Chapter Text
She remember dying. She remember taking Baelon's and Maekar's urns and setting herself on fire with them in her arms.
She remembers the hollow feeling they left behind.
Maegelle Targaryen, first child of Prince Maekar and Lady Dyanna, twin sister of Daeron.
Maegelle had been the last... The last of her soulmates to die. They had all left her. They had all died and left her to be tormented on this damned earth. To suffer in agony after their deaths.
Daeron, The Drunken, they call him. Maegelle always called him Daeron The Dreamer. Just as dreams tormented his nights while he was alive so was he tormenting her during the nights from beyond. After her twins death she had never dreamed a good dream; only death and distruction. It was like after his death, he left all his Dreams to her. All his sleepless nights and half-finished prophecies were hurled in her general direction after he died. If only the Gods have given her his curse from the beginning... Mayhaps he wouldn't have died, for Dreams killed her twin just as much as the pox did.
Loving Daeron has been instinctual. Two sides of the same coin. They shared a womb and a crib. They share blood and fire. They shared each other's shadows.
When Daeron learned the sword, he taught her as well. When Maegelle learned embroidery, she taught him as well. When Maegelle didn't eat apples, he would eat them and gave her grapes instead. When Daeron didn't sleep, Maegelle was there to sing him valyrian lullabies and put him back to sleep.
They were one. Interconnected in a way, few in the family understood. There was Aelor and Aelora, Uncle Raegel's children, but they were not that alike. While Aelor and Aelora were in love with each other Daeron and Maegelle were not. A fact their father, Maekar thankfully understood and never pressed for a bethrowal between the two despite His Grace, The King's, expectations.
Daeron and Maegelle were not lovers, but they were not just brother and sister, they were more. They were the same person in two bodies and when he died, she had felt as her mind has ruptured, pouring her grief over his pyre.
Prince Baelor, The-King-Who-Never-Was, stole her fire. With his death, her heart was no longer aflame. Whatever spark was inside of her was extinguished, with the last of the embers of his funeral pyre.
It has been so easy to love Prince Baelor. As easy as it was to breath. He was kind and patient; inteligent and wise; cunning but not cruel. A great man, all agreed; A great ruler, some still say; But more than anything he had been hers, but there are none alive to remember.
She had loved him quietly. He was the Heir of the Dragon, and she his beloved niece, his favored brother's favored child. She could not love him openly, she knew that from an early age. She had realized that, at the same time she had realized that her childish fascination had become something more. Maegelle had been just a child then, just after her mother, Lady Dyanna had died, when the ugliness of the world had just started to creep into her own little world.
The Prince had been kind with her admiration, and so had been his wife, Lady Jenna. For he had been married, and the lady bore him two sons, Valarr and Mattarys. They all knew of her girlhood infatuation, as it had been hard to hide when she wore a star struck expression every time he was in her vicinity. Despite her embarrassingly wide known affections, they have not taken offence. They put it on a girlhood infatuation worthy of the House of Dragon and left it at that.
Some japes were said when too much wine was had at feasts or private dinners but nothing scandalous. Not when, as she grew Maegelle was the high of propriety. No heated looks, no lingering touches, nothing improper. She was quick to smile for the Prince but so was so for everyone. She was quick to obey his commands but he was The Heir and The Hand of The King. She danced with him if he invited her but never danced closer than appropriate for an uncle and niece.
And yet... Some nights, when thoughts were to loud and sleep was refusing to come; they would meet in Queen Mariah's gardens, sourounded by endless parfumes from Her Grace's flowers, under bright moons on quiet nights and they would talk. They would talk of everything, his problems, her worries, what scared them. She baceme his confidant. A thing frowned upon but accepted as long as they knew their bounds.
They were never alone though. Even then, in the gardens, they were never alone. The guards were always watching, keeping them safe and protecting the absurd notion of her virtue. Like her Kepa, a knight known for his honor and chivalry, would dishonor his wife and his niece in one fell swoop by deflowering her on a bench in the garden. Absurd!
Maegelle knew with certainty that her uncle loved her as well. She knew in the way his eyes burned when he called him Kepa. She knew when his fingers clenched in fists when she spoke Valyrian to him. She knew when he said "I'll miss you" when she left for Summerhall. She knew when he embraced her, just for a moment, and his whole body relaxed as if every burden fell from his shoulders at her touch.
But he never took anything from her. Just her heart, the spark that kept her alive. He did not steal kisses, nor did he took her by the hand. He did not took her waist or cradled her cheek. He never took anything, honorable fool that he was, but he would have given everything.
Maegelle had asked her father only once for a chance to be with Baelor. A chance, was just what she asked for. Leave to make her affections known. It had been almost 6 years after Lady Jenna's death, so nobody could drag Baelor's name to the mud if he allowed her to love him. Yet her father's response had been a decisive no.
She could have pursued her Kepa Baelor without her father's leave but the thought of taking Baelor away from Maekar had been unfathomable. She knew that the moment she chose to love Baelor openly, her father will shun them both.
Maekar Targaryen... Her father...
Her love for her father has been complicated and his for her just as bad.
Maegelle had been his first born. The child that made him a father. The child that loved easily and was loved even easier. The child that would have been everything he desired in an heir. She was inteligent and soft spoken. Clever and charming. With a head for numbers and a mouth that waved diplomacy.
If only she had been born with a cock...
Maekar loved her and hated her in equal measures. She had been the perfect heir yet she lacked the correct appendage to inherit. She had been lady of Summerhall in all but name,since her mother died, yet she refused to marry Daeron and make her name official. She had been proficient with the sword and yet she could not be squired nor could she be knighted.
Still her biggest fault had been loving him. Maekar hated her for it yet he could not stop himself from loving her back.
She had loved him more than a daughter loves her father and he did the same. After her mother's death something changed, slowly but surely. Maegelle would catch herself admiring Maekar's physique when he trained with the men and likewise she will catch his eyes following her while she wondered the corridors. When she embraced him, he would tense and then he would held her reverently, as though she was a sin bestowed on him.
She knew lust when she saw it, and she did saw it in her father's eyes.
He was never inaporpriate with her. Never touched more that he was supposed to. Never embraced her longer that was proper. Maekar was Baelor's brother through and through.
Nevertheless Maekar had been more selfish than his brother, especially after Baelor's death. No longer was he pushing her towards marriage with Daeron or Aerion. Their embraces become hurtfull things between two broken souls. And when Targaryens started to fall like flies, her father no longer let her out of his field of vision, desperately clutching at what remained.
Never give her what they both needed. Mover crossing that invisible line he had drawn for them. Kepa gave her just enough love to sustain herself until he died. After that...
That is why she was confused at the moment. She died. She set herself aflame with the ashes of her twin flames. That was a fact.
So why the fuck was a little Aegon waking her up in the middle of the fucking night begging her to fight for Ser Duncan, when the Trial of the Seven has been more that 25 years ago?