Chapter Text
I do it ‘cause it runs,
your blood, within my belly -Tu sangre por mi tripa
In his dream Mother's eyes pierce him, large and full of terrible wrath. She hits him, one forceful punch after another. Aemond endures the dowager queen's aggressive anger without turning away. It is her right. And Aemond has certainly earned it.
The sensation he receives is vivid, tangible, the blows impossibly strong for such a frail woman, his own mother at that.
It makes no sense.
Slowly Aemond begins to remember: she hadn't really hit him that way, not by any means with her fists. Alicent had slapped him across the face, once, that time. A simple slap that had hurt him more on the inside than on his own cheek.
He recalls the exact moment it had happened. Not today. Not now.
Back when Aemond had revealed it, before her. What he had done to Rhaenyra's bastard, there above Shipbreaker Bay.
It’s at the point that Aemond comes to that memory that his mind can separate it, dream and perception. It is not Alicent who is doing this to him. No way.
He wakes up.
He wakes to the sound of Daemon Targaryen's strained voice, and to the pain of what he understands are his fists slamming into his torso, soon slamming the side of his face into the wall. It is also there, he finds, a numbing sensation in Aemond’s mind. A certain daze that only succeeds in confusing him.
Aemond opens his eye, defiant in the face of uncertainty. He takes in everything, immediately.
The sight of his uncle, before him, who for the moment does not see that he is conscious; the anger that shows in his expression. The silver hair tied in a knot behind his head and loose at his back. He hides his appearance under clothes uncharacteristic of him, grey and plain covering his figure more typical of a man of low birth, but Aemond also notices the chain mail beneath them.
The chamber they are in is gloomy, he observes; unfamiliar. Dank and underground, windowless. Stone walls and a wooden floor surround them. Aemond finds the door, far away, revealing stone steps leading to upper floors.
Dark Sister awaits, leaning inside her sheath against the wall. Too far away. Out of reach.
In no way can he remember how he got here.
Aemond notes it, immediately after. His own body, bound as it is, hanging against the wall. His arms, above his head, numb from holding his weight. The ungrateful reminder of Daemon's knuckles on his stomach and ribs. The sensation on his face; the blood running wetly from his nose down and the pain of the previous blows mingled with something else, something Aemond fails to recognize.
His hands clench into fists, and the chains that enclose his wrists clang metallic against the stone on the wall.
He can't get loose.
“You've woken up, it's about time, nephew.”
Daemon speaks to him, without even looking at Aemond. Another blow hits him in the middle of the sternum, then, knocking the wind out of him for a moment.
Despite the alarming slowness in his thinking, Aemond feels anger boiling up in him, unable to understand this situation.
“I believed you at Dragonstone, uncle. You will have to explain to me the meaning of this.”
Daemon studies him for a moment, silently, before his mouth turns into an enervating smirk.
“And what makes you think we are not at Dragonstone? You've been asleep for such many hours that we could be in Lys by now for all you know. Too bad that's not where we would want to take you, I'm afraid.”
Aemond stumbles into the trap and for a second worries that he might actually be in Dragonstone, in the belly of the old fortress. But if so he would be in a dungeon surrounded by darkness, he tells himself, and not in this place, improvised as it seems.
“This is not Dragonstone. It doesn't stink enough of fish and saltpetre.” Nor does Daemon reek of Caraxes at this moment and in their mutual closeness. Aemond senses that, wherever they are, his uncle will not have flown over his dragon recently. He may not even have it with him in this place. “Tell me, uncle, what part have you taken, in that I have been sleeping for so long as you say I have?”
Daemon laughs, apparently delighted at the accusation, not denying what seems to be obvious.
“Some part of it has been, have no doubt. But the fault for falling for such a stupid and obvious ruse has been entirely yours.”
Aemond remembers, at that moment. Too much.
His mind goes back to those days that had followed his return to King's Landing. He recalls, irremediably, what everyone's reaction had been. After all, Aemond himself had announced what had happened.
Not only that. He had pretended that Lucerys' death had been fully his intention. His decision.
He can remember it, all too well. That moment on Vhagar, when the feeling that had clenched his stomach had given way to a very different one. That was what he had willed to cling to, going back home.
To the sense of revenge.
Only to that.
His grandsire had shouted furiously at him, the second Aemond had uttered the news: Luke Strong now rested in his dragon's guts. Aemond had understood his anger, that was in no way part of the Hand's plans.
What's done is done. The saying had replayed in his head a few times lately.
He remembers the reproachful looks from the small council and the way they had questioned him, the moment Ser Otto had dragged him before them to repeat what had happened.
Mother had reacted with equal incomprehension, when Aemond had insisted, it was bastard blood.
“As much of your father's blood courses in you as it did in that boy, bastard or not," she had declared, upset as she was, as he tried to explain himself. “The Gods will judge us for this... And you put everyone in danger, you throw us into a war that could have been averted, don't you understand?”
Aemond had disagreed. Alicent knew it as well as he did, and so he had reminded her: the Velaryons crave power, as does Daemon. They would not let Rhaenyra agree to their terms under any circumstances, and if she did, it would be only to produce deception and treachery.
“It was going to be war one way or another, and now the Blacks ride one less dragon. While Vhagar flies for the right side, Mother.”
At the end of it all, only Aegon had defended him. Moreover, his brother had celebrated what Aemond had done, and in his twisted glee he had ordered a feast in his honour that very night.
Clinging helplessly more and more to his own doubts, Aemond had gotten himself drunk during that feast, toasting perhaps a few too many times.
Once to the rightful king. Another to the end of the pretender. The next to vengeance. Another to victory. Another to the spilt blood of bastards.
Another to himself, Aemond One-Eye, the Kinslayer.
The servants had taken him back to his chambers, at some point.
The following days had been no better, in any case. There was no joy within him, beneath that pride he presented, so Aemond knew. Instead what accompanied him was restlessness, the feeling of weakness, whenever he remembered once again that he had failed to control Vhagar, that he had been unable to make her obey his orders.
The memory, which intruded annoyingly, that at other times had calmed him, of the ephemeral catharsis he came to feel after assimilating Luke's death, turned into nothing in a second.
The regret, too, prickling in his stomach at other times. The damned guilt in him for having taken a life.
His grandfather had been right, he knows. Aemond should have captured Lucerys, taken him alive to the castle. Make him a prisoner of the Crown, tip the scales truly in the Greens' favour that way.
It was something he had not even considered during his hectic pursuit of the boy.
Even now weeks later, Aemond cannot explain to himself what it was that he had truly expected to happen.
In the eyes of all, at any rate, Aemond has harassed Lucerys to death and gloats over his cruel demise, condemned in the eyes of men and gods, murderer of children, of nephews. Everyone thinks that, he feels it. Everyone judges him for it.
He had embraced the damn lie and had made it his truth, proud of his crime before the stares and whispers.
Mother had been right, likewise. Aemond had forced himself to persist in his determination to stand up for what had happened, to wear it on his forehead even, emboldened in front of the others, behaving as expected of him after his deed. He had clung to that bravado that he knew unnecessary, while within his fears had been growing.
There is no doubt that he puts everyone at risk with what he has done, those who will be able to fight and those who will not. Mother and Helaena and his little nephews, them too.
That thought wanted to hurt more than any other.
He had gone to see Helaena's children one of the days, driven by his doubts. The twins were playing noisily, oblivious to everything, their childish laughter filling the chamber. His sister Helaena had been embroidering, her eyes intent on her knitting, her face radiant in the sunlight reflecting from the window.
Aemond had said nothing. He only wanted to see them, just for a moment.
It had been his sister who had spoken, without even looking at him.
“Wings in past battles,” he had heard her musing. “Maw in future battles.”
In the embroidery there had not been a dragon, he could see as he approached, unlike what he had thought. It was a meganeura, an extinct giant dragonfly that Helaena had once told him about. The critter was certainly all wings.
“The crone decides, and the boy is green.” Despite his presence, his sister hadn't looked up from her task.
Only that her words had equally puzzled him.
“Green and grey. Red and red. Maw in future battles.”
“Hel...?”
As if nothing, his sister had gone ahead, crossing silver thread in the fabric that she held.
Jaehaerys and Jaehaera were chasing each other around the room at the same time, still giggling.
Aemond had lowered himself to study Helaena's eyes, limpid and beautiful as they are, as he tried to decipher the situation.
It wasn't possible. She couldn't know...
“The circle does not stop, does not steer, does not obey, even if yours it is. Its blood is fire. Its fire is blood.”
Behind the wall that were Helaena Targaryen's lilac eyes, her brother had glimpsed that she knew what had really happened. Only she alone knew, how green Aemond had acted that one evening, frustrated upon Visenya's aged battle mount.
The notion had undone him somewhat.
He had taken her in his arms one moment, and the next he was shaking her, asking Helaena if it was true that somehow she knew, that it had been unintentional, that he was not a murderer. Or was he? Did she think he was?
Helaena had shut herself away from Aemond's attempts, as she sometimes does, unable to get another word out, and had only shaken her head at each of Aemond's questions, whatever they were.
Soon he had had to desist in his endeavour. Helaena is difficult to communicate with, which doesn't make her any less sweet as a sister. Aemond had thanked her for her effort and especially for her intention he guessed to encourage him, perhaps, with a caress on the pretty hair and a small kiss on the forehead. After all, Helaena only accepts his affection, apart from that of the children.
Red and red. Blood and fire. The ambiguity of her words had not been overly reassuring, in any case.
For days, Aemond had thought about it.
About what had already happened. On what was to come, now.
Aemond remembers, finally, how that very morning he had wanted to drink and drink, to somehow quell the dark feeling in his mind that had been bothering him lately.
The wine had tasted horrible to him, metallic, more unpleasant than usual - he had never found a liking for wine, really - but in no case had he stopped to think about the reason for that taste. Glass after glass he had asked the innkeeper to pour him more, hoping that the wine would take away that fucking sensation.
And at some point it certainly had, no doubt.