Chapter Text
Alicent was mad. She’d heard the servants whispering in hushed tones and noticed them averting their gaze from her. As if her anguish and rage were something that could be contracted. It set her teeth on edge every time she heard the clack of their shoes coming up those infernal stairs. Always in pairs. As if they were attached at the hip. As if they were afraid to face the mad dowager queen on their own. She hated them. She hated the way they would look at each other and communicate silently with their eyes. It made her chest ache with memories of her. Memories that Alicent had, until very recently, once kept tucked away like prized jewels into a locked box for safe keeping. She’d take them out only in the most quiet times, when she needed an anchor to her truth and to her past. Now the memories seemed to spill out of her, slippery and free. They made her eyes prickle with angry unshed tears and the lump in her throat swell until she thought she might just suffocate. Her hands were picked raw as she choked down her rage.
These goddamn girls didn’t understand. They didn’t understand her sacrifice, her duty, or her pain. And she hoped to The Seven they never would. But she laughed bitterly knowing that wasn’t likely, this world had a way of chewing up and spitting out the young and innocent until all that remained was a bitter husk. She heard footsteps and braced herself for a pair of young maids to come bearing dinner or a maester to check on her waning sanity. Her shoulders tensed as she awaited the young girls who’d curtesy shallowly with staggered movements as if they weren’t quite sure whether she was a traitor or a dowager queen. A prisoner or a guest. Alicent knew she was both and neither and everything in between. There was no word in Valyrian, Dothraki, or Westerosi that captured her status.
The door creaked open, but instead of the two pairs of footsteps she expected, Alicent heard only one set step into the room behind her. She turned and felt the air get sucked from her lungs. A child, no more than 13 stood in front of her. White hair and piercing lavender eyes had the former queen gasping in shock. A ghost perhaps, Rhaenyra come again to torture Alicent for her sins. However, it was not Rhaenyra, but King Aegon III, Rhaenyra’s son and heir. She gulped a bit as she took in the boy. It’d been two years since she’d last seen him, when she had firmly opposed the marriage of her granddaughter. They were but children and she’d long grown tired of the queer Targaryen customs of marrying blood to blood. There were no Targaryen’s left except for four children. Why continue the practice? But she’d been overruled. She held no power in these matters and had been confined to the holdfast. A prisoner and a royal at the same time. She’d heard whispers from the maids that the King was a quiet boy. A gentle one. A sad one. She could be glad that Jaehaera would not be subjected to cruelty at the hands of her kin and lord husband. A small mercy.
“Your grace,” said Alicent as she stood and curtsied to the boy stiffly. His eyes scanned her. She felt examined, and a wave of unbidden memories crashed over her again. It was the same way Rhaenyra would analyze her when they were children, trying to figure out Alicent’s mind. Like a puzzle to be solved or a code to be broken.
Aegon lowered his head in a bow, “Dowager Queen,” he said. His voice was soft. A quiet sadness seemed to radiate in waves off of him.
“To what do I owe the honor?” Asked Alicent as she folded her arms behind her back to hide her hands as she continued to pick at them.
Aegon glanced around the room. It was fairly bare. She didn’t have much to keep anymore; everything valuable in her life had been lost or taken from her except Jaehaera. And even her granddaughter was not all quite there. The horror of her brother’s death had scarred the young girl. She spent hours staring into space. Lost in thought. She reminded Alicent so much of Haleana sometimes that her heart would physically ache in grief. “I come seeking information,” spoke the boy king.
Alicent’s eyebrows pulled together almost imperceptibly before returning to a neutrally blank expression. She’d spent her life schooling her features at the behest and badgering of her father. If she could not control her emotions it would spell doom for them all. Perhaps it was the one thing in his miserable life that her father had been right about. Her rage and jealousy and sorrow truly had condemned them all. The great Targaryen dynasty leveled by Alicent Hightower’s anxieties and jealousy. A family of gods, destroyed by a pawn made into a queen. It was a tragedy so epic Alicent could only imagine the poems that the bards would write. But Alicent truly didn’t know what information the boy was after. She’d remained in the holdfast for two years. She knew nothing anymore. Nothing except what she’d heard and deduced from the gossip of servants and guards. “I do not know how much help I will be your grace. But I will do my best,” said Alicent carefully.
“I will not beat around the bush or insult your intelligence Queen Alicent. You know my mother died when I was quite young, in a-“ he trailed off. In a grotesquely evil horror, Alicent’s mind supplied. At the hands of Alicent’s own son none the less. She felt herself grow queasy just thinking about it. The king continued, “awful way.”
Alicent nodded, “Yes your grace,” she spoke softly, her voice filled with unshed tears as she imagined Rhaenyra dying in the jaws of one of those awful beasts. Bile rose in her throat.
“I have been attempting to learn more about her. Her life. Her desires. Her wishes. To make peace with what happened. To figure out what sort of ruler she wanted her children to be.”
Alicent nodded in understanding. She’d lost her own mother at a young age and had spent years attempting to learn anything and everything about the woman. To know her in some way.
“I was looking through some of her things, and found a book. Detailing childhood feelings and friendships. Feelings about you, dowager. I gather you were close.”
Alicent felt herself pale. It was no secret amongst the court that the lady Alicent and Princess Rhaenyra had been best friends and companions. But to hear that Rhaenyra had kept a journal her whole life about their time together shocked her. It made her ache with long hidden childhood hope to find out what Rhaenyra had written about her. The King continued, not waiting for Alicent to acknowledge his statement. “There are very few people alive who knew my mother, and even fewer that knew her as a friend. I will not pretend it does not make me angry to have to turn to you. Knowing how she felt and how deeply you betrayed her. But I have exhausted all other avenues.”
Alicent swallowed thickly. She wanted nothing more than to turn the boy king away. To tell him she remembered little of her childhood and that it was so long ago. But those memories, so slippery and free, were at the doors of her lips demanding to spill free. But Alicent held her tongue as she remembered herself. Her father, cruel as he was, had taught her the power of knowledge and how to leverage one’s power to get what they wanted. “Your grace, I understand your desire and would share my memories, but I ask for you to understand the pain they hold. I must ask for something in return.”
The king scowled at that, “And what is it you would demand in recompense for your memories of my late mother? A room with a view? A trip to The Reach?” He spat out bitterly.
Alicent shrunk a bit at that but remained firm, “The words and feelings of your mother from her writing. A memory for a memory. A feeling for a feeling,” spoke Alicent quietly.
Aegon’s shoulders tensed. He examined her with a fiery gaze that she’d grown used to seeing in Rhaenyra and Daemon’s eyes. The eyes of a dragon no longer had much ability to scare her. She’d seen so much and had so little left to lose. “Fine. A memory for a memory. Quid pro quo.” Spoke the king finally.
Alicent nodded in ascent. “Let me start at the beginning then. My father was not a kind or loving man…”