sits next to her on the sofa and she starts to read. It’s not until she’s halfway through the first chapter of Great Expectations that she realizes he has moved closer to her, almost uncomfortably so. She politely ignores this.

As she nears the end of the chapter, he puts his hand on her knee, strokes the material of her skirt softly. She politely ignores this too, even as a prickle of discomfort grows along the skin beneath his hand. 

When she leaves, he gives her a genuine-looking smile, offers his sincere thanks, and she thinks that maybe she overreacted.

—

A few days later she is back at his home, in his study, reading to him. She is here on her father’s orders again and still feels as awkward as ever, despite Viserys’ warm reception.

This time, he sits down close to her right away. She decides that this must be his way. Maybe he’s one of those older men who transgresses boundaries without meaning to. She hasn’t exactly set boundaries, anyway.

After ten minutes, she feels his arm slide behind her, looping around her waist, his hand coming to rest along her side in a way that feels far too intimate. She stiffens and falters in her reading but when she glances at him, he is looking down at the book, as if everything is perfectly normal.

His hand rubs her side slowly and her skin crawls and she wants to tell him to stop but she doesn’t know how, so she continues reading.

—

Things continue this way and it’s not until the fifth instance of Alicent reading to Viserys that she worries it might be escalating.

They’re standing near the front door, saying goodbye and before she can turn to leave, Viserys clears his throat and reaches out, touching a hand to her elbow gently. “Alicent…” he says.

She looks up at him expectantly.

“I just want to tell you how much this means to me, what you’ve been doing,” he continues. “I can’t tell you what a comfort you’ve been this past week.”

Alicent smiles, but it feels strained. She still hasn’t managed to shake off the awkwardness, the discomfort of their arrangement. “I’m only doing what I can to make a hard time a little easier,” she says.

Viserys nods, smiling back. There’s something in that smile that she doesn’t like, but she can’t place what it is. “You’ve done more than you can know.” He pauses for a few seconds before speaking again. “You haven’t mentioned this to Rhaenyra, have you? I just…I don’t think she would understand.”

Her smile falters. She hasn’t mentioned this to Rhaenyra. They’ve texted and called since she’s been away, but she hasn’t been able to bring herself to talk about this because she knows Rhaenyra would find it strange and she’s not sure how she would explain. She feels guilty, but how can she disobey Rhaenyra’s own father on the matter? “No, Mr. Targaryen,” she answers.

Once the words are out of her mouth, Alicent is being pulled into an embrace, his larger frame wrapping around her entirely, his arms encircling her, his face coming down to bury in her hair, near her neck.

She can’t help but stiffen, her arms hanging limply at her sides as she tries to process what is happening. Her discomfort heightens, the urge to pull away strong. But a voice in her head that sounds like her father’s reminds her that Viserys is grieving and that he is merely seeking comfort in the only person around him right now. So she tentatively wraps her arms around him, loose around his upper back.

Suddenly she feels hot breath on her neck and realizes he has turned his head, his nose now pressed against the bare skin there, his mouth mere centimeters away from it. She can’t help but cringe away on reflex, but he follows her and then his lips are pressed against the skin in a way that must be deliberate and she freezes in shock.

When he finally releases her from his embrace she stares at him, her eyes wide, but he is still smiling softly at her. 

Alicent stutters out a goodbye and departs as quickly as she can.

—

The next day, when Otto tells her that Viserys has requested she go back to keep him company again in two days time, she tells him what happened. Her discomfort and resulting dread of being alone with Viserys again outweighs the fear of contradicting her father and she stutters through her account of it, mutilating her cuticles as she speaks, unable to look her father in the eye.

When she’s done, she chances a glance at his face and she doesn’t understand what she finds there. He doesn’t look upset. He doesn’t even look surprised. After a few seconds she realizes that the expression on his face is pity.

“Alicent,” he begins in that slow, deliberate manner of speaking that makes everything he says sound well thought out, intelligent, and perfectly logical. “Viserys is lonely. His wife just died. He’s trying to deal with it as best he can.”

She blinks rapidly as she attempts to comprehend her father’s words, sure she must have misunderstood. “What?” She croaks.

He takes her hands in his and she wants to yank them away, wants to kick and scream, but she’s frozen in place as he pulls them up to his chest, almost cradling them. “Viserys is seeking comfort and companionship during a hard time. I’m sure you misunderstood his intentions.”

She stares at him, unsure how to respond, but there is no need to as he continues. “He is clearly fond of you. We can use this to our advantage.”

Alicent is confused. What advantage is he speaking about? Didn’t he instruct her to spend time with Viserys to provide him comfort as he grieves? 

Otto is still looking at her with that same pitying expression, still holding her hands in a gentle but firm grasp against his chest. “Viserys provides for those he cares about. You are showing him kindness in a difficult time and he will want to provide for you in turn. This will be the last push he needs to officially make me a partner in the business.” 

Alicent’s breathing picks up as she understands that there is an angle here. There always is with her father.

“Think about it, Alicent,” he continues. “We would be set for life, your future would be taken care of. Gwayne’s too. Think of what this could mean for all of us.”

Otto is so calm as he speaks that Alicent begins to wonder if she’s going insane. Is this logical? Is this normal? Has she entirely misunderstood the situation? “But, dad,” she croaks. “I-I don’t want to, he…” she trails off, unable to say it directly, unable to voice something she’s still not sure of.

He sighs in a particular way that always means she’s disappointed him. It brings out a visceral urge within her to shut up and obey.

“Please, Alicent.” He squeezes her hands lightly. “Sometimes we have to make sacrifices for family. You can spend some time with a lonely old man, brighten his day, and help your family. Family comes before everything, doesn’t it?”

That familiar sense of guilt wells up in Alicent as she thinks about all the things her father has sacrificed for her. He reminds her all the time that she is his number one priority, that everything he does is for her, so that she can have a better life than he has had. He has sacrificed so much for her and she accepted long ago that, in return for this, her responsibility is to obey him and she always has. Without fail, no matter how much she doesn’t want to do something, when her father asks, she puts her head down and she does it.

God, she doesn’t want to keep doing this. But she has never been able to tell her father no. 

—

It continues this way with lingering touches and uncomfortably long hugs and crossed boundaries and Alicent lets all of it happen, sacrifice and family ringing in her ears. It unnerves her, but it’s all things that she can brush off once she’s out of Viserys’ presence.

Until it’s not.

It happens two nights before Rhaenyra returns from her trip. It starts in a way she’s grown used to, him seated too close, his hand somewhere she would rather it not be, and then it happens. It happens so quickly Alicent hardly feels she has time to react. She doesn’t really react at all, stays silent and meek and stiff as it happens. She can’t seem to find her voice to protest. 

Alicent has never been good at telling people no. Her father made sure of that.

—

When it’s over, the only thing Alicent initially feels is shock and she drifts through it in a haze as she leaves the house and gets in the car waiting for her. By the time she gets home, it has morphed into shame, so hot in her gut it burns her.

—

She opens the door of her house and crosses the threshold to find that Otto is there, waiting for her at the kitchen table. He has never been waiting for her like this before.

“How did it go?” He asks.

Alicent wants to tell him, but when she opens her mouth to try, it’s like her voice is gone. When she finds it again, all she can say is, “Fine.”

Otto looks like he wants to say something else, but he just nods.

She goes upstairs to her room, enters the adjoining bathroom, and vomits into the toilet. Then she stumbles into bed, not even bothering to change, curls up, and finally cries. She cries and thinks about how stupid she was to let this happen. She cries until she’s dehydrated and her head is pounding and she drifts into a fitful sleep.

—

The next day, sitting across from her father as they eat breakfast, she wants to tell him but something stops her. If she tells him, what will happen?

He will be disgusted with her, he will blame her for inviting her own ruin, or he will tell her it’s a sacrifice she must make and she doesn’t know which is worse. 

Or maybe not. He is her father. Maybe he will hold her and say he is so sorry and that Viserys will never come near her again. A part of her still holds out hope for this outcome.

That hope dies when Otto tells her to get in the car, that they are going to the doctor to start her on birth control.

He says it in that same matter of fact way he tells her to do everything and, like always, she obeys without protest, even as she feels like her heart and her last hope are being crushed within her. 

She doesn’t ask him why and she doesn’t tell him what happened last night because she doesn’t want to hear confirmation that he knows and that he’s perfectly okay with it.

—

When Rhaenyra comes back from her trip, Alicent avoids her for as long as she can, but it’s summer and they are usually together every day. She has no excuse she can give and so after just three days, she is back with Rhaenyra, in the park by her house that they go to all the time.

Alicent is quiet, letting Rhaenyra do all the talking and trying to avoid looking at her. When she looks at Rhaenyra, she feels like she is rotting from the inside out and she is scared that Rhaenyra will see it. 

A voice hisses inside her head: How could you do this to her? What kind of friend are you? And her guilt is so palpable, such a physical thing she is scared she will choke on it.

“Are you okay?” Rhaenyra asks about an hour in.

“What?” Alicent replies.

“You’ve barely said two words,” Rhaenyra says, a pout on her lips. “What’s up?”

Alicent tries to look down, but Rhaenyra ducks her head, catching her eye, and gives her a goofy smile. “Are you sick of me already? Did you realize while I was gone that you prefer the quiet?”

Alicent considers just telling her. She knows she can’t, so instead she smiles back. “Well, you are pretty annoying.”

Rhaenyra scoffs and shoves her lightly. “How dare you?” She exclaims with faux outrage. “I am a delightful presence! The light of your life, in fact.”

She finds herself giggling genuinely, allowing the familiar comfort of Rhaenyra’s presence to wash over her. She can’t tell Rhaenyra, but as long as she doesn’t know, things can still be normal between them. It’s up to Alicent to make sure it stays this way.

—

Keeping Viserys company never gets easier, but acting like everything is normal does. She has always been skilled at compartmentalizing and even more skilled at putting up a front and hiding her true feelings, her true desires. She finds that, as long as she’s not in his presence, she can shove Viserys and what they are doing into a dark corner in her mind. She can act like it doesn't exist

Alicent especially uses her time with Rhaenyra to escape. It’s strange because Viserys is her father and at first she had assumed that this would serve as a constant reminder. But Rhaenyra has always had a knack for cheering her up, distracting her from her woes. This hasn’t changed.

Sometimes, the guilt creeps up on her and she is forced to make a hasty exit with the first excuse she can come up with. But most of the time, Rhaenyra is her only escape.

—

It has been six weeks and Alicent still gets so anxious she shakes before going to see Viserys. Sometimes she throws up and has to go brush her teeth before the car takes her over. Her nail beds are always bloody by the time she arrives.

Sometimes her father sees her off, but they never speak about what happens while she’s there, neither of them putting words to the act.

“It will be fine,” Otto tells her. 

“This is worth it,” he insists. 

“I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you,” he lies. 

And Alicent, fifteen and wide-eyed, looks at her father and believes him. Because he is all she really has in the world, as he often reminds her. Because he has protected her all her life and it’s far easier to believe that he still is than to confront the possibility that maybe he never really was. 

—

The only times she thinks seriously about telling are right after it happens. When she’s lying alone or riding home in the car, sometimes she fantasizes about calling the police, about telling someone, anyone. The driver of the car, a stranger on the street, her brother, even Rhaenyra. 

Sometimes, in those moments, she really convinces herself that she’s going to tell. Once, she even has her phone in her hand, fingers hovering over the buttons, willing herself to call the police.

She can’t do it.

Each time she comes to the same conclusion. No matter how bad things are right now, telling would only make everything worse. Her father is sure to remind her of this as well, in a vague enough way that he still has plausible deniability. She would be ripped from her home, from everything she has ever known, from her family. Telling would impact so many people, the whole Targaryen empire. And people would never look at her the same. They would wonder what was wrong with her, why she agreed to it, why she didn’t say no.

And she would ruin Rhaenyra’s life too. Rhaenyra would hate her.

It’s better for everyone if she keeps it to herself.

—

Her ability to compartmentalize isn’t entirely reliable. In fact, it really only works when she’s around other people, forced to put on a mask of the girl she was for the first fourteen years of her life.

When she’s alone, things are different. She loses her appetite. She sleeps more than she ever has in her life. Her fingertips are destroyed, utterly mangled. She cries at random times. She doesn’t even have to be thinking about it for this to happen. She could be walking down the street, reading a book, sitting on her porch swing, and she will suddenly burst into tears.

At first, she spends the days after their encounters in the Sept without fail. She kneels for hours on end, until her knees are so numb she can hardly stand back up. She begs for forgiveness, begs for someone or something to save her, begs for an answer to why this is happening. It never makes her feel better, but it feels like something she can do to mitigate her lack of control.

She stops going to the Sept three weeks in, when the worst effect begins. She wakes up in the middle of the night to an uncomfortable dampness between her legs, beneath her. Her skin itches and the smell hits her nose and she realizes she’s wet the bed. She feels shame burn hot from the top of her head down to the tips of her toes and she cries while she hides the sheets under her bed and then steps into the shower, getting rid of the evidence of her own filth. It becomes a semi-regular occurrence. She feels disgusting. She can’t bring herself to enter the Sept anymore.

She wonders if these effects, these things that happen when she’s alone, are visible to others at all. She wonders if her father notices, but she decides he doesn’t because if he knew what this was doing to her, surely he wouldn’t want her to continue.

—

She only goes to keep Viserys company when Rhaenyra is away for the night. The Targaryen house is large enough that she could probably go undetected regardless, but it’s an unspoken rule and one she appreciates, as she’s not sure she would be able to handle this whole arrangement if Rhaenyra was under the same roof while it happened.

This rule is why it’s such a shock to her when one night, about two months since this all started, as she’s stumbling into the foyer, having just left Viserys’ study, pulling her cardigan tight around herself, she comes face to face with her best friend.

“Ali?” Rhaenyra utters, confusion evident in her expression.

Alicent blinks, wholly unprepared. She hasn’t even had time to compose herself, to put on the mask she wears for the driver who will take her home, one not nearly effective enough to fool the person who knows her best in the world. Rhaenyra was supposed to be out with Laena and Laenor tonight.

“What are you doing here?” Rhaenyra asks.

She doesn’t know what to say, can only think about the fact that her clothes are rumpled and her hair is disheveled and she must look like a mess and then suddenly she doesn’t care anymore and she just wants to tell, desperately wants to tell, the truth banging at the backs of her teeth. 

But she can’t and so instead she finds herself falling into Rhaenyra’s arms, a sob escaping her.

Rhaenyra’s arms encircle her immediately, fiercely. “Alicent?” She asks, concern evident in her voice. “Alicent, what’s wrong?”

Tell her, tell her, tell her, thrums through her, pulses in her head, down to her bones.

She’ll hate you, she’ll hate you, she’ll hate you, replies some other voice from deep inside her.

As Rhaenyra strokes her hair and rubs her back, Alicent knows that losing her will completely destroy whatever is left of her pathetic existence, her delicate grasp on sanity. It physically hurts to keep the truth inside, to push it down as it claws and fights to get out, leaving indelible marks where no one can see and no one but her can feel, but she does it anyway. 

She cannot lose Rhaenyra. 

So when the other girl asks, “is it your dad?” in that fierce, protective tone of hers, Alicent just nods and lets herself sink further into Rhaenyra’s arms. 

Rhaenyra knows how upset Otto makes Alicent sometimes, how bad he can make her feel. This wouldn’t be the first time she’s sought refuge with Rhaenyra after her father has uttered a particularly cutting remark.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She shakes her head, still buried in the space between Rhaenyra’s shoulder and her neck.

“Okay,” Rhaenyra says in that easy way of hers. “Come upstairs. You can sleep over.”

Alicent obeys, following her best friend up to her room, accepting the offered t-shirt and sleep shorts, and crawling into bed next to her without saying a word. When Rhaenyra wraps her arms around Alicent, she doesn’t protest, just lays her head on Rhaenyra’s chest and continues to cry while Rhaenyra rubs her back in a soothing motion.

You don’t deserve her, she thinks at herself until she falls asleep.

—

It all ends in such an anti-climactic way. There’s no dramatic reveal, no one ever bursts in on them or sees proof of what’s been happening on Alicent’s skin and deduces the whole ugly situation. 

Instead, a housekeeper stumbles upon security tapes that Alicent had no idea existed, watches them despite knowing she isn’t supposed to, and calls the police. Within a day, police are at her house and arresting Otto and placing Alicent into the temporary custody of a foster family until her extended family in Oldtown can be contacted.

“Alicent,” her father says as they take him away, “remember that I love you.”

She nods through her tears of shock and confusion. 

It’s not until the next day that a female detective with a kind face and a gentle tone tells her that there is documentation proving Otto is guilty of child sex trafficking. It takes her an embarrassingly long time to understand that those charges aren’t related to some other child, but to what happened between her and Viserys.

When she does understand, it feels like the world has dropped out from beneath her feet and she is falling down, down, down and she hopes that when she reaches whatever bottom she is hurtling toward it will kill her. 

She doesn’t know how she is supposed to live with the knowledge that her father did this to her.

Then she feels an unbearable urge to see Rhaenyra, to be held by her, to run to the person who has always been her safe place where even her father failed. But she has just gotten Rhaenyra’s father arrested. She can’t run to her. 

Her base instinct, the primal animal part of her, is pulling her toward something she can never have again. 

Alicent is completely, utterly alone in the world.

—

The trials come and go quicker than she thought they would and she tries not to pay much attention to the details. The detectives have already taken statements from her and she doesn’t end up needing to testify. The videos and the documentation Viserys kept are apparently enough. 

She sees Otto once before he’s sentenced. He requests the visit and through the cloud of unreality she now exists in she agrees, hoping that maybe he can offer some explanation that will allow her to grasp the facts, to grasp reality and see her life for what it has been and what it now is instead of feeling like she’s perpetually untethered and unable to find solid ground. 

A small, naive part of her hopes he will tell her that it’s not true, that he had no idea, that he would have stopped it. 

But he has been convicted and he doesn’t waste time trying to convince her he is innocent. Instead, as they sit in the cold private visiting room, guards posted at the exits, he tells her that he’s sorry things got out of control and that it’s not what he intended and that he still loves her more than anything and hopes she believes that, hopes she can see he was just trying to build a better future for her.

Alicent stares and stares and stares at her father across the table from her as he rambles. He looks exhausted, but his expression is determined and his voice is sure in the way it always is, as if he’s presenting the facts. Perfectly logical.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” he says, “but I would greatly appreciate your help in convincing the judge of an…appropriate course of action moving forward. For all of us. So that we all might begin to heal.”

All at once, Alicent understands what he’s doing. Of course, this is about the sentencing. That’s the only reason he asked to see her and probably the only reason he is apologizing. 

Has his manipulation always been this transparent?

God, she’s been such a stupid little girl.

Blinking rapidly, she does her best to hold back her tears but it’s no use and they flow freely as she looks at her father, still struggling to comprehend who he truly is and how she didn’t see it all these years. She steels herself to speak and all she can manage is one word in a shaky, small voice: “No.” 

It’s not much, but it is the first time that Alicent has said no to her father.

—

A day after the sentencing and three days before she departs to live with her family back in Oldtown, Alicent finally sees Rhaenyra again. It’s the first time since everything fell apart and Rhaenyra is the one to approach her, showing up at the house Alicent has been staying at.

She’s terrified, but face to face with Rhaenyra, she cannot turn her away. So she goes outside and stands across from Rhaenyra, arms wrapped around herself, and thinks about how this is the farthest apart they have been since they met nearly a decade ago.

Rhaenyra is the one to break the silence of course. “Are you okay?” Is what she says.

Alicent doesn’t know how to answer this and she tries desperately to read Rhaenyra’s tone. Does she want a real answer? Is she angry? Did she come here to yell or to seek an explanation? 

She knows Rhaenyra better than she knows anyone but she cannot read her tone and her panic spikes.

At her silence, Rhaenyra looks off to the side, shaking her head a little. “Sorry, I…stupid question.”

“No, it’s…” Alicent rushes to reassure her but trails off, unsure what to say. 

This feels so strange. They’ve been best friends since they were six years old. They’ve always been completely comfortable in each other’s presence, able to say anything, able to understand each other without words. Now it’s like a chasm has opened between them that neither of them knows how to cross. It makes Alicent want to cry.

It’s all your fault, that voice inside her says.

She wants to open her mouth and apologize, beg for Rhaenyra’s forgiveness, but she’s frozen, just like she has been all summer. 

“You’re going back to Oldtown?” Rhaenyra asks.

She nods.

“I’m going to live with Aunt Rhaenys and Uncle Corlys in Driftmark,” she says.

Alicent swallows hard. It makes sense. There is no one to look after Rhaenyra in King’s Landing anymore. All at once, they’ve both become orphans.

It’s all your fault.

Another silence stretches between them and, again, Rhaenyra is the one to break it as Alicent stands there, useless as ever.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Rhaenyra asks, and Alicent can’t tell if she’s reading anger into her tone or if it’s really there. Rhaenyra’s eyes convey hurt, but she’s not sure who it’s directed at and can only assume that she is the cause of that hurt.

“I…” Alicent fumbles with her own inadequacy. She wishes she knew what to say to convey how it all just happened without her agreement or even full understanding of what was going on. She wants to explain how she was roped into it without realizing and all of the shame and guilt and disgust with herself that kept her quiet. She wants to say she thought she was protecting Rhaenyra by not telling her, that she didn’t want to lose her, that she’s so, so sorry.

But she doesn’t know how to explain any of it. All she says is “I couldn’t tell anyone.”

Rhaenyra nods, looking away from her again.

Alicent keeps looking at her, soaking in Rhaenyra’s frame and her features and the familiar hoodie she’s wearing. Looking at her, Alicent begins to mourn something she hadn’t even fully figured out or come to terms with yet. And now it seems she’ll never get the chance.

I love you so much, she thinks as tears well up in her eyes. Please don’t leave me.

“Well,” Rhaenyra says with a sigh too heavy to be coming from a fifteen year old girl. She looks back up at Alicent and there are unshed tears shining in her eyes as well. “I’m sorry.”

She’s not sure what Rhaenyra is apologizing for but her response is automatic: “It’s okay.” She is the one who made a mess of her own life, contaminating Rhaenyra’s life in the process.

“I–” Rhaenyra falters. “I’ll miss you.”

“Me too,” she chokes out.

Then she watches Rhaenyra’s back as she turns, walking toward the car waiting for her on the street.

Turn around, Alicent wants to say. Don’t go.

Like she can hear her thoughts, Rhaenyra looks back and her mouth is open and it looks like she wants to say something more. Hope swells in Alicent and she wishes she would, please, please, please.

But then Rhaenyra’s mouth closes, pressed in a thin line, offering a stilted smile, and she turns and walks away, taking Alicent’s heart with her.

It’s the last time she will see Rhaenyra for the next three years during which she will still think of her often, wondering if she will ever be able to stop loving her.

Age 18

Rhaenyra is already at the coffee shop they’ve agreed to meet at when Alicent arrives, sitting at a small table near the window. She smiles and waves when she spots Alicent, and Alicent tries to calm her pounding heart.

It’s just Rhaenyra.

She goes to the counter, ordering her coffee, and then makes her way over to the blonde. “Hi,” she says, taking the seat across from the other girl. “Sorry if I’m a little late, it took me a minute to find the place.”

Rhaenyra shakes her head, immediately reassuring Alicent that it’s fine. “I’ve only been here for a few minutes.” She doesn’t seem nearly as nervous.

“How are you?” Alicent asks. “I mean, how have you been since we saw each other last?” 

“Fine,” Rhaenyra answers, an easy smile on her face. “You?”

“Fine.” Alicent hopes they’ll have more to say to each other than this, but she doesn’t know how to begin. They’re here to catch up with each other. How can she talk about the last three years without bringing up the thing that colored it, which also happens to be the thing she absolutely cannot speak to Rhaenyra about?

She’s scared, afraid Rhaenyra will change her mind and ask her questions she can’t or doesn’t want to answer.

Why did you go along with it? Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you even try to stop it? Rhaenyra’s tone in her imagination is far more accusatory than it is now.

It turns out, she doesn’t need to figure out how to begin the conversation because Rhaenyra, always bolder than her, makes the leap. “I’m sure you’ll be happy to know I was even less well behaved in Driftmark. Do you remember how gray Corlys and Rhaenys’ hair already was? Well, I somehow managed to make it grayer.”

Relieved and grateful, Alicent finds herself laughing easily. “Wow, I never could have predicted that,” she says.

“Well, you’re still just as sarcastic,” Rhaenyra replies, giving her a pointed look.

“Probably more.” Rhaenyra’s courage must be rubbing off on her, because Alicent feels suddenly lighter, the banter coming easily.

“Wow, I never could have predicted that,” Rhaenyra parrots.

Alicent giggles, covering her hand with her mouth. “And you’re still just as insufferable!”

“How dare you? I would say I’m still just as charming !”

She’s laughing harder now, surprised at herself. God, she has missed Rhaenyra so much. So much that it was a physical ache, so much it sometimes made her think she was going insane when remembering what their relationship had been like because it couldn’t possibly have been that good. But it’s only now, with the other girl back in front of her, that she fully grasps the enormity her absence has been. It feels like coming up for air after so long underwater she began to get used to the feeling of her lungs burning.

Rhaenyra is grinning at her, no trace of resentment, no trace of anything Alicent fears. It has barely been five minutes, but she begins to feel hopeful that as long as they don’t stray into subject matter to be avoided, things really will be okay. Of course, Rhaenyra has always made her feel like things will be okay.

“So how is Gwayne?” Rhaenyra asks. “Is he still playing football?”

“Just as a hobby,” Alicent tells her. “He’s actually in med school.”

Rhaenyra’s eyebrows raise. “Wow. I never got that vibe from him.” She pauses thoughtfully. “I guess he never was squeamish about blood…” 

“Oh, don’t make me think about that!” Alicent exclaims. She knows Rhaenyra is referring to a particular football match of Gwayne’s that they attended when they were thirteen and he ended up breaking his ankle. The bone had stuck out in such a gruesome way and Alicent had turned, hiding her face in Rhaenyra’s shoulder. Gwayne, though, had remained almost eerily calm as the paramedics carted him off the field. 

“It was freaky!” Rhaenyra exclaims. “He was, like, way too calm. Remember at the hospital afterward? Your dad–” she cuts herself off abruptly, the easy smile dropping from her face, which turns a shade paler. “Sorry, I…”

Alicent feels a familiar ache in her chest, a hint of panic, at the mention of her father, but she was having a nice time and she’s desperate for it to continue. Now that she’s had a taste of what having Rhaenyra back in her life could be like, she can’t bear the thought of losing this chance. “It’s fine,” she brushes it aside and searches for a way to change the subject, diffuse the tension. “So, did Corlys and Rhaenys ever catch onto the fact that Laenor is gay?”

A grateful expression spreads across Rhaenyra’s face and then she starts to chuckle a bit, clearly just as eager and willing to move on. “Oh, they found out. They found out by walking in on him getting his dick sucked by Joffrey.”

“No!” Alicent gasps, feeling herself grinning once more.

“Mhm,” Rhaenyra leans forward and Alicent does too, as if there’s a magnetic pull between them. “Do you want to hear the story?”

“Of course I want to hear the story!”

“Well, let me set the scene.”

—

After that, it’s like they’ve both been freed from some invisible binding that was keeping them apart and slipping back into how they used to be is surprisingly easy. Alicent finds herself spending the vast majority of her freetime with Rhaenyra, just as she did for most of her childhood. Their dynamic is shockingly unchanged, with Rhaenyra dragging her along to places she never would have thought to go, pestering her when she’s trying to study and Rhaenyra has decided she’s studied enough, and making Alicent laugh even on her most stressful days.

They tell each other more about their lives during the three years apart. Alicent learns that Rhaenyra went through a wild phase when she was seventeen. She skipped school and snuck out to drink with her Uncle Daemon in dingy bars that wouldn’t card. She became embroiled in a rather dramatic affair with a girl named Mysaria that ended with a lot of screaming and crying, she tells Alicent, and Alicent tries to ignore the ridiculous pang of jealousy she feels at that.

Alicent has decidedly less to tell about her life in Oldtown considering she spent it mostly as a recluse, merely trying to get herself out of bed, through the school day, and back to bed, but Rhaenyra still laughs at her stories about things like the High Septon tripping and falling during one particularly boring service. It all feels almost normal, including the fluttering in Alicent’s stomach when Rhaenyra smiles at her and the way she can still make her blush so easily.

Still, things aren’t entirely the way they used to be. There are moments when something shadowy seems to pass between them, when one of them gets too close to uncharted subject matter and they both go silent. Sometimes Alicent almost talks about it, when she’s feeling particularly comfortable and at ease in Rhaenyra’s presence she thinks about bringing it up. There are just so many lines she can’t bring herself to cross, things she can’t bring herself to say, and she senses Rhaenyra is holding back too. At her lowest moments, she’s sure that what the other girl is holding back is hatred and blame and she’s glad she won’t voice these emotions. All of this results in a certain distance between them, unspoken and unacknowledged.

In the end, it comes up one night while they’re sitting side by side on Rhaenyra’s bed, having just finished watching a movie. The credits are rolling and it’s around one in the morning and maybe it’s the late hour that makes Alicent say what she says, or maybe it’s the fact that she feels so comfortable around Rhaenyra again.

“I just wish we never had to move away from each other.”

Rhaenyra looks at her in surprise, her expression mirroring Alicent’s own shock. “What?”

Without really thinking about it, Alicent finds herself continuing. “I wish…none of it ever happened.” It’s a massive understatement, but it’s what comes out of her mouth.

Rhaenyra visibly swallows. “Me too.” Seemingly encouraged by Alicent’s broaching of the subject, she keeps talking. “The last conversation we had, when I came to see you before you left… There was so much I wanted to say to you but I just couldn’t bring myself to say any of it. And I regretted it the second the car drove away.”

At this, Alicent turns to fully face Rhaenyra and she feels a bit of her absent nerves creep back in. What did Rhaenyra want to say? Did she want to yell at Alicent that day? Does she still want to? 

“Why didn’t you ever call?” She asks. “I would’ve answered.”

“Honestly, I wasn’t sure you wanted to hear from me. I was…I didn’t know what to say or if I would make things worse,” Rhaenyra confesses. She meets Alicent’s eyes and her own are shining with sympathy. “I’m really sorry about what happened to you, Alicent. I’m so sorry.”

Alicent closes her eyes against the prickling she can feel that means she’s on the verge of tears. She takes a few slow, deliberate breaths and opens them again, feeling a bit more in control. She can deal with this. As long as they’re not getting into specifics, explicit details, she can talk about it in this vague way. As long as Rhaenyra doesn’t ask her things she won’t like the answers to, things that will surely make Rhaenyra look at her with the same disgust Alicent feels. 

“Thanks,” she says, her voice just above a whisper. 

“Is it…” Rhaenyra trails off. “Is there anything I can do? Like, are there things you need? Any way I can help with…all the shit I assume you still have to deal with?”

Again, it’s incredibly vague. Rhaenyra seems too overly cautious to say anything direct, which suits Alicent just fine. If it gets too specific, the tenuous control she has over her emotions may snap. Still, she’s overwhelmed by Rhaenyra’s kindness. 

She shakes her head, offering a small smile. “Just being my friend again is enough. I’ve been having a really nice time with you, it’s…honestly the most normal I’ve felt in three years.”

Rhaenyra smiles back. “Me too.”

They sit in silence for a bit, but it’s an okay sort of silence. 

“Can I give you a hug?” Rhaenyra asks.

Alicent blushes a bit. “Sure.”

Then she’s in Rhaenyra’s arms and she sinks into the feeling gladly, tears pricking at her eyes. It feels like coming home. It feels like the first real comfort she has gotten since before they parted ways. No one has ever hugged her like Rhaenyra does. She’s glad this is still true.

—

That’s enough, Alicent decides. They’ve finally broached the topic and, for now, Rhaenyra doesn’t seem upset with her about what happened. They can finally put it all behind them.

Alicent is resigned to the fact that there are so many things she’ll never be able to tell Rhaenyra. That she’s so sorry, that she knows she ruined Rhaenyra’s life, that she shoulders that blame.

That she loves Rhaenyra more than she’s ever loved anyone in the world and this is something, perhaps the only thing about her, that wasn’t changed or taken away by what happened to her when she was fifteen. 

But she will never tell Rhaenyra these things because she’s terrified of the response, the inevitable rejection. Instead, she will take what she can get from their renewed friendship and deal with the rot inside of her the same way she always has: alone.

Age 21

On the train back to King’s Landing, Alicent stares at the rolling countryside and thinks about what it will be like to see Rhaenyra again.

It’s been three months and, though it’s cliché, she does feel like a bit of a different person coming out of the inpatient facility that Rhaenys and Corlys helped her get into and pay for. It’s not that she’s magically healed, scars erased, mind cured, memories made dull and unable to scratch at her. She still gets nightmares. She still has a lot of bad days. She still has those familiar emotions of shame and guilt and disgust to contend with.

But now she feels armed with coping mechanisms and techniques and a new understanding of it all. For so many years, she stumbled around blindly through her trauma and its lasting effects. Her only shield was the ramshackle coping mechanisms she had developed by herself, things that she has come to understand were hurting more than helping.

She feels a bit silly thinking about the obviousness of it, but therapy helped her a lot. She could curse her past self for avoiding it for so many years, but this is another thing she’s learned is unhelpful. There is no use blaming her past self for using the only tools she had to survive. 

She survived. The only thing she should feel for all those past versions of herself is gratitude for that.

—

Alicent sees Rhaenyra before Rhaenyra sees her. She’s standing on the platform, hands in her pockets, shoulders hunched, scuffing her sneakers against the concrete. She looks nervous. 

Relief fills Alicent’s whole body at the sight of her.

Home.

She doesn’t think about all the uncertainty she’s felt about their relationship, about her worry that Rhaenyra would grow tired of waiting for her. She doesn’t think about her anxieties over the conversations they need to have. She can’t bring herself to think about any of that when that invisible tether that has always bound the two of them is tugging on her, pulling her toward Rhaenyra.

Rhaenyra’s expression changes to one of recognition, but Alicent only sees it for a split second before she’s launching herself at the taller girl. Rhaenyra’s arms encircle her without delay, lifting her slightly so that her feet dangle an inch above the ground, and they hold each other tight. The same relief Alicent feels is palpable in Rhaenyra and this is what she clings to.

“Hi,” she breathes into Rhaenyra’s shoulder, not pulling away.

“Hey you,” Rhaenyra replies, also not pulling away.

Alicent knows that she is in love with Rhaenyra and she knows that they’re going to be okay.

—

When Alicent asks Rhaenyra to come to a therapy session with her, she easily agrees. Alicent, who began the conversation fully prepared to have to explain her reasoning, is a bit taken aback by Rhaenyra’s immediate acquiescence. But that’s Rhaenyra. She’s always done most anything Alicent has asked her to.

—

She probably could have talked to Rhaenyra by herself, but she wants to make sure she doesn’t back out of saying everything that she needs to. Her therapist, a kind older woman named Talya who wears chunky knit sweaters and sensible shoes, was the one to suggest she bring Rhaenyra with her to a session.

“You’ve made a lot of progress, Alicent,” she’d said. “I think you’ll be able to do this. But if it will help, I can be there in case you need some encouragement.” 

So she accepted the help. This is something she’s learned she can do. Because she needs help, including professional help, and that is okay.

Now she’s sitting side by side with Rhaenyra on her therapist’s couch. Talya is across from them, but they’re looking at each other, her presence unimposing. Rhaenyra is looking at her with that characteristic wide open expression, waiting for Alicent to say whatever she needs to say. She’s holding Alicent’s hand.

“I want to start by apologizing,” Alicent begins after taking a shaky breath, “for the things I said to you that day. I didn’t mean any of it and you didn’t deserve that.”

“It’s okay,” Rhaenyra is quick to reply.

Alicent shakes her head, squeezing Rhaenyra’s hand gently. “It’s not. And I need you to know that what I said wasn’t true. You didn’t let anything happen. It wasn’t your fault and I don’t blame you. The truth is, I don’t even know why my anger became directed at you because I’ve never blamed you, I–”

She cuts herself off, feeling a familiar prickling begin behind her eyes and she takes a deep breath, steeling herself for what she wants to say next. Despite her best efforts, tears begin rolling down her cheeks as she continues. “I blamed myself.” Her voice cracks, but she soldiers on. “I have felt so much shame and so much guilt over what happened and when that would overwhelm me, I just couldn’t move. And I couldn’t look at you or be around you and it’s not your fault, it’s because–” she breaks off with a sob. She has this all planned out but it’s so hard to say it out loud while she looks Rhaenyra in the eyes.

Rhaenyra’s brows are furrowed in sympathy, her thumb stroking back and forth across the back of Alicent’s hand. Silently, she’s there, urging Alicent to continue.

“I’m just–” she begins before breaking off again. She glances at Talya, who gives her a reassuring nod, and she goes on. “It’s because sometimes I still get so worried that you’ll hate me, if you know everything, Rhaenyra. There are so many things I’ve never told you because I don’t know what you’ll think of me if you–” Another sob interrupts her and she tries to breathe, tries to compose herself.

She can’t even see now, tears blurring her vision, but Rhaenyra is still turned toward her. Rhaenyra’s hand is still steady in her own. Rhaenyra is there and it helps.

Alicent takes a deep breath, preparing herself. “I just went along with it,” she confesses. “I didn’t even fight back, the whole time. I just… went along with it. And I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anyone, I just let it happen, and I ruined your life.” Finally having said those terrible words she kept inside, afraid to utter them lest Rhaenyra confirm her worst fears to be true, she gives into the sobs, lets them wrack her body as she bows her head down, squeezing her eyes shut and resting her forehead against their still-clasped hands.

She feels Rhaenyra’s body curl over her own, holding her. It brings Alicent the same peace it always has and she sits up a little in Rhaenyra’s arms, hugging her back as she cries. A tentative sense of hope fills her body.

“You did not ruin my life,” Rhaenyra says. The words are muffled in Alicent’s curls, but she can tell that Rhaenyra is crying too. “God, Alicent, you’re the best part of my life. Always have been. I could never hate you.”

Rhaenyra starts to pull back, prompting Alicent to do the same, and the blonde cups her cheeks in both hands. “ Nothing that happened was your fault.”

Alicent clenches her eyes shut, a fresh wave of tears falling. Hearing Rhaenyra say these words feels like absolution but, more than that, it feels like confirmation that she never needed absolution in the first place. She reaches up to grasp Rhaenyra’s wrists. “I’ve been working really hard on accepting that.” 

Her eyes flit over to Talya then, who is watching them with an entirely non-judgemental expression that was paramount in getting Alicent to open up to her when she first began therapy.

“Rhaenyra,” Talya says gently, and both girls are looking at her now. “Is there anything you want to share with Alicent? There’s no pressure, but this is a safe space for you to be honest about your feelings as well.”

Rhaenyra looks back at Alicent and she nods, doing her best to look encouraging, even though she’s nervous. She wants Rhaenyra to be able to tell her anything, but she’s still scared her worst fears will be confirmed, no matter that Rhaenyra just assured her she could never hate her.

She watches Rhaenyra take a deep breath, seeming to fortify herself in the same way Alicent had needed to.

“To be honest, I–” she falters and looks down. “All these years, I was worried that you hated me. I knew something was wrong that summer, I knew something was going on with you. I noticed what your fingers looked like every time we were together and sometimes you would just stare off into space and I knew something was wrong, but I…” 

She trails off, giving Alicent some time to take in this information. She hadn’t known that her pain was so obvious, always assuming she hid it well.

“I was just so distracted with my own grief over my mom that I–” she looks up at Alicent, fresh tears shining in her eyes. “I didn’t really see. And I’m so sorry, Alicent. All these years, I’ve felt so guilty too. I’m so sorry that I didn’t do anything to help you.”

A few more errant tears escape Alicent’s eyes at this revelation, but she feels an instant sense of immense relief. Of course. Of course, all this time, if she and Rhaenyra had just been fully honest with each other, they could have related to one another. They could have understood each other. They were both just girls back then. Girls without mothers to protect them from men, with only each other in the world, wholly unequipped to deal with what was happening to them and everything that would follow it. 

Smiling softly, she reaches up to brush away Rhaenyra’s own tears and echoes her words from earlier: “I could never hate you. It never even crossed my mind to blame you, Rhaenyra.”

She can see her relief mirrored in Rhaenyra’s expression as she leans in to hug her again.

“It sounds like you’ve both been carrying around this guilt all these years,” Talya observes when they pull away from each other, “when in fact, the blame for this all rests solely with your fathers.”

A silence stretches between the three of them, full of implications. 

Rhaenyra is the one to break it, her voice steely and full of malice. “I fucking hate them.” 

Alicent nods and tells her, “Me too.” The truth is that she thought she hated them before, ever since it happened, but the bulk of her hate was directed toward herself. It wasn’t until these past few months when she began to let go of her shame and her self-hatred that she has truly felt the full and crushing weight of her hatred for Otto and Viserys. Sometimes it scares her. She never knew she could hate someone as much as she hates them.

“I still get so angry,” Rhaenyra continues. “Sometimes it scares me how angry I feel, how much I hate them.” It’s like she pulled the words from Alicent’s mind.

Talya nods at them both. “That’s an entirely valid reaction. It’s healthy, even. The important thing is not to allow that anger or that hatred to control you. Don’t let it be the only thing you feel.”

Alicent considers this and looks at Rhaenyra, who looks back at her. Now that it’s been said, now that it’s all out on the table, Alicent finds that, while the bad feelings are all still there, what’s currently overwhelming her is something else: love. So much love for Rhaenyra that she doesn’t know where to put it all.

Looking into her eyes, for the very first time, she thinks Rhaenyra feels it too.

—

By the time they’re done with the session, both their faces swollen and red from crying, but feeling markedly lighter, Alicent has decided that she’s going to tell Rhaenyrs she’s in love with her. It’s strange, but she’s not scared anymore. It’s as if, after finally coming clean about everything else, this is just a natural next step. She’s given Rhaenyra a full look into her mind and her soul, let her stare at the rot, and Rhaenyra embraced her and looked at her with the same kindness, the same love as always.

Why would she do that unless she feels it too, this unshakable, permanent way that they have always and will always be connected? It’s so tangible, almost a physical thing and it has been there since they were six years old, was there in the years after their lives were ruined by the selfishness of their fathers, and it is there still. Alicent knows it’s real and Rhaenyra must feel it too.

What else could Alicent possibly have to fear?

As soon as the door of their apartment shuts behind them, Alicent is grabbing Rhaenyra’s hand and leading her to their couch. They sit next to each other, bodies tilted toward each other, legs tangling and hands still clasped.

“Can I tell you one more thing?” Alicent asks.

Rhaenyra is smiling at her and she nods encouragingly. “Anything.”

There are no nerves, no hint of trepidation or the urge to hesitate. She just says it. “I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you for as long as I can remember. I’ve just never been brave enough to say it.”

For a split second, Rhaenyra is completely still and then all at once she’s in motion, grabbing Alicent’s face in her hands, cradling her like she is something precious. There are tears in her eyes. “I am so fucking in love with you. Have been since I met you, I think.”

Alicent lets out a watery chuckle as her own eyes well up. She squeezes them shut, letting the tears fall. She’s surprised she has any left in her body. “God, I spent so long thinking that you could never love me.”

Rhaenyra shakes her head, shifting even closer to Alicent as if she can’t bear to have one millimeter of space between them. Her hands hold steady and warm on Alicent’s cheeks. “You’re perfect, Alicent.”

She laughs again, this time in disbelief.

“No, you are,” Rhaenyra insists. “You are the bravest, most resilient person I know. You’re smart and you’re funny and you’re so fucking kind. You’ve always been kind, but after everything you’ve been through, the fact that you’ve stayed kind? You’re the best person I know and I am so in love with you.”

Alicent stares at Rhaenyra, gaze flitting from her blue eyes to her strong nose, to her pink lips, and back to her eyes. Her heart feels fuller than it has been since she was fourteen and scolding Rhaenyra for entertaining silly fantasies of running away. “I don’t think anyone has ever loved me like you. You taught me what love is,” she says honestly.

Rhaenyra’s eyes soften further and she asks, “Can I kiss you?”

“Please,” Alicent breathes. She has never wanted anything more.

The next thing she knows are Rhaenyra’s lips on hers, impossibly tender. One of Rhaenyra’s hands slides back to cradle the back of her head, the other remains on her cheek and it’s all unbearably soft. Alicent leans into Rhaenyra, practically in her lap and deepens the kiss, savoring it for a few more seconds.

When she begins to pull back, Rhaenyra follows suit, but they stay in each others’ space, foreheads resting against each other, breathing each other's air. Alicent feels at peace for the first time in so long. 

As usual, Rhaenyra breaks the silence. “I have wanted to do that since I was twelve years old.”

Alicent bites her lip, trying to tame the large and surely unattractive grin that threatens to split her face. “Should I congratulate you for fulfilling such a long-held dream?”

Rhaenyra breaks into surprised laughter, pulling back a bit. “You are so mean,” she says, but it’s in the same tone that she told Alicent she was in love with her.

“You love it.”

“I do. And I love you.”

—

They spend that night wrapped up in each other for the first time. Rhaenyra touches every inch of Alicent’s skin and she asks and she checks in and she listens and it’s purifying. 

Is this okay?

What do you need?

Does that feel good?

Held in her embrace, brought to the crest of pleasure by her, Alicent feels safer than she ever has in her life, freed from the darkness and brought into a warm light that Rhaenyra has always carried with her. It feels sacred, it feels right, it feels like everything Alicent has ever wanted.

—

Things are a lot better after that. There are still bad days. Days when Alicent needs Rhaenyra to hold her, to almost lay on top of her, body covering her own, needs the full weight of it surrounding her, compressing her, to feel safe. Days when she can’t stand to be touched, wilts under even Rhaenyra’s gaze if it’s too focused. But on those days, she doesn’t retreat into herself. She forces herself to push through because she knows that it will not be forever. There will be good days again and for the first time in a long time, she has hope.

They talk about things, about everything. It feels like there’s something new every day that Alicent wants to tell Rhaenyra, something that was previously buried in the darkest recesses of her mind. It feels like freedom, like she’s literally getting lighter by the day. When she shares how when Viserys was on top of her she sometimes fantasized about killing him, or about standing on the bridge in Oldtown, begging for the will to jump, or any number of other painful memories, Rhaenyra looks at her with nothing but sympathy and love, holds her while she tells, while she cries afterward. In those moments, she can’t believe she was ever so scared to be honest with Rhaenyra. She’s glad she’s not anymore.

There is still so much they need to say to each other. There are still so many things Alicent wants to tell Rhaenyra about what it was like for her back then, what it has been like since. And there are so many things she wants to ask Rhaenyra about, wants to hear anything she’s willing to tell. They haven’t said all there is to say yet, not even close, but they will. Alicent knows they will.

Age 25

She finds Rhaenyra out on the large balcony of the Velaryon estate, looking out at the sea. The waves are crashing and the breeze coming off of the water puts a chill in the air, causing Alicent to pull her cardigan tighter around herself as she approaches her girlfriend.

“So this is where you got off to,” she says, and Rhaenyra turns, smiles softly at her, and then turns back to face the water.

“Just needed some air.”

“Do you want to be alone?” Alicent asks.

Rhaenyra shakes her head. “I was actually just about to text you to come meet me out here.”

She comes to stand right next to Rhaenyra, their shoulders pressed against each other. Alicent studies her girlfriend’s face and feels trepidation creep up inside her. She looks so sad. “Do you want to talk about it?”

They’ve been at Corlys and Rhaenys’ all day for an intimate family gathering consisting of them, Laena and Laenor, and Rhaenyra’s Uncle Daemon. It’s not exactly a funeral, as no one really wants to mourn Viserys. No one is wearing black, they’re not sitting around telling stories about his life or saying how much they’ll miss him. Actually, he is a topic that has been carefully avoided. But Rhaenys had thought that after what happened, it would be nice for them all to be together, and everyone answered her call. Rhaenyra had told Alicent she didn’t need to come, afraid of ruining the tenuous progress Alicent had been making in the past week, but Alicent had insisted she wanted to be there for Rhaenyra. She was a bit scared her presence would be unwelcome, surely serving as a reminder of Viserys’ misdeeds, but everyone has been unfailingly kind.

Rhaenyra looks at Alicent and seems to consider her question, but she looks hesitant. “I don’t want to…” she trails off, looking back at the sea. “It’s not anything you need to hear. I-I don’t want to make you listen to my feelings about him right now. This has already been a setback for you.”

“Hey,” Alicent touches Rhaenyra’s shoulder, not continuing until her girlfriend looks at her. When she does, Alicent turns her gently so that they’re facing each other and grabs both of her hands. “I wouldn’t ask if I couldn’t handle it, alright? You’re going through a lot too and it would make me feel better if I could be there for you. Like you’ve been there for me.”

Tears spring to Rhaenyra’s eyes and she looks off to the side. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

Rhaenyra takes a large breath in and then exhales, turning back to the sea. Alicent keeps looking at her and waits for her to speak.

“I meant what I said before,” she begins. “He has been dead to me for a long time. I guess, because of that, I just thought I had finished mourning the person that I thought he was and that this wouldn’t…hit me so hard.”

Alicent nods in understanding. “He’s your father. No matter what he did. You can’t help it if you’re sad that he’s dead. Believe me, I understand having complicated feelings about your father.” She allows herself to think about Otto for a second. She’s been thinking about him a lot since Viserys died.

“It’s not that.” Rhaenyra shakes her head, gaze steely. “I’m not sad that he’s dead. I’m…sad for myself that I never got to have a father that loved me or…at least not one that loved me enough to put me first. To really think about how his actions might affect me. So that’s why I’m sad.” She pauses. “But it’s not fair for me to feel this way when–”

“No,” Alicent cuts her off immediately, needing to stop that train of thought in its tracks. “Rhaenyra, you feel how you feel. There’s no fair or unfair. He hurt you too, Rhaenyra.”

Rhaenyra nods, squeezing her eyes shut and bowing her head forward, a sob escaping her. “Yeah,” is all she says.

Alicent takes the moment to wrap her arms around her girlfriend, letting her lean her head on her shoulder and cry. All at once it breaks her heart and strengthens something in her, the knowledge that she can be there for Rhaenyra too and Rhaenyra will let her.

They stay like that for a few minutes until her sobs have turned to sniffles and then Rhaenyra pulls back, wiping at her cheeks and her nose. She finds Alicent’s eyes, clearly searching for something in them, although Alicent isn’t sure what.

“Will you do something for me?” Rhaenyra asks, voice still a bit shaky.

“Anything,” she answers easily.

“Will you talk to me about how you’re feeling? More than anything, I just…I worry about you. It makes me feel so much better when you talk to me.”

Alicent takes a deep breath, nodding. She knows this. She knows that when she goes through a bad time, Rhaenyra thinks about how things used to be, that she gets so scared Alicent will retreat from her, shut her out again. “If you really want to hear it.”

Rhaenyra gives her a soft, watery smile. “I do.”

She ponders where to begin for a moment, wondering how much context she should give, considering just how deep she’s willing to slice herself open, how many layers she wants to excavate to unearth the truth of the matter. She knows it’s up to her. Rhaenyra will take anything she’s willing to give and never pressure her for more.

“I’ve told you about how he used to talk to me after, right?” This is what she lands on. There’s no need to specify who “he” is or “after” what. Rhaenyra knows.

“I think so,” she responds. “You said he was always weirdly normal.”

Alicent nods. “He acted the same as he always did with me, like nothing out of the ordinary or wrong had just happened. He would just tell me goodbye. Sometimes he would…thank me. Like we were doing a business deal or something. And I was so out of my depth and so scared and confused that I would act normal too. Or as normal as I could. I would ignore what had just happened, just like he did.”

Rhaenyra stays silent, letting Alicent continue, but she reaches out to grasp one of Alicent’s hands, holding it firmly. Her expression is stony, like she’s keeping herself from reacting too much. It’s the way she always looks when Alicent talks about what Viserys did to her.

“I’ve thought a lot about why he did that. Why and how he could still act like everything was normal and like he wasn’t hurting me.” In truth, she has spent the past few nights thinking this over as she lays awake. “I think it’s because a part of him did feel guilty for what he was doing. He knew it was wrong, but he was too much of a coward to really grapple with that. So he tried to act like everything was fine, hoping that I would do the same and then he wouldn’t really have to face what he was doing to me. And I did. I gave him exactly what he was hoping for.”

Her lip trembles. There are more things that have made her think this that she doesn’t tell Rhaenyra. Like how he used to turn her on her stomach when she started to cry. Or the way he would avert his gaze while she dressed herself after. She doesn’t think she can bring herself to say these things out loud. Maybe one day she will, but not today.

“I never got a chance to tell him how much he was hurting me or to be angry to his face,” she continues. “I never even got to be… less than polite. Sometimes I worry that I let him rationalize it. Like, maybe he lived the rest of his life convinced that he didn’t hurt me because I never told him.” She brushes away the tears that have begun to fall. “And I’ve been really regretting not giving a victim impact statement. I couldn’t back then. I was so fragile, I just couldn’t. But now he’s dead and I never got the chance to tell him what he did to me. I never got to make him face it.”

As soon as she begins to cry in earnest, Rhaenyra wraps her up and it occurs to Alicent that they have just swapped places from where they were a few minutes ago. 

“I’m so sorry,” Rhaenyra says as she rubs Alicent’s back in soothing circles. “If it makes you feel any better, I know that, in the end, he had to come to terms with what he did. And I think he lived with that until he died.”

Alicent’s brow furrows at the sureness in Rhaenyra’s voice, like she knows. “What makes you say that?”

Rhaenyra goes a bit still and when Alicent pulls back, her face is full of trepidation. Alicent raises an eyebrow at her and she tells her: “Because I went to see him while he was in prison. And I made sure he knew what he’d done to you.”

She feels stunned, unmoored by this information. How did she not know this? “What?”

They’re still holding onto each other and Rhaenyra’s grip goes a bit tighter, like she’s scared Alicent will pull away. “It was when you went away to do inpatient. I felt…so out of control that whole year and so useless watching you go through that. I didn’t know how to deal with all my anger and my worry and I realized that I needed to take it out on the person it was actually caused by.”

Alicent feels nothing but shock, not quite processing her emotions about this new information, only able to ask more questions. “So you saw him?”

Rhaenyra nods. “He was already sick at that point. He looked so weak, and he–” she cuts herself off, searching Alicent’s eyes. “Do you want to hear about this?”

“Yes,” Alicent says immediately and she finds that it’s true. She’s hungry for the information, for the absolution that might come from knowing Viserys got to hear about what he did to her. “Please, tell me what you said.”

“Well, like I said, he looked weak and so frail. Pathetic, honestly. And he just let me berate him. I told him how much what he did was still hurting you. I told him he was lucky that his only punishment was rotting in prison because he deserved so much worse. I told him–” She pauses, her eyes flitting away and then back. “I hope it’s okay, but I told him that you had to go away to get treatment because of how badly he hurt you.”

Alicent feels a bit breathless, staring at Rhaenyra in awe, clinging to her every word. “What did he say?” She needs to know.

Looking into her eyes, tightening her grip, Rhaenyra tells her. “He apologized. And he cried.”

Something begins to settle within Alicent, some sense of peace washing over her. “He did?” Her voice breaks a little as she asks.

Rhaenyra nods. “He apologized over and over and he said he had been living with the guilt and that he wished he could take it back. I think he died with that guilt.”

Tears spring to Alicent’s eyes, but she feels better than she has since she first heard of Viserys’ death. “So he knew? He knew how badly he hurt me?”

“He knew,” Rhaenyra confirms.

Alicent lets herself fall into her girlfriend’s arms, squeezing her tight, dampening the material of her shirt with her tears. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too. So much.” 

Rhaenyra’s arms around her are sturdy and safe and Alicent feels incredibly grounded. She feels something close to strong and it’s this feeling of strength that makes her feel prepared to confront the other thing Viserys’ death has brought up for her. 

“I think I want to go see my father.”

Rhaenyra’s grip tightens a fraction, but she doesn’t offer approval or disapproval, like she really wants Alicent to make her own decision. And Alicent has made a decision. She already lost the opportunity to look one of the men who hurt her in the eyes and tell him what he did. She won’t lose another. 

“Would you come with me?” Alicent asks. “If I went to see him, would you come with me?”

“Of course.” Rhaenyra’s answer comes as easy as breathing.

—

In the end, Otto refuses to see Alicent. It’s one thing he could give her, one measly little thing after the lifetime of pain he subjected her to, and he won’t even do that. In the end, he puts himself and his own desires above his daughter’s one last time. So she writes him a letter.

She pours all of her hurt, all of her anger into it. She tells him in graphic detail how she’s suffered over the years, tells him about all the time she spent feeling guilty and blaming herself before she realized that it was he and Viserys who should be shouldering that blame.

What did you think when I was born? She asks. What kind of father did you hope to be? Did you ever love me? Did you ever want to protect me? Or was I always just a means to an end? 

I wasn’t a person to you. She writes. I was a chess piece that you moved around the board, only worth whatever advantages you could use me to get. 

I hope you feel guilty. I hope you know that it’s all your fault. I hope it haunts you until the day you die. Because I’m done carrying that guilt. This is how she ends the letter.

—

Rhaenyra goes with Alicent to the post office to mail the letter and afterward they drive out to one of their favorite spots just outside the city, a clearing in the forest overlooking the lake that they stumbled upon by accident when they were in university. 

They’ve brought a blanket, as they usually do when they come here, laying it out on the soft grass. Alicent lays between Rhaenyra’s legs, her head propped up on her girlfriend’s chest as they stare out over the lake. She spots a bird as it swoops low, dipping down and skimming its feet over the surface of the water before taking off into the sky again.

She feels Rhaenyra press a kiss on top of her head and wonders if she sees the bird too. When she tilts her head back to look up at her, Rhaenyra is already staring back, a soft smile on her face. “How do you feel?” She asks, her voice gentle.

Alicent smiles back and answers honestly. “I feel…freer than I’ve ever felt before.”

Rhaenyra’s expression is so tender Alicent can’t keep eye contact, looking back down as her cheeks warm. She considers the ridiculousness of the fact that Rhaenyra can still make her blush after over four years together. 

“I know I’m not magically healed, but I just…” She trails off, spotting the bird again, following its looping flight pattern with her eyes. “I’m going to be okay. For the first time, I really know I’m going to be okay.”

She feels Rhaenyra’s head drop again, her nose and lips pressed into Alicent’s hair. “I’m so proud of you,” she says. “I don’t even have the words to describe it.”

She wiggles a bit, snuggling deeper against Rhaenyra, genuinely smiling. How wonderful it is that they can talk about this and it actually makes it hurt less instead of more. How wonderful that Rhaenyra knows her better than anyone in the world, all of her flaws and her hurts, and loves her so completely. How wonderful that the thing Alicent always feared most was really something beautiful waiting to happen.

Alicent tilts her head back again and they lock eyes once more. Looking at Rhaenyra, she is so overcome with the enormity of her love that the words just come out with no planning or forethought. “Marry me?” As soon as she’s said it, she knows she wants it.

Rhaenyra’s expression drops into something stunned and then she’s moving, sitting up and grabbing Alicent by the shoulders, hoisting her up into a sitting position so that they’re facing each other. Alicent giggles at the manhandling, silenced when Rhaenyra rises up onto her knees and surges forward, grabbing Alicent’s face in her hands, tilting her head back and up so she can stare directly down at her. “Alicent, I cannot believe you! I literally have a ring for you at home. I had a whole proposal planned!”

Alicent giggles, feeling her heart swell at the revelation. God, she wants to marry Rhaenyra. “Is that a yes?”

Rhaenyra continues as if she hadn’t heard. “It is just like you to take my moment like this!” 

“Rhaenyra!”

"So impatient, Hightower.”

She’s grinning and Alicent knows she’s teasing her and lets out a huff. “You are insufferable. I don’t even want to marry you anymore. I rescind my offer.”

“No!” Rhaenyra rushes out, moving one hand up to tug on an errant curl. “There’s no take backs, I’m afraid.” She tucks the curl behind Alicent's ear, moving her hand into her hair and leaning in closer.

“Damn,” Alicent sighs. Their faces are inches apart. “I really should have read the fine print.”

“Mhm, you should have. Now we are getting married and there’s nothing you can do about it.” 

Before Alicent can respond, Rhaenyra closes the miniscule gap between them, their lips meeting. Alicent lets herself sink into it, Rhaenyra’s hands cradling her face the only thing keeping her upright. She feels Rhaenyra bearing down on her and leans back, allowing her to lay her down across the blanket as their lips slide against one another, their kisses tender and honest.

Rhaenyra pulls back after a few minutes, hovering over Alicent and smiling. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Alicent replies.

Of all the things they can now say to each other, this is Alicent’s favorite.