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After Storm’s End the fever takes over inside him and the storm raging in the skies there never settles in his heart. It’s like he’s always in Vhagar’s head now, and the war is calling, the roars for more: blood, bodies, fire, ruins.
For a moment a bile of ashes in his throat threatens to choke him. His heart shrinking into withering, ugly thing that pierces with something unnamed (something he doesn’t dare to name). Maybe regret, maybe despair, maybe inconsolable emptiness.
For a moment he thinks there is nothing to define him anymore. To anchor him into purpose. Justice torn away from his hands like that. Slipping into a free fall dive to the waters of the lake beneath.
It was supposed to be his for the taking. For cutting out. For carving forever on the grave of his nephew. (Instead it became his own grave, but he doesn’t know it yet. He never dares to name it like that).
But then he just embraces it fully. Owns it. His first scalp. Out of so many. Soon he will have an entire shrine made of bodies shaped into his name.
Now, it’s a Kinslayer. One-Eyed no more.
His new badge of honour. He made the previous title into one he shall make this one as well. Claim it like spoils of war. Damn be his mother, looking at him like she always looked at the dragons: ugly, incontrollable beasts of barbaric appetites. (Maybe in the end her own children became this for her, too). Damn be his grandsire spewing mockery about his blindness (Haelena showed him how venomous insects trapped under a glass try to sting the most in helpless defense).
Helaena has already gone away behind the veil of that other world she always communicates with and when she watches him she no longer sees him. ‘You’re a ghost. A ghost of Harrenhal. You came back home, brother.’
(Will he call her his spoils of war, too, her broken body, a crowning jewel in his shrine of worship?)
But this is then. Then hasn’t happened yet.
Now is him looking into Aegon’s eyes, the only person that baths him in praises, pride and approval. ‘See? Always claimed you would be the one. A true conqueror without a mercy. A true dragon, brother.’ Bloodshot eyes, swaying movement and a breath stinking of ale.
The King pays him tribute. Calls him a war hero. Anoints him his most trustworthy of the warriors.
So why the taste of ashes fills up his entire mouth instead?
*
The dreams never end now.
He is Vhagar. He conquers, he claims, he annihilates and destroys. And he roars for more.
The fever burns but whenever he wakes up, the dryness in his throat remains, chocking him.
The words reach him through roars echoing, too.
Was it worth it?
*
The shrine of his bodies (No. The shrine of the spoils of the war) grows in size and thickness of blood and guts, too.
The bodies are not only black and in his dreams a headless boy dances on the bonfire asking him with his sister’s voice: Was it worth it?
Before he wakes up, gasping for air and finding ashes, he thinks he sees a glimpse of the head a boy carried.
A black crown of locks.
*
To escape the ashes he throws himself into the fire more and more. An irony he fails to see. He grows into formidable threat, everyone is talking about like he’s Vhagar personified. Like the true Conqueror returned to take everything with fire and blood. Cleanse the land anew. Baptise it into one true Valyria again.
Some call him The Stranger. Others Black Heart Prince. But most uses the only honorific he promised himself to make into one: Kinslayer Prince.
When he burns another village in their campaign to claim Harrenhal he laughs to himself, voice hoarse with ashes in his throat, to drown out the curse words returning.
Was it worth it?
*
It is only fitting that he wears the Red Rubies crown.
King Regent. And they kneel to him and they adore him and they shout hails for him.
Masses of nameless people. His mother no longer sees what’s in front of her, devoured by a sept, a prayer and holy oils. His brother half dead doesn’t have drunk praises for him anymore. And Helaena murmurs to herself over and over again with eyes empty and manic: ‘You lived too long, brother. You lived too long, brother.’
No. Ameond pretends there is still that purpose that defines who he is.
One-Eyed Aemond.
Kinslayer Aemond.
There is a point to it all. To his bloody path. To every burned ground and maimed body in his shrine.
*
He feels like he found it again when he finally manages to take Harrenhal by slaughtering the entire House Strong, some of them with his own bare hands.
The image of the altar of the blood and guts in the hall of the castle fills him up with it. This is right. This is true. This is sacred.
The Stranger writing his gospel in fire and blood. Gospel about debt being paid. Gospel about purpose redefined.
A voice, not in his head, but in this hall, from the corner of it, asks: ‘Was it worth it?’
An older woman. She hid but now she stands there, proud and ready for whatever fate the Stranger brings.
A crown of black locks. Dark eyes, glinting with challenge. Shapely but round nose.
‘I didn’t come here to fight you, uncle.’ (Was it worth it?) The voices in his head aligned into one, clear sound of his nephew.
He remembers. (No. He never forgets). And he shouts, fever burning at its peak.
‘Fight me, you craven! Fight me and make me rid of you, you cursed soul!’
He’s gripping the woman by her arms, breathing hard down her face, spitting the words of the prayer for salvation.
She replies like she knows. Like she understands. ‘But who you will be, uncle, without it. Who you will be when you’re rid of me?’
‘Take her away!’ he roars to his soldiers (hostages of his fever), confirming the curse of his purpose. Confirming the truth of the gospel of his life.
He can’t be without it.
The purpose.
Him.
*
He never told it to anyone, but he came back to the Silken Street to that brothel where they made him a man (broke him with the truth. Aegon called him crippled, Aegon called him wrong and maimed, until he finally responded to a girl with black, short hair, soft spoken but an attitude. Calling him uncle in tribute to Targaryen traditions, Aemond burying the true reasons within himself beneath shame and fear and fever growing).
He came back as that man made then and picked his own whore for whims and pleasure.
A boy he called nephew, because the walls of this place are thick and no one will uncover the truth from the grave of his heart.
You can’t maim the brothel’s workers so when Aemond pull out the dagger, a boy (nephew), almost screamed for the guards (making Aemond angry with how unfitting to the role this whore is).
‘Hush, nephew. It’s not for you,’ Aemond offers him a handle of a dagger, like he gifts him with precious jewels. ‘It’s for me,’ pleading for a boy to know, to understand.
But you can’t maim or hurt the clientele there either, so Aemond never found the purpose there.
Fire burning unquenched as he chased his nephew for it to his death.
*
‘Who are you, wench?!’ she’s been taken to his chambers (biggest room in this graveyard of the castle, fitting for the Conqueror or the Stranger).
Aemond roars the question (feeling haunted, feeling like this place has a hold of him, peering into his black heart and picking out his filthiest secrets).
The woman glides on the floor like she’s immaterial.
(A ghost of Harrenhal. Haelena’s voice rings in his head. There are so many ghosts here already and he only trapped more souls in this hell).
She casts him looks glinting with knowledge and mockery in it.
‘I’m your purpose, my lord,’ she’s close, like a mist of the dawn (the veil to a world of the phantoms). Her face painfully familiar. Her face an image of his kingdom of ashes. ‘I’m everything you chase after, uncle.’
He’s gripping her shoulders (she is very much physical, even if there is no wince of pain on her face but a beastly smile) and pushes her against the wall with Vhagar growling inside him for a swift end. ‘I will have your tongue cut out. Stop saying that!’
He doesn’t sound like a roaring dragon.
He sounds like then. In the hall of Storm’s End. Demanding for debts to be paid. (Wanting to be rid of this fever).
‘Don’t fight it, my prince,’ her hand is gentle on his face, as she tucks his loose strands behind his ear, reaching for the eye patch, for the scar. Aemond jerks away.
No one touches him there.
It’s a sacred spot of remembrance.
It’s a festering wound of a curse.
She leans closer and whispers witchcraft into his ear. ‘I can be your beloved ghost. I can even look like him, if it pleases my lord?’
He lets her go, moves away from her suffocating influence, turns around not to be tempted, not to be deceived.
He should have slaughtered her with all the rest. No more house Strong. No more reminders. Ashes to ashes to nothing to the void.
‘Look at me, uncle,’ it still reaches him and it’s not her voice.
It’s the same voice that never leaves his head with a mantra like chains on his neck and ashes in his throat. Was it worth it?
His body is not his own, a thread (a red thread) pulling him to face mocking destiny. A destiny that wears his face, but older. What he could look like if he wasn’t rotting in pieces in the waters of the eye of the storm.
Aemond’s empty socket aches and it spreads to his entire body, a chain yanked by some invisible force, hurting, burning, but it’s tinged with pleasure, relief and release.
It’s been so long. It’s only been yesterday, too.
His only purpose, defining him, making blood in his veins pulse and run with vigor. Making all of this worthy and meaningful. He calls the purpose by his name, fever of longing deceiving him to believe it to be real.
‘Lucerys.’
He’s on his knees, clinging to this body he never really touched, but it’s firm, taller, bigger, bulkier under his hands. He’s seeking absolution, he’s seeking damnation. As he clings to his nephew’s waist. ‘Will we find peace, nephew? Have you come to give it to me?’
There is even a smell of smoke and ocean lingering on this mirage posturing as his ghost. Aemond’s mouth waters. Perched for a release. Perched for freedom and fulfillment.
‘Yes, uncle,’ comes a response with the sound of a dagger and as Aemond looks up his beautiful, vengeful deliverance holds a knife reflecting glint of a purpose in those brown, familiar eyes.
Like he’s always known. Like he’s always understood.
If Aemond remembered how, he would have cried in joy.
*
He’s raining fire and destruction from the skies during the days. Becoming one with Vhagar, not leaving one ounce of lands not scorched, one body not melted. And at night, he’s dancing with the ghosts of Harrenhal in search for absolution.
*
The blade leaves an angry red trail on his pale skin of his chest as Aemond watches reverently, sigh of relief and acceptance leaving his throat (no longer stuffed with ashes).
He’s bound by the ropes to the bed. Naked.
Lucerys straddles him. Clothed. A soldier of justice or a executioner of vengeance.
Aemond sees him as his deliverance only.
‘Your skin is a parchment for me to write our story on, uncle. And it’s such a rich story. Will you let me?’ more cuts follow as they bleed and Luke leans forward to lick the blood with a long, languish glide of his tongue.
Aemond whimpers. There’s a series of incomprehensible words in shameless mewls wrecked out from his bent body.
‘What do you wish for, uncle. Anything you wish,’ Lucerys breath is moist and hot on him. Aemond thinks he wants to burn in it. Burned by his fire. Baptism and retribution.
But fire is not theirs in the end.
Water is.
He doesn’t know it, yet.
‘Please, please. Carve me up to your liking. Carve your ghost out of me, too. But pour yourself into me completely, so that I never feel empty. So that I never taste ashes where there should be you.’
*
So his ghost does.
*
Aemond is on all fours, gripping the sheets (splattered with red, it’s a permanent pattern on his bed now, a painting of their legacy to hang by the fireplace in a throne room). He’s sprawled wide for the taking (for his ghost to pour himself into him) and moves with haste and desperation to meet him halfway, to feel the emptiness inside him full and whole and complete.
‘How does it feel to have me inside, uncle?’ Lucerys asks, breathing hard, moving with fervor, his nails renewing marks on Aemond’s back he’s left many times before.
‘Like purpose,’ Aemond sounds wrecked, hoarse, and fucked. He’s wet, bleeding and sweaty. And he’s insatiable. Because whenever they are not doing it he feels emptiness edging him closer to madness, to fever.
There are days he barely leaves this bed. It’s only here, Lucerys is around him, on him, inside him. He never leaves. His ghost. His purpose.
There’s a tingle of release building inside him he always tries to stall, because then there’s a freefall into nothing (like a foreboding of their fate).
Lucerys knows this. He understands this. So he grips his hard, wet cock in an iron grab and stops the movement so that they can soar in this in-between. In this almost.
In their almost.
On the edge, just before the fall.
The tears always follow. Dissolving into his hair, long silver veil of a bride scattered like shards of the fallen stars.
Lucerys yanks it to lick the salt off his face. (Salt of the waters of his farce of a heritage).
‘I’m here, uncle. I will never go away. Not until you meet me on the edge,’ and he resumes the thrusts of his hips (Aemond bristles and whines, welcoming the fullness of that empty space inside, opening wide and loose for more of it) as Luke rides his dragon and guides him to that edge of salvation (and oblivion).
*
The aftermath is hollow. When the sensation subsides, when they jumped off the edge, dived into the depths of the unknown and Aemond feels alone and empty again.
Until Lucerys’ soft fingers trace his skin, read the pages of their story from his wet, marked skin, covered in blood, seed cooling down on pale parchment that is his body.
Until Lucerys’ loving whispers and warm mouth follow with praises and confessions: ‘You’re a vision, uncle. Beautiful, ruined, claimed and mine. Come and see for yourself,’ he clasps their hands together and helps Aemond up (his legs are shaking, they have been going for hours and hours, the entire night of this dance with the ghosts, his body – a testament of that). He leans on Luke’s strong, broad shoulders (what he could be, what he could grow into), nuzzling his skin in search for the familiar smell (but how does he recognize it, when he never had it for his own?).
In search for sanity and the truth (there is none, the fever and grief burned it all out).
There is a huge mirror in his bedchamber Luke guides them to, supporting Aemond from behind to put him on display.
Adoration of the sacred painting of the holy martyr. Aemond Kinslayer Targaryen.
No. Aemond prefers the name Luke uses to pay tribute to it.
‘Mine.’
The cuts on his skin shape into this name. Mine. The scratches freshly bleeding, too. Mine. The bites and the bruises from fingers digging deep. Mine. Drying out seed on his thighs. Mine.
‘Mine.’
Now says Luke’s cock slipping into him again (filling up that empty, aching space) like he never goes away, like he’s always inside Aemond, where he wants him to be, where he needs him to be.
‘Watch yourself as I take you again and again and again, uncle.’
(Mine. Mine. Mine. The rhythm of their anthem echoes with slaps of wet skin.)
(Yours. Yours. Yours. Aemond falls apart in his hands in helpless moans in response.)
*
He never sees his family these days. Those who remain, because even if they are alive, they are shells, hollowed from within, only the same fever that burns inside him fueling them from the inside into something resembling living.
The price they paid for hubris.
He’s the King of Harrenhal, the ruler of the ghosts on this graveyard, painting his bed in blood and seed. Or the Stranger flying his hellhound beast to bring the end of the days, collecting souls to the hoard in his kingdom of the dead.
There is no more purpose to him. No more meaning to him.
But his, his, his.
*
She forgets to use her witchcraft that day, when he returns from one of the campaigns of extermination, seeking soothing peace in relentless abuse his body needs to quench his soul.
He forgot she’s there. (He forgot Lucerys is not).
He demolishes the place. Breaks the mirror with his bare hands, bleeding from shards that for the first time don’t come from Lucerys’ blade or his nails.
There are screams or sobs or both.
‘Why do you deceive me, so? Why did I let you live? Why are you doing this?’
He finds himself gripping her, shaking her body, as if he could have the illusion back, to physically reshape her to his ghost, to his phantom, to his purpose.
‘You’re not him. You’re not him. You’re not him,’ he glides to his knees, clutching her waist, voice breaking as he repeats over and over again, stumbles over the broken prayer that can never return Lucerys to him.
Lucerys is rotting on the bottom of the lake.
She strokes his head like his mother used to do. She feels like her too, warm and broad and protective under his hands, clinging to her. And she murmurs like she used to sing lullabies to him. ‘My prince. My sweet, broken prince. I am everything that you have left. All the purpose. All the meaning left.’
He continues to hold on to her, gripping her body like gripping illusion, unable to let it go. His prayer takes on meek and pleading melody of: ‘Please, please, please.’
‘Hush, uncle. I’m here. I’m here. Come. Let me remind you,’ a hand weaving into his hair is his, a touch of lips there, too, the smell surrounding him pushes him into familiar, safe illusion and Aemond does follow. Follows his ghosts to bed, open his legs for him and lets him in to the empty space of grief and despair that never heals unless they are like this.
Fucking relentlessly.
When he spills for the third time that night, hurting, sore, filthy and loose (perfect, whole, filled to the brink) there’s a promise or a curse or both in his ear, whispered: ‘You know what you have to do, uncle. You know how to find me.’
*
Daemon is waiting for him by the God’s Eye when he arrives on Vhagar.
Alone. (No. Since Storm’s End he is never alone).
Prepared. (He’s lived too long. Helaena warned him. Helaena knew. She always knew).
At peace. (The fever has burned out. There is serenity where hollowness used to be).
‘Took you long enough, pretender.’
Caraxes wheezes his sinister whistling tune, to add his own warning. His own curse.
But nothing can reach Aemond in a state he is.
Completion.
He whispers to Vhagar, touching her scales with gentleness she probably never knew in her life. ‘Nyke glaesagon tolī bōsa. Ao gōntan tolī.’ (I’ve lived too long. You did too).
She responds with a tired rumble. She deserves her peace, too. To finally sleep undisturbed by the horrors of violent life they inflicted upon her.
Does he deserve his peace, too? Did he repent long enough?
‘Bisa iksos skoriot ao rhaenagon aōha mōris,’ (This is where you meet your end), Daemon speaks his admonitions, petting his dragon, giddying him up for the final accord of their symphony of macabre.
No. Aemond thinks. This is where I find the purpose.
Before they dance for the last time in this pointless war, Aemond pleads in his heart (pays his final tribute).
My lord Strong, can we rest now? Will you have me?
*
When he falls through the air to his death in the water (that is their grave) he hears the prayer that never abandoned him whispered melodically in his head.
Was it worth it?
Now he knows. Now he can respond with clarity.
Yes.
*
Alys Rivers sits on the throne of Harrenhal with a goblet of wine, toasting the room full of celebrating wraiths and she laughs, triumphant, undefeated.
They call her The Witch Queen of Harrenhal. They worship, they tremble, they fear. And she reigns this place, plays the game and has kings, lords and pretenders of Westeros on their knees for years to come.