Work Text:
The night’s quiet was broken by the rhythm of iron-shod hooves on a damp road.
Forests and fields fought the intrusion, streams rushing forth like a band of banished sellswords. Bats eagerly beat their wings, shaking out the cloak of darkness and spreading it once more over all that should be slumbering.
Somehow, the first rider in the train heard none of it. His thoughts were far louder than the night he stole through.
Philosophical wanderings were only possible because the road was one that Prince Rhaegar had travelled many times, before and after ascending to the Regency— it was a destination which had always drawn him in. A ghost he turned to face and found smiling, dancing, beguiling in greens and blues and reds. A fearsome fire which compelled him closer.
Behind the Prince Regent, however, rode an unusual companion. It was not customary for Rhaegar to keep Ilyn Payne particularly close, and the silent man’s presence was rarer still when he made this journey. For the simple reason that Aerys had seized a tongue as easily as he had a father, a brother, and this was something Lyanna would not fail to note. To feel a stitch in her side. Lyanna was... quite adept at looking to another and finding some scar she shared with them. Likewise, Ser Payne was not among the changing of the colors at Summerhall every quarter. That was a matter for the rotating personal guard, led in proud column by a white cloak and anticipating their silver tassels.
Yet on this particular occasion, Rhaegar had brought Payne. Perhaps because he required the uninterrupted silence of the dragonflies. Or perhaps because Ilyn Payne gave Rhaegar’s inner turmoil something of a physical presence— not unwelcome tonight, in how it breathed down Rhaegar’s back. Not unfamiliar. Always, the dull shiver traversing his spine.
Discomfort had to be borne, and borne graciously, because it could not be avoided. In Rhaegar’s mind’s eye, Elia’s words from earlier in the evening tied over and over into knots. Like a mummer seeking a kernel of truth, he rehearsed their dialogue from her moment of arrival in his chambers...
An arrival as unexpected as this very ride to Summerhall.
And yet, one had spurred the other. I am retreating to my mistress and my love, precisely as my lady wife professed to fear. It was honey on a lemon, that Rhaegar made for Summerhall because it was home to his wife’s laments. The Princess’s fears were his, in a sense. His to know and resolve so that their alliance of marriage, sturdy and long-keeping as the apples of autumn, would house no holes in its curtain walls. Their marriage was nothing if it was not peaceful. If it was not combined strength and children, heirs who would one day build their own towers and turrets upon the legacies left to them.
Elia had fears, though. Ones Rhaegar could hardly discount— he had spent many a lonely night in King’s Landing considering them himself. Nights with Lyanna and Aemon were too warm, he could not think when they were piled like puppies atop him. Aemon was still the age for crawling into his parents’ bed, an age Rhaenys was past now, Rhaenys who could read and scribble and only sparingly had nightmares which a vigorous cuddle with her cat could not soothe.
She feels safe in her own room, which is for the good, Rhaegar assured himself though it was bittersweet, his little girl growing up and away. If only he could bottle up time…
A father’s folly, such a wish. Undoubtedly that would present its own issues. It was difficult enough dealing with the past when it was in the past, rather than staring one in the eyes. Much like the question of Lady Lyanna haunts King’s Landing, even with her so many leagues away.
Such a sour irony that Lyanna haunted not only Rhaegar. It nearly made him jealous to know it. Him with the least right of any to that emotion.
The whole world knows you to prefer them, Elia had said— entering his rooms in her dressing gown without so much as announcing herself, almost as if she’d been propelled forth and the intrusion was happening to both of them.
If she had only wished to lay down beside him. To feel the comfort of two bodies slumbering in one bed. Rhaegar would have been contented to offer her that. He would have guarded her vulnerability like a secret, even from Lyanna. The whole world knows my failures, Elia had admitted instead, and spread like strawberries the stain of shame across them both.
The failure is mine, he said, honestly and humbly. The words alone were no justice.
What, he wondered, could he have told her that would have been better? A pledge to always defend the rights of their children? He’d give it a thousand times but against what enemy? For it could never be his heart, with her shining grey eyes. Nor his darling who was half bouncing curls and all his mother. Those were dangerous thoughts, Rhaegar couldn’t allow them to fester or they would cast themselves like spells of prophecy beyond merely Aemon in Summerhall— Viserys and little Daenerys would walk out of the unlocked door and upon that edge just the same. Suspicion and mistrust paved a slippery, slippery path.
All this the Princess Elia knew. She was soft to children as well, a gentleness inseparable from her nature. So there was no true solution in a denunciation which Rhaegar would never give. To affirm her the same right to a ‘favorite’ whose discreet presence Rhaegar would never begrudge... would only be taken as a blistering insult. If such a relation ever came to be in her life it would likely shock her above all, she would not have sought it out, in fact the moment she noticed it happening she would likely resolve to put a tidy stop to it. Rhaegar knew it because, before Lyanna, he had assumed that was what he would do. Should the infinitesimally small possibility come to fruition.
There was the tentative remedy of the Princess Elia having more duties. In the sense of court and council, not the traditional one expected of the wife of the Prince of Dragonstone. That, of course, was out of the question.
It would be early for Elia take such a position. Not inappropriate, however. Rhaegar had been occupied with spiderwebs of diplomacy since assuming the regency— he had not been crowned King though, not yet, thus Queen Rhaella still presided over certain ceremonies. The queen was ever welcoming of her gooddaughter, and Princess Elia well-suited to such a sphere... but the two women of his family did suffer from healths quite delicate. As a result, Rhaegar took as much as he could on to his own plate.
To the point of exhaustion. However preferable exhaustion might be to idleness, one did feel the lack of marrow in one’s bones at some point. His respite… ah, it was an open secret that his respite was a thigh he could lay his head on, while their hatchling slumbered upon his mother’s breast. His respite wore her riding boots from sunup to sundown.
Rhaegar’s exhaustion made the time he spent in Summerhall feel earned, though. It was a wonderful hurt. After each visit, he returned to King’s Landing feeling strong and clean, both arrows and puppet wires severed from his back.
His lady wife greeted him on those returns to the Red Keep. Which Elia had alluded to, in their conversation of the late hour. Rhaegar had already known it to be a pinching task. It was only done because Princess Elia saw it as her duty to welcome him. To let it be seen that lord and lady were not estranged, that she not only knew of the Prince Regent’s travels but was the first to know, it was all arranged between them, him only travelling to his mistress at her approval.
Rhaegar greeted her mutually each time and even bowed to her, but it was not equal. It could not be. Even when she asked and how are your dear ones, my faithless lord? as if it were a jape, a wise worldly woman chastising her naughty husband.
His response was dutiful and courteous but it spoke volumes, that question. It asked much and more about equality.
Earlier, Elia had said: at first I still felt you were my husband and my lord, because you spoke of her as if she were a daughter. And Rhaegar had been sitting on his bed facing her, one socked foot balanced on the floor, groping for some honesty besides: no, Elia. You did that.
Really they had only obliquely spoken of Lyanna until Princess Elia began inquiring after his ‘dear ones.’ A question posed as if Lyanna and Aemon were equivalent. Were equals.
A daughter and a son, like Rhaenys and Aegon, ones Rhaegar loved whimsically but would tire of should they require much of him. How little she truly knew him… of course, if Elia doubted Rhaegar’s commitment to Lyanna and Aemon, it was a gratitude she owed to having the same doubt of Rhaenys and Aegon’s place in their father’s heart. Every fear was born of a fear before, and did sire the next.
That, at least, was not a misgiving he would take the blame for. It was the result of a different voice in her ear, one the Princess Elia was wont to trust. And there was nothing new or blameworthy in that.
Elia had said: on the night of our wedding, we met as allies. We spoke the whole night as though we were two lords come to parley. Soon the sun rose, and you shuttered the window that we might sleep for a clutch of time. We shuttered more than that. The failure was mine, no doubt. My lady mother had urged me to make you feel I needed you.
I am the one who needs you, my lady, Rhaegar told her, sidestepping the ghost seeking entry— he knew better than to directly argue with Elia’s late mother in her grave. It was not a lie, anyway. For the sake of the children, for the sake of the Realm. He relied on her for those and more.
That is not what I meant, she said gently, half of a sad smile on her face.
Perhaps if she could see herself through his eyes… what, Rhaegar asked himself? What then? All her worries would be assuaged? Another fool’s hope, though this one had a pinch of bitter humor in it. To see herself through the eyes of an appreciative man would be to see herself plainly. Her multitude of wonderful qualities, indispensable qualities, all the rich elements of her tapestry which could only be further admired when one knew of the adversities she had faced in her life. She’d see a scene be as honest as the open sky, if she could only borrow the eyes of him who did not burn for her and therefore saw her beauty unembellished. Who knew her loveliness as it was illuminated by the light of day, and could not by any be denied.
This impossible desire he recoiled from even moreso than the last, shuddering atop his steed which was galloping by then, splashing louder and more carelessly.
No, Elia could never see as he did. Because everything Rhaegar saw was splattered and drowned and necromanced in shades of bright fucking blue.
If the Princess Elia saw herself through Rhaegar’s eyes, she would also see all the empty hallways and rays of light wherein the edge of Lyanna’s braid or perhaps the bottom of her foot taunted him the whole day long— his lover’s eyes would be the most damning proof of his faithfully-kept faithlessness. Truly, it was not only Lady Lyanna who could find herself in any walk of life. For Elia could search between all his bones for some manly urge to be needed, vaunted, to sire more children, and she would find only the bewildering loyalty of the exile.
No doubt I would feel similar pain to see myself in Princess Elia’s sight. Rhaegar was hardly indifferent to the opinions of the mother of his children. He respected her above most. She was a rare woman and true.
Yet as the distance between him and Summerhall grew short, Rhaegar found his mind wandering once more to Lyanna. The night had thinned considerably. Already the King’s Crown was half-gone from sight; The Sword of the Morning winked one last time before it disappeared.
Oh, Lya.
Rhaegar hardly knew what he meant to say to her. She would question his unheralded arrival, why he was descending on her so suddenly and with such vigor, like a man returning to his homeland. If he told her all…
Lyanna would taste the drop of betrayal in the tale. Elia had confided in him, not her. If Rhaegar told his lover all, and it would include her own name, this confession, that could not be avoided— if he told her? She would feel a guilt. Certainly she would. Lyanna understood the lack of love, just as much as she understood what it was to be a woman. At the same time, the discordance was not hers to solve, however much she might wish to. Only Rhaegar could arrange his affairs.
All too soon the time for pondering was over. Before him, Summerhall dawned beneath the cracking of a yolk.
Day crested the horizon, and Rhaegar reared up beneath it. The palatial defenses remained light— Lady Lyanna had not seen fit to change that in the reconstructions— which left Summerhall appearing nearly translucent. Otherworldly. The newly raised glass gardens were heartbreakingly beautiful in the morning’s pale light, as Lyanna had promised they would be. Crystalline with dew. Draped in reams of rising mist, all those ghosts drifting up in search of a cloud to kiss.
For a moment, Rhaegar simply listened to the choir of forest birds. Theirs was a sad song. The first song he had ever known. There was no curtain wall about Summerhall, nothing to keep him from feeling the beating of his own heart in his chest or hearing it echoed back. It all converged in his throat.
And then… there was Lyanna.
If Rhaegar had conjured her from his mind alone, there would not have been a single detail different. She stood in her riding boots. Her loose hair danced.
He dismounted quickly, preferring to greet her on level. On his feet he could embrace her, press her body against his, inhale the rich scent of her hair. She could hold him in turn. Peace sliced him in half when that all came to pass, vivisecting him in her arms. Gods, but he wanted to feel her weight on him.
“Going for a ride?” he mumbled into her hair after an embarrassing stretch of time. Rhaegar hadn’t felt a moment of it, hardly noticed the bodies darting around them in the performance of their duties— only Lyanna. Humming like a bee against his cloak.
She laughed. “No. The ruby mare foaled early.” Rhaegar let her turn him to the near field, where she pointed towards the silhouette of a clumsy suckling. If he squinted he could make out the color… but he hardly cared to. Instead, he looked down to a smiling Lyanna. I haven’t kissed her yet, he realized, and made to remedy that.
She pulled away too soon, keeping only his hand in hers. “Aemon was so excited, you know. He thinks the colt was born just for him. Look, Rhaegar.”
Rhaegar looked. There, in a pile of clean hay, lay a lump of little boy.
“He tired himself,” he said, chuckling.
“He always does,” Lyanna agreed pleasantly.
Rhaegar bent down to inspect his open-mouthed sweetheart, who was breathing wetly and dreaming. Their wolf cub changed so fast… when Lyanna respectfully said Ser, however, Rhaegar blinked and rose. It was Payne Lyanna spoke to. She was curious of him, as Rhaegar had known she would be. The man’s response to her greeting had been his customary clack and bow.
Rhaegar did not wish to explain just then. He packed the knight off with the horses instead, dimming Lyanna’s inquisitive eyes for the time being in favor of scooping Aemon into his arms. Aemon, as Rhaegar predicted, did not stir. He sleeps like a rock, this one.
Inside, Lyanna fussed with some pots and pans. In her plain browns and woolen socks (her boots had been left at the door) she could have been any young and pretty wife whose man was come in from sea. Rhaegar idly picked straw from Aemon’s hair while he watched the boy’s mother boil tea and slice bread, spreading her favored butter and preserves on one. It hardly mattered what she wore, though. She moved about so much that her shape, her rhythm, was always obvious. Rhaegar realized he wanted her... though he already knew it. That familiar lancing desire, sharp and shaft-long. He loved her to distraction. Loved to watch her.
Aemon remained sleeping through all of Lyanna’s noise, somehow.
My precious darling, Rhaegar thought fondly— his Northern blessing cloaked in a dragon’s name. Lyanna had wanted one to match his coloring at first, cycling through scores of Northern names before Rhaegar got around to telling her of his relative who was a maester for the Night’s Watch. She’d seemed to think that a good omen, a thread between them. Lyanna loved to entangle herself with the world around her. Rhaegar had known that when he told her his sneak of a tale. For a woman so terrible at needlework… she had a talent for weaving.
When finally she sat, she did so with a thigh pressed to his. She kissed him, though only on the nose, and laid her chin on his shoulder. He could feel her happiness to see him. For some reason being with her emboldened him, made him stronger and more sure—
“Why are you here, then?” she asked.
—more willing to change the entirety of his life.
“It never ceases to astound me how you have resurrected Summerhall, my love,” he said in praise. Light was peeking in the window, mischievous as the mistress of the manse.
She hummed indulgently. “Shall we have a banquet to celebrate?”
When he did not answer, he felt her swallow. Felt her pull away to look upon his face.
Quietly, she asked, “is it time to leave?”
Guilt did press it’s fingers into his throat. “It is— tremendously difficult, my love. To be away from you. I find myself distracted to the point of uselessness. Away from Aemon as well, who insists on growing only when I am gone. If I had you with me... we could return at times, of course.” Rhaegar trailed off, watching her face turn to stone while she considered him. He allowed her this puzzled silence; his reasoning had been silly, lazy, openly manipulative…
For the simple reason that Rhaegar would not use Princess Elia’s feelings to convince her that she should take on the burden of King’s Landing.
His plea, however, was manifestly sincere. The time for licking wounds in separate realms was over.
Eventually, Lyanna pouted at him, her grey eyes lit like sconces. Rhaegar leaned in to brush her nose with his, his eyes fluttering shut. The weight of their boy in his lap had his sore arms screaming in joy.
“Am I being terribly selfish?”
“You are,” Lyanna said— which was nothing he did not know. When she closed her eyes, Rhaegar knew it from the shape of her sigh. “And selfless, too, I suspect. You are ever the contradiction.”
“And yours. Above all, yours,” he added. Though it was nothing she did not know.