"do you know i could break beneath the weight of the goodness i still carry for you?"
fate is a curious thing. viserra velaryon and aemond targaryen treat theirs as casually as flipping a coin, until they realize what it means to be born to burn tog...
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a study in those who know things.
By the time the doors to the throne room swing open, evening has fallen in a curtain of orange-streaked blues, and Viserra has fully convinced herself that she imagined whatever happened in the gardens. Whatever almost happened.
In truth, it hasn't been hard: her mind was wiped blank the moment Raya appeared, panic erasing the pretty afternoon and the smell of sea water clinging to Aemond's hair and the feel of his aquiline nose ghosting over hers. Her lady-in-waiting all but dragged her up to the castle, not commenting on what she may or may not have seen, filling Viserra's silence with a rushing stream of excitement for her brother's arrival as she stripped off her friend's sailing attire and cinched her into a clean gown at a bone-breaking pace. Raya deemed her presentable in a few short moments and they careened down the halls to the throne room arm in arm, pushing past courtiers and guards and servants alike.
And then they waited, one minute stretching into ten, ten stretching into thirty. Aemond was already there, between his brother and sister at their mother's side—the Greens in a line on one side of the throne, Blacks in a disorganized cluster on the other, both Rhaenyra and Alicent vying to stand directly center—but he wasn't looking at her, or anything but the floor, and it was easy enough to pretend that everything was as it always had been: he was little more than a stranger to her, the uncle who made no effort to know her for all the years of their shared life. He would never touch her with startling tenderness, tuck a flower behind her ear, stare at her mouth with all the desire of a starved man looking at his first meal in a week. He ignores her. He always has. And she accepts this, doesn't beg for more, doesn't dream of anything but. Everything is normal. Nothing happened in the gardens (or on the boat, or in the weeks repairing said boat, or in the training yard, or the godswood, or—)
So it hasn't been much of a challenge to forget what didn't happen. She has bigger concerns; her mother hasn't stopped fiddling with her rings since she entered the great hall, and Daemon is gripping Dark Sister like he's expecting an attack and not a peaceful visitor, and Luke keeps asking Raya every half-minute if her brother is still coming. And Viserra can't help but see Cregan's name in Muña's handwriting at the top of the list every time she blinks. The future that once seemed ages away now sits directly before her, and it's too late to run.
When the doors finally open and a guard calls out the name, she flinches, startled that someone managed to read her thoughts. "Lord Cregan Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North."
But as soon as she spies him at the other end of the chamber, the nervous fluttering of her heart ceases. A strange calm settles over her. Time seems to slow. Something metallic stings in her throat, and something hazy shimmers in the air. Sound becomes muffled and muted around her. She feels like she's in a dream—-and not one of the meaningless ones. Fate and future seem to dance like specks of dust in streams of sunlight, and her legs feel unreliable as water. At least a dozen Northmen descend the steps into the great hall, hulking and bearded and draped in furs despite the warm temperature, and all eyes follow the man at the front of the pack.
