Chapter Text
i.
The Essos heat is stifling.
At night the earth cools and winds of the shores of the sea bring a slight reprieve of cool air. Still, the heat warms her skin and Joanna stands outside on the balcony facing the sea. Try as she might, the weather of Essos will always be an unfamiliar friend, strange but welcome.
Joanna breathes in the ocean air deep and tastes the salt on her tongue. Never would she have thought she would come to Essos, never would she have dreamed of the riches and luxuries she’s surrounded by now.
Joanna closes her eyes as a breeze lifts through the air. She tilts her head back, dark hair cascading down her shoulders as the cool air kisses her skin in a brief pass before it’s gone.
“Joanna.”
She turns at the sound of her name. Her brother –different in every way, in personality, in looks, hers dark, his light – stands before her, white hair contrasting sharply against the black and gold embroidered jacket he wears.
“Aegon.” She greets lowly, still unsure of their familiarity with each other even after having spent six moons together.
Together they make the last of Rhaegar Targaryen’s children.
The heirs to the Iron Throne.
“What are you doing out here? The guests are inside.” His tone is serious but there’s a soft turn at the corner of his mouth that contradicts.
“I’m uncomfortable inside.” She confesses, laces her hands behind her back and looks to the ground.
Lady Catelyn’s disapproving face flashes in her mind’s eye. It’s been years since she’s left Winterfell and still the anger and shame trail behind her like her own shadow clinging to the life in her body.
“You shouldn’t be. These people are here to celebrate us. On this night we make new alliances.” Aegon walks closer to her and casts his eyes upon the unruly sea, “Once we have our army and ships we’ll sail across the Narrow Sea and take back what is ours.”
She wonders, briefly, when the transition of what was his became theirs.
“I don’t think I told you.” Aegon’s voice is low and soft when he turns his eyes back to her, like he doesn’t want anyone to hear what he says, “You look beautiful tonight.”
Her heart races and Joanna can’t find the words to string together to create a thought let alone speak them. Aegon steps closer to her, he is taller so she has to lift her head to meet his eyes. They are much lighter than hers, a lighter purple closer to the color of the lavenders planted around the gardens.
Aegon smiles softly and lifts his hand to her cheek. The back of his fingers slide down her cheekbone to her jaw, it leaves a phantom trail of fire. She almost wants to ask what he’s doing, why he’s doing it, it seems much too intimate but a part of her doesn’t want to speak.
“You always look beautiful, of course.” He says lowly, his fingers rests at the bottom of her lip for a moment before they find their way to her shoulder, playing with the edge of her dress, “There just seems to be something different about you tonight.”
Her voice is caught in her throat.
Joanna stares up into Aegon’s lavender eyes under the navy night of the sky.
Aegon’s hand is light against her skin as it trails down the deep-v of her dress. It leaves a burning trail of heat in its wake and she just barely feels the brush of his fingers against the edge of her nipple. His hand moves back up and slips over the side of her neck, light eyes meet dark and there’s something that moves between them. A sort of intensity that she never thought existed.
He tilts her head higher; eyes’ moving over the soft youth of her face, categorizing what is similar and dissimilar. Aegon slips his thumb under the sharp edge of her jaw to the soft underside, rests for a moment over her racing pulse.
He leans his head down, to the hallow of her throat. She feels his breath, warm before his mouth closes against her skin. A noise of surprise escapes her before she can repress it and her muscles are tense, arms and legs locked into position.
He drags blood to the surface in long sucks. There’s a hand under her jaw and another resting on her lower back. His fingers dig into her hip briefly before he lets her go, soft lingering kisses up her neck, like the soft touch of butterfly wings.
The hallow of her neck is damp and she’s seen enough whores in Winterfell and Pentos to know that there will be a dark mark there on the morrow.
Aegon’s lips rest on the edge of her jaw, above his thumb which still rests against her pounding heartbeat. She feels his lips turn upwards, a smile, a secret, a promise; just for her.
When he pulls away and leaves he does not spare her even a single glance and all at once she feels cold. The only warmth left in her is the mark Aegon left.
ii.
She ignores him as best as she can.
Confines herself to her chambers or the garden or the training field. What transpired between them; the unravelling of curiosity underneath the barely refrained desire.
And she now knows it to be desire.
She feels conflicted, an ocean of emotions, a push and pull of waves crashing against her leaving her lost not knowing which way is up and which way is down. A suffocation of water filling her lungs, the automatic inhale for sweet air only to receive more water.
Joanna lays on her bed, large and soft with feathers, sheets as light as air and smooth on her skin. There is no familiarity here, no furs to keep her warm, no shutters over the windows to keep out the cold, no Ghost by her side; soft white fur and red eyes always on her. She misses it – them.
There are three dragon eggs near the hearth. They rest in a basin of hot coal, propped up like decoration (time has turned them to stone, someone says) she knows this not to be true. She isn’t sure how but she knows in her heart, in her bones, in her soul that they are not stone.
Joanna’s limbs are heavy with sleep, sore and aching from training with swords all day. Her eyes close and open languidly, in her sight are the eggs, waiting – waiting for something, someone; waiting for her.
Her eyes close.
When she wakes it’s to a touch. Someone has lain down behind her and there’s a longing hand, heavy touch from the outer skin of her knee all the way up to her inner thigh. She isn’t afraid, there’s a part of her that knows who it is, knows that there is only one person who is allowed in her chamber without her permission, only one person –
“You’ve been avoiding me.” It’s an accusation breathed along the curve of her neck.
Aegon’s hand is soft even though it’s calloused, rough from training just as hers is.
“Yes.” She admits tired and pliable.
And there’s a spark of indignation towards him because she knows that he knows after she’s had a particularly hard training session that the last thing she wants to be is challenging. When she’s aching and tired she’s soft and supple and agreeable.
He squeezes her inner thigh, “Why?”
“What do you mean why?” She mumbles angrily into her pillow, “The why is perfectly clear and understandable, it’s happening right now.”
He huffs, a blow of warm breath over her neck and it take all of her strength not to move closer into his arms.
“Do you dislike me?” Aegon asks laying a soft open-mouthed kiss against the curve of her neck. His hand slides up along her outer thigh and up her belly and resets just below her right breast.
She clenches her legs closer together and turns her face away from his and further into the pillow. Her face burns in embarrassment at the sudden realization that she has no smallclothes on, only the short slip of silk night dress she wears. She can feel his shoulders shake with laughter against her back, feel his smile against her neck and the sound ripple against her skin.
She makes an unintelligible noise to answer his question. Not a yes but not a no either. Aegon stills behind her, she can almost hear the debate in his mind until he settles on an answer, rather a question.
“Do you dislike what I want to do you?”
The question blooms embarrassment deep in her chest along with another feeling she can’t quite discern. She makes the same noise again, still tired and pliable, her eyes drooping close with every breath she takes. The feel of his thumb running slowly back and forth under the flesh of her breast is simultaneously thrilling and soothing.
The heat of the hearth, the coals her dragon eggs rest upon, pull her closer to her dreams, to her own navy night behind her closed eyes. Her eyes shut, Aegon shifts moving her with him until she rests on her back.
He nudges her nose with his, she opens her eyes briefly.
She gazes into the lavender depths of his eyes before he pulls her night dress down and moves his mouth over the valley of her breasts. Tongue hot and heavy filled with whispered promise over her heart.
(I am yours and you are mine)
“We’ll take back what is ours with fire and blood.”
iii.
She is alone when the eggs first start to crack.
Aegon has just returned with eight thousand Unsullied marching at his back, the masters of Yunkai’s blood soaking the cobbled stone streets turning black with the sun. Her brother is named after Aegon the Conqueror for a reason.
She hears it at first the sharp crack against the silence. She rushes to the eggs in fear that something has happened, something awful, something has been done to take them away. But through the crack of the dark red egg there’s movement, a sliver of deep red in the depths of the dark shell.
Joanna stands and rushes to her door, dark hair whipping behind her in her haste. She opens the door and sees the guard, light hair and purple eyes, characteristics of Valyrian descent, “Get Prince Aegon now.”
The guard makes no move, stares at her wide-eyed at her sudden and disheveled appearance, “Get – Prince – Aegon – now.”
At her second reiteration and forceful tone he moves quickly down the white marbled halls of the immense castle they are allowed to stay in.
Joanna races back to the fireplace, places her hands over her three eggs. Dark red, green, and blue, three dragons – in her head there is a whisper; the dragon has three heads.
Slowly but surely the cracks widen allowing light to be casted upon small bodies moving, straining to be rid of their confinement. Joanna picks up the barely held together ends and places them in the basin of hot coals. The dark red dragon is the first to break free, followed by the green one then the deep blue.
They cry and screech, newborns in every sense of the word and instinctively her hands reach out, reach forward to them. They crawl to her shakily, bones soft not yet strong enough, nestle into her warm flesh, on against her belly, the other wrapped around her thigh and the last held high in her arm.
She doesn’t even notice the tears that spill down her face until a hand wipes them away.
Aegon stares wide-eyed and just as amazed as she at the sight of the dragons, her dragons – their dragons.
“Aegon.” She whispers, the blue dragon raises its head from her thigh, screeches loudly, “Aegon.” She says again this time it comes out as a sob.
Aegon’s hands, weight press against her skin rest on the sides of her neck under her jaw. He tilts her head up, presses his lips to hers, open mouthed and desperate, like all the air has disappeared from his lungs and the her lips are his oxygen.
Joanna can’t feel anything but the line of Aegon’s lips, his hot breath, wet tongue, the scrape of this teeth when he catches her lower lip between his.
He holds her head in his hands carefully, gently, like she’s a fragile little thing. Slide his hand behind her head and grabs hold of the back of her neck, slips his thumb to rest on her pulse.
“Westeros will be ours.”
A promise.