Fire And Blood

Mending The Bridge

Rhaenys I

Days blurred into one another. Finding sleep was difficult, finding an inner balance even more so. Staying in that house was suffocating.

It stung how well Aunt Daenerys got along with him. Sometimes she caught herself wondering if there was already a budding romance between aunt and nephew. It'd be the perfect match as well: the future king and his beloved aunt as his queen.

The king with the name of their greatest ancestor. The king with the name of her baby brother who had been so brutally torn from life before he even got a taste of it.

Angry tears threatened to spill again. She dried her eyes with the back of her hands, swiping angrily and almost cutting herself in the process with her fingernails.

Was her Aegon's body even cold when her father had named him? Or had he named him before her Aegon was gone? Whichever it was, it was terrible and it hurt and she was so, so angry.

She didn't want to hate him. He was a good man who held himself to impossibly high standards; she could see as much. Yet, it was so difficult not to hate him. She hated that he was here and alive, the result of her father's betrayal, while her baby brother's skull and brain were plastered against a wall and her mother was almost cut in half, her body parts barely held together by her flesh.

And nothing of it was his fault. She knew. She understood. But she needed someone to blame. Neither his mother nor their father was alive anymore. He was, however. It was convenient. It was easy.

She exhaled deeply. The security of her and her aunt's bedroom was a small comfort and almost meaningless compared to the whirlwind of conflicting thoughts in her mind.

He had tried talking to her once. She had almost gouged his eyes out, then and there –

– only in her head, but the sizzling, burning inferno of her anger had been there. Aunt Daenerys had pulled him away. It was a good thing she did. Rhaenys couldn't tell for how much longer fantasy would have remained fantasy.

Aunt Daenerys understood her.

Aunt Daenerys may be younger, but out of the three of them, she was leagues above them in maturity and wisdom. Rhaenys was not ashamed to admit it. Even hidden, even with the danger of her discovery looming over her had she had a rather innocent childhood. Aunt Daenerys hadn't had that luxury and even more so with the whole Viserys-tragedy.

She needed to talk to her.

With a sigh, she got up from the bed, walked towards the door and opened it. Willing herself and her body into quietness, she listened.

"Mēre?"

"One."

"Lanta?"

"Two."

"Hāre?"

"Three."

"Izula?"

"Four."

"Tōma?"

"Five."

"Very good, Aegon!"

Rhaenys bristled. Yes, Aunt Daenerys had started to use that name now.

"It is his name, my niece. It is his Valyrian name. A good, strong name."

A name that had belonged to her baby brother before the Monster had painted the wall with his blood, skull and brain. A name that her father apparently enjoyed handing out to just anyone.