Chapter Text
“Every time a Targaryen is born, it is said, the Gods flip a coin to determine his nature, on one face, greatness, the other, madness. The entire world holds its breath to see how it lands.”
Luke feels like his coin was lost at the sea.
It is said what knowing one's fate is dangerous, as by knowing that you might want to change it and it's a dangerous road to walk on.
They said the ones who try to change their fate are the ones to succumb to it.
Luke wonders how much of the truth it holds. He wonders if following your fate like a lost puppy will change things or simply put them in their places.
He wonders if Jace ever gets dreams like these, if Joffrey is tainted with Targaryen visions in the way he lately seems to be.
He hopes not.
It hurts, oh gods how much it hurts, uncle Aemond all over him, vision clouded, blood seeping between his fingers. It's not what he doesn't feel his eye; it's what he feels it too much.
The Seven, he begs, make it stop. Old gods, new gods, he doesn't care, just make the pain stop.
Someone had to hear him; because that's the moment he wakes up.
Sometimes it's different; sometimes it's his hand what holds the blade, sometimes Aemond isn't even in the room.
It's always the right eye.
He always wakes before it's done.
The king is dead, they say, long live the Queen.
Mother is soon to be crowned.
But Luke isn't fooled, he hears people whispering, he knows what they are talking about.
"A woman on the Iron Throne? Let's see how long she'll last," they say.
"I will serve no queen!" others sneer.
"Prince Aegon should be the king," some conspire, as if they're not seeing Aegon for who he is, as if the man doesn't spend more time at the Flea Bottom than he ever spent in a council room.
But he is a man, and it's all what matters.
Luke hates it, he hates how mother has to prove herself over and over again, fighting twice as hard where man would need no fighting at all, how council visibly resists and contradicts her at every turn, as if Viserys didn't appoint her as his heir twice. As if they didn't have enough time to accept it.
They weren’t planning to accept it. They were sure she wouldn't actually get crowned; they actively opposed her reign decades before it happened.
Mother has husband and children at her side, she has Rhaenys and Corlys Velaryon and the entire Velaryon fleet, the best in the Seven Kingdoms, and she has Luke.
What she doesn't have is queen dowager's support. What she truly doesn't have is the support of her own kin, her brothers and sister, her blood.
And Luke knows he's part of the reason, he knows his existence is part of the reason, and his actions, and the history that lies in blood between them.
He remembers Aemond's sharp scream as steel cut the flesh, he remembers blood everywhere.
He sees The Dream once again and weeps as he wakes.
Dreams are not supposed to hurt.
Rhaena knows, like she knows everything about him, like he knows everything about her. His lady-wife, his closest friend, they share bedchamber now, but would never do what it takes to consummate their alliance.
Good thing no one demands them to. Good thing she's she mirror of him, feeling inadequate, feeling small, feeling not enough for their family, feeling less than they need.
Luke despises himself for thinking so, but he's relieved she understands, what she knows, what she couldn't force herself to touch him in a way beyond familial either, what her gaze is always in the sky or at the page of the book and never – on people. She simply doesn’t care for them so.
They have their oaths and their duty, but it sounds so minuscule, so unnecessary.
They will never be able to become anything but siblings, and even as their customs say it can be that and matrimony, Luke knows it will never actually work.
He respects Rhaena enough to not demand anything, and she does the same in return.
They sleep in the same bed none less, two desperate for contact bodies, second children, simply so much...less than their capable older ones.
Rhaena dreams of dragons, but her dreams are the normal kind, not the ones to come to life.
Luke would trade their dreams in a heartbeat.
Every time a Targaryen is born, it is said, the Gods flip a coin.
Lucerys is just Targaryen enough for his coin to fall; Rhaena is Targaryen enough to burn in order to get warm.
Despite her mother dying in a dragon fire, she doesn't fear the flames; sometimes Luke thinks she reveres them.
So it's really shouldn't come to anyone's surprise then they do what they do.
Rhaena knows what he’s about to do, so she helps.
Luke wonders if the dreams will stop once the deed is done, or if they'll simply turn into memories.
He holds up the thin blade of valyrian steel to inspection; the edge is sharp enough.
"Are you sure?" Rhaena asks. He'll ask her the same thing pretty soon.
"I don't think I have a choice," he voices the fear what was living in his lungs for years, dormant and hidden, but always there. It took the dreams for Luke to accept the fear as the part of who he is, to acknowledge the deep scar lying at the pith of his soul.
She sizzles:
"You always have a choice!" and how he loves Rhaena for that, for the belief that whatever fate one is destined to have, he can still turn the tides.
If Luke has believed that once, he cannot remember it now.
"Do you think my coin fell the other way?" he asks and is scared of the answer to come.
She snorts.
"I think you're absolutely insane," she confirms. "But not more than the blood we’re born into."
His is the task of simple endurance and blood.
Her is the journey of fire.
If he fails, he's a cripple; if she fails, she is dead.
"Let's do it," he decides and hopes the pain is worth it.
Luke swears his screams could be heard from the Kings' Landing.
It hurts, but no more than a dream - and really, what kind of dreams are these to hurt more than an actual injury?
He lies to maester, lies to grandparents and lies to his mother:
"It was an accident," he says. "On the training grounds," and refuses to elaborate, refuses to point at the culprit.
He would never let them know Rhaena tied him up and cut in until the gross blob fell out, slick with blood, how his stomach heaved to free itself from the remaining of the meal.
How she begged for forgiveness for something he asked her to do.
He knows he wouldn't have been strong enough to do that himself, but luckily Rhaena is always here to catch him.
It starts like this, with Laena Velaryon’s death and the fight what shatters the family.
If they had even been a family.
He remembers blood on his hands, pain in Aemond’s remaining eye and the King demanding to know who dared to call them bastards.
No one used to then Ser Harwin was alive, no one was brave enough.
Luke remembers him; bigger than the world, brighter than the sun, kindest of them all.
How could anyone use the word Strong as an insult is beyond him.
He remembers grandfather judging a single word thrown at them to be of more importance then his own son.
Viserys was a good king, but a bad father.
Luke was too young to understand the insult then; he’s too weary to care about it now.
They are bastards; even a blind man could see that.
He wonders what they can do with it.
It’s like it’s their fault lord Laenor wasn’t their father by blood, he loved them still, they had two loving fathers and then they had none.
Luke remembers standing in the main chamber, queen Alicent demanding his eye then screaming about duty.
If he gave it back then, how would things be now?
Would they be a family still?
“You can’t simply cut the boy’s eye out,” someone said back then.
Watch him.
Rhaena goes away then. It’s her half of the story, her part of the madness. Luke knows better than to stop her, to beg to reconsider. She cut an eye for him, the best he can do in return is cover her tracks.
It’s a suicide mission, honestly, the road to ashes and ruins, the descent into the darkness.
Rhaena is stubborn, and fiery, and also very brave.
She wants to ride a dragon more than anything in the world.
“Aemond had the right idea,” she confides in him once. “If you want a dragon, you must get yourself one; no one will do it for you.”
In the dreams Luke can almost hear her sing:
“ Drakari pykiros, Tīkummo jemiros
Yn lantyz bartossa saelot vāedis
Hen ñuhā elēnī: perzyssy vestretis
Se gēlȳn irūdaks Ānogrose…”*
Once the main disturbance over his sudden and suspicious injury is over and Rhaena is safely sneaked away, Luke takes his time and rest, tries to adjust to suddenly half-blinded vision of his own. He tries to read, but the words seem to slip away, turning into indiscriminate mess; tries to train, but keeps missing things – everything being suddenly too close or too far away.
Is this what Aemond had to deal with for the last several years? No wonder he looked none too happy to see Velaryon brothers – Luke can see (or rather he can’t) how this disadvantage could turn the most timid of them all into a raging beast.
He comprehends his actions and wonders if it was a mistake.
But the deed is done and the eye is cut, so all Lucerys can do now is adapt, learn, endure.
The coronation of Rhaenyra, The Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, The Lady of The Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm is in two days and Luke really hopes Rhaena makes it in time.
He also desperate to know she is alive.
So far no one had caught up to princess’s Rhaena’s disappearance several nights ago; Luke makes sure of it, always commenting on how she was just right here, but no, he doesn’t know where she has gone. Twice he has to lie about her not feeling well to attend the family meal, once to cover for her before their grandmother whose lesson she missed.
The boy has several maids on his side; maids were always especially fond of the twins; and Baela definitely knows and plays along, and with mother, Daemon and Jacaerys in King’s Landing preparing for the incoming coronation, it’s surprisingly easy to lose a certain Velaryon princess in their castle of Dragonstone.
Gods bless Baela and maids for keeping him humored.
Luke suspects Baela knows exactly where her sister is right now, but she’s also unexpectedly content; and if Rhaena’s older twin-sister doesn’t worry, then, Luke gathers, he has no reason to worry either.
Rhaena gets back just in time, and oh, what an entrance she makes.
On the back of one of the oldest dragons alive, the one Jaehaerys the Wise rode, she comes with pride and glory.
And Luke doesn’t think much about how she flew on a dragon without a saddle, till he sees her arms.
They are an absolute bloody mess.
“It’s just a scratch,” Rhaena jokes as maester treats her wounds – dragon scales are anything but soft, they tore in her flesh through the leather gloves and left several deep marks. Her appointed husband doesn’t know how she even managed to hold into scales for long enough to fly home, how she didn’t fall to her death from the massive back of the Bronze Fury. “It’ll heal.”
Rhaenys shakes her head.
“What is this with you and Luke getting hurt needlessly?” she inquires.
They both quickly look away.
“It’s for the greater good,” Rhaena finally speaks.
“No good is great enough if you tear yourself apart for it,” and with Rhaenys’ final word the dispute is done.
She stays home for one more day as Lucerys and Rhaenys fly to the Red Keep for the incoming coronation, Luke maneuvering carefully, still not trusting his halved vision; a simple satin sack hidden in his saddle purse, a single freshly made gift in it waiting for the right time.
Luke knows he needs to prepare himself for the reactions, for people staring at him, mouth agape, for whisperings, for rumors.
He forgets to prepare for his entangled family.
The realization of that hits him in the face, quite literally.
He’s turning the corner then another figure crosses his trajectory, too quickly for the boy to react, smudged under his still unfocused gaze. So Luke plants his face right into someone’s chest and all but cries with pain – he managed to plaster his injured face into someone’s hard leather armor.
“Watch where you’re going,” a rough voice demand, and the boy rushes to apologize before the acknowledgement settles.
He knows this voice.
Luke bustles to raise his gaze, head turning to the right far enough for the left eye to see clearly. Honestly, will he have to move his neck around at all times now; will his remaining eye ever adjust?
He stares straight into his uncle’s face.
And it’s funny, because Luke wasn’t thinking about it back then, as he persuaded his wife to cut his eye out; but he and Aemond kind of match now, remaining eyes looking right into each other.
It’s almost like looking into the mirror, except the person in the mirror is a higher than you for at least a full head, has striking silver hair and sports a scowl.
A scowl that quickly transforms into a frown and freezes there.
Aemond Targaryen is staring at him like he has seen a ghost.
Lucerys shifts his weight from one foot to the other.
“Good morrow, uncle,” the younger prince tries while he pretends he’s not being scrutinized under what can only be described as the sharpest, most intense look a person was ever graced with. “Are you on your way to the coronation?”
Luke knows perfectly well that what’s not where Aemond is heading, that’s where he was heading, and his uncle was obviously moving the opposite way. Maybe he was getting as far away from the throne room as possible, the boy muses, even though the coronation will require his attendance regardless.
Maybe he wanted so escape it for just a moment; Luke knows that feeling well enough.
Aemond’s frown deepens.
“Good morrow, nephew,’ he echoes, barely making an effort to show some manners. His look is still locked on boy’s face; at Luke’s right eye sewn shut by a small angry scar, still a little red and puffy. “I see you couldn’t keep both of your eyes intact after all,” he finally comments.
You neither, Luke wants to retort, but it’s not the time nor place for a fight. Instead he plasters the most unsuspecting smile on.
“Accidents happen,” he conveys and aware just a moment too late what this can be taken as an insult as well; in a way in which anything Lucerys says can be turned into an insult by Aemond.
His suspicions are confirmed by the scowl on his uncle’s face.
“See you at the coronation,” the older prince says as he brushes unceremoniously past Luke.
It could’ve gone worse, he comfort himself.
It could’ve gone better, his mind unhelpfully supplies.