Chapter Text
Aegon doesn't have the eye for art like Aemond does, isn't off in a fancy university studying it like his brother, however, he does have a steady hand and determination.
He spends hours drawing Rhaenyra.
Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra.
Always Rhaenyra.
Rhaenyra holding his corpse against her chest, maggots crawling in his eyes, his blood on her hands; he's her babe and she his mother, his lover, his everything.
Rhaenyra nude, her hair flowing down her back, tears staining her lashes. Aegon wants to see the kind of face she'd make if she caught him looking at her like that. Aegon wants to make her cry for him.
(To see her smile just once.)
His pencil strokes might be rough and his hands black with ink, but those expressions are forever captioned by him. They are his. Not Uncle Daemon's and not those of Harwin Strong; no, these visions of Rhaenyra are solely his to have, creations of his desperation.
Aegon calls it art, fucks himself to sleep with his sister's face in mind.
He collects old photos like trophies, keeps polaroids in his wallet, hides them in between his shoes and socks, stuffs them away wherever Mother can never see; does it all, so he can marvel over long forgotten memories when the house is empty.
Their family portraits, back when when she'd still taken part in them, see Rhaenyra as far away from Aegon as she could: Father standing behind her; Aegon in the front with Mother and Aemond, bony fingers on his shoulder, a forced light in her eyes, Daeron cradled to her chest. Only Helaena had seemed happy that day, bending down to pet a beetle just as the flash went off.
So, to Aegon, these faded old prints are the only proof that, once upon a time, his mother had been young, too. That she got to hold Rhaenyra's hand by the sea and had been smiling with her, nervous grin hidden behind a hand. (Rhaenyra had smiled boldly then, blowing the camera - Or was it the camera man? - a kiss.) That one is his favorite.
And if Aegon squints hard enough, he can almost pretend that the light reflecting off his mother's hair is silver, and that is he, Aegon, who stands by Rhaenyra's side.
______________
"Aegon," his mother says quietly one day, holding a crumpled piece of paper up to his face.
He blinks, eyes adjusting to the light. Nothing good ever happens when it's his mother who wakes him. Nothing.
Aegon blinks again. The world is blurry, colourful blotchy shapes. He doesn't want to deal with this, whatever his mother has found fault in this time.
Alicent rips his blanket away.
"Aegon, what is this?" Mother repeats, her voice rising an octave. He always makes her angry, but somehow... This time, Aegon does look closer, and his ears start ringing.
Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra.
She's holding his sketchbook in one hand, a ripped out page in the other.
He swallows, hand twitching at his side. "Where did you find that?"
His mother's eyes follow him like a hawk as he gets up, almost as if she knows that he's going to rip the drawing out of her hand the second that the chance presents itself.
Aegon stands up.
"Did you find it in Aemond‘s room?" Aegon taunts, eyes set on Alicent's tiny hands. He doesn't mind lying to his mother like this. He does mind the thought of how he'll get his piece of Rhaenyra back.
Alicent slams the book down at his desk and points an enraged, angry finger in his direction, eyes going cold. "Don't you dare accuse your brother of drawing something as vile as this!"
"But you'll accuse me with no proof?" he shouts back, stepping closer. He might not be as tall as his brother, but Aegon can be intimidating in his own right. "How is that fair?"
"This is your sister! Don't you see what you are doing?"
Aegon circles his mother. "You wanted me to marry Helaena, Mother! Don't show your hypocrisy now, will you?" He's almost at the desk now.
"You were friends once," he tries to reason. "Don't you see why I like my sister?" He laughs. "I can't hate my flesh and blood! What kind of brother hates his own sister?"
Alicent shakes her head, suddenly seeming older than she is. Their family had sucked the life out of the girl from the photo. Part of Aegon thinks she deserves it. She sighs. "Don't speak about what you don't know, Aegon."
Somehow, her sudden calm enrages Aegon the most.
His hand curls around his sketchbook.
"You only want to keep her for herself!"
For Aegon, this is truth. He sees it in her eyes, in the care that till goes into her hidden memories, into her amplified rage. She's never been this angry; never been this threatened, envious and hateful. That must be what she's feeling now, isn't it? To look at herself in Rhaenyra's colouring, in male where she herself is female - not bound down to a marriage he hates, to children that take more than they give. Aegon is free. He could have Rhaenyra, if his sister wills it, Alicent could never.
"Do you hear what you are saying, you miserable boy?" his mother screams. "Have you completely lost your mind now? If your father saw this-"
Aegon sees red. He throws the book back at her, the spine hitting the bone of his mother's eye and she cries out in pain.
"I don't care!" Aegon screeches. "This is about you! Everything is always about you!" Snot runs down his nose, and the tears burn, and Aegon burns. "You don't give a single shit about anyone but yourself! You don't care about what I think or what I want- You don't even notice me! Don't you get it?" He points one accusing, shaking finger at her. He's always just like her, even down to the smallest gestures; Aegon is her child, Aegon should be important to her! He's trembling all over. "You even love Rhaenyra more than me! You love everyone more than-"
He pats around the desk once more, fingers clutching around any heavy object he can find, doesn't care if it's sharp or whatever meaning it has. He wants Alicent to hurt. He needs her to hurt.
For her to deny what he is accusing her of.
Alicent stands bent over, one hand holding her face, the other reaching out towards him. "Stop it, Aegon!"
"Fuck you!" He bents down to pick up the photograph, the cursed, wretched thing that stops his mother from loving him. If he ruins all memory of Rhaenyra, she'll have to love him. He tears at the edges and-
The slap aches painfully on his cheek, and Aegon knows that it's just the kind to bruise this time. His head snaps back.
"Yes, Aegon!" Alicent hisses, ripping the picture out of his hands. She holds it more care than she ever did Aegon. His eyes start to water.
She steps closer, and, suddenly, Aegon feels small, a boy, again. "But do I say it? Do I play the fool as you have? No, because I am your mother and as your mother it is my duty to raise you! To help you grow beyond the failure you are now! Weren't you my son, I would have long given up on you!" The seven pointed star seems to bend in her hand. Does she imagine it to be his throat instead? For her to have suffocated him in infancy? "Isn't this what you want to hear, isn't it, Aegon?" she asks. "Me to admit, I'd wished you'd never been born at all?"
Aegon holds his breath.
"So," he begs, "do you love me at all? Any part of me?"
However, salvation does not come. An agitated breath... Mother tears her eyes away from him, and her voice loses its edge - returns to the usual pained monotone. He doubts she would ever cry over him; not even now when he's hurt her so, physically and emotionally.
"Clean this up, Aegon." She turns her back to him. "By dinner time I want to see none of it."
Somehow, it hurt more than her hands ever could.
It takes a while, but, eventually, Aegon moves. He reaches out towards the where his phone has fallen, slowly dials a number he he hasn't dialed in years, one he shouldn't for all he knows. He does it anyway.
One beep, a second, then... silence on the other side of the call, breathing, and Aegon let's out a heavig sob. "You left me here," he cries. "Although you know she hates me! My own mother hates me, and you left because she hates you-" he coughs, "Why couldn't you take me with you?"
"Aegon," Rhaenyra sighs. "How much did you have to drink?"
He ignores the question; has to, or else she would not listen. "I want to live with you, Rhaenyra." Aegon wipes over his eyes. "I'll run away either way," he threatens, and even Aegon knows how pathetic he sounds right now. "Throw myself down a bridge or in front of a bus, as long as I don't have to spend one more day in thi-"
"Who do you think you are for behaving like an insolent brat, when you are an adult, Aegon?" his sister hisses. "You are a Targaryen! If you wish to run away, do it." She pauses, and Aegon knows that she's barely holding herself back from screaming at him like his own mother did moments ago. It's the most attention he's ever gotten from Rhaenyra. "Don't try to force me into making your decisions for you, because you are-
Rhaenyra stops.
"Forget what I said, Aegon," she says. She's back to the cool, impassioned tone that's reserved for his part of the family. Uncaring. "Go to sleep, apologize to your mother and don't... Don't call again."
"If I were Baelon," he breathes, hands shaking, "would you have said yes?"
Rhaenyra hangs up.
______________
Helaena is a nut case in and itself, and yet, Aegon often does try to understand his little sister, attempts to help her when she gets fuzzy and wants to be touched by nothing and no one, finds bugs and glittering stones for her.
However, today, (and most days, Aegon has to admit) he wants to shake her in frustration. She's back again to talking in riddles, repeating the same words over and over again, and Aegon is just done with it.
He'd only come down to the kitchen to take some of yesterday's leftovers up to his room. If he raids some of Mother's wine, too, while he's here, does it matter?
Now, Aegon's hand flies down on the table. "Can't you just shut the fuck up for one second?" he screams. He's tried talking gently to her, tried ignoring her- he just wants some peace and quiet. And while Mother may have endless patience for Aemond's and Helaena's moods, Aegon does not.
Helaena begins to cry: Small budges of tears rolling down her cheeks, eyes becoming big and watery, and her face grows an ugly rash.
He looks the same when he cries.
Pitiful.
Of course. He scoffs. It's only Aegon who does things wrong.
Aegon's chest rises, up and down, and up and down, and- His head is killing him. How is this fair? Why is it always, "Aegon! What did you do?" Even those times that he didn't do anything at all? Even when he's poked probed at until he just needs to scream and throw something? Maybe that's what he's meant to do, to hurt and disappoint; who he is meant to be. It wouldn't make a difference now, would it?
"You're unbearable," he hisses. "That's why Father loves Rhaenyra more than he does you!" He hits the table again, and Aegon is sure that his hand is bleeding now. "That is why no one but your own family can stand to be around you, Helaena!"
And what does his sister do? She stares at him, bug eyes swimming with tears, and Aegon hates himself for ruining everything he touches, for saying to Helaena that is the undeniable truth about his standing in the family - however, he still hates his mother more in this moment, wants to hurt her more than he wants to console Helaena.
"You want a reason to cry?" Aegon asks.
Aegon lungs his bottle and storms towards her door - towards the disgusting creatures she keeps locked up in a glass box like some kind of psychopath.
Helaena runs after him.
"No!" she wails, throwing herself at him when he opens the lid. She sounds just like their father, like their mother, like everyone who he had disappointed in his life. "Stop, Aegon, don't! They didn't do anything wr-"
She sounds like Aegon.
For one moment, he pauses.
His little sister looks back at him and, for a second, he thinks of a younger, smaller Helaena wearing the same expression on her face after a scolding from Mother. She'd behaved unladylike, Alicent had explained, holding Helaena's fingers between her own. Helaena had nodded, her eyes sad and heavy and Aegon had just never understood her back then.
Helaena was always sad.
It didn't matter how much he tried to make her happy - Helaena would always be sad, and Mother would always come for her, desperate, hoping for anything to make her pale little girl love her, to be close to her like she once was to- Aegon thinks back to his own hands, red and raw after their mother heard him talking back to their priest; remembers the first time she found a magazine underneath his mattress.
The moment passes.
Aegon pours wine into the terrarium until there is not one single red drop left inside.
Somehow, he finds solace in Helaena's agonized screams.
______________
Mother sends him on his way with a bruise on his jaw to match the one his book had given her. They spent the ride in silence.
"You want to be with Rhaenyra," Alicent finally says, pulling the car into the train station. "Be with Rhaenyra. But don't come running back to me, when she does what she does best, Aegon."
Aegon doesn't respond.
Aegon doesn't care.
He only wants Rhaenyra.
______________
Rhaenyra's face is passive, calculating, when she greets him at the train station. Her eyes flicker over Aegon, and her mouth twists downwards, then turns into a fine line again.
What is she looking for?
Who is she looking for in him?
The brother or... his mother?
Aegon knows it isn't normal to immediately find blame in himself, to think that each and every person's mood depends on him and his fuckups. Of course, that doesn't hold off the nervous pounding in his chest, the sweat forming on his hands, and Aegon can't stop twitching his fingers, he-
"I heard what you did to your sister," Rhaenyra states, and her eyes seem to stare right through Aegon. Your sister, not ours. They're no family - he's the duty his mother begged her to take. He has to look down, or else he'll begin to cry. "I am doing this, because your mother asked me nicely. So, I will say this once. We will have none of that here, Aegon. Do you understand?"
If she were Mother, she'd have taken his chin between her fingers, made him look back at her. the message is just as clear. Rhaenyra doesn't have to; the message is just as clear.
Hurt my children and I will have you suffer far more than what you did to Helaena.
"Yes, sister," Aegon whispers. His chest aches. "I'll behave."
His sister nods, gaze softening a tad as she musters his cheek.
The bruise still hasn’t faded.
"We will have none of that, either," Rhaenyra says.
She stares at him expectantly.
Aegon doesn't know what to do. He just shrugs. What else is he supposed to do? All of this is making him want to scream.
"Good. Now come"
With that, Rhaenyra takes his suitcase in her hand and pulls it after her, towards the house.
Towards her home.
Towards... Aegon's new home.