[1] SEVEN SINS, Aegon II Targaryen

[4] original sin

*slight mature content*

[4]

ORIGINAL SIN

  "Where are you going?"

"To drink."

Run to the Street of Silk, seek comfort in the arms of a whore, fuck her way out of misery, do all the wrong things to wreck the pieces of consciousness and decency left. So much transgression for a young princess.

Aegon remained on the crisp, sun-washed sheets of his bed, watching as Maera rummaged through his drawers, searching for a pair of commoner flannel and pants.

He remained uncertain, still reeling from Alicent's earlier confrontation. And then there was Maera—her own tangled web of secrets, the whispered rumors of her tarnished affairs beyond the Red Keep now echoing in his mind. Could it be true, then? That his sister was wrapped in the very filth she so often scorned? The truth felt like a jagged edge, cutting through the last remnants of his innocence.

Aegon hissed through clenched teeth, his voice sharp as broken glass. "Stop borrowing my clothes," he snapped. "You don't even return them back . . ." He shifted, trying to rise from his seat, but weariness clung to him like a heavy cloak, sapping the strength from his limbs, leaving him anchored in place.

". . . You're going to the brothels, aren't you?"

      Silence.

"Maera."

      Silence.

"Maera!"

It frustrated Aegon to realize her ignorance was her way of torturing people. It frustrated him to see her fucking wielding it like a weapon, sharp and deliberate, a subtle cruelty that twisted the knife in places too tender to touch. Everything about her was a storm to his fragile sense of self. It consumed him, this endless frustration—how she could be better than him, yet somehow worse, as if she occupied every planet in existence he could never reach.

     It killed him that she was, in some insidious way, no different from him at all.

The sight of her undressing, peeling away layers of herself only to wrap herself in his clothes with such pride, stung like acid on an open wound. She wore him like a second skin, and it tormented him.

     She was unreachable, untouchable, a distant star in a sky he could never hope to grasp. Yet the agony of it all lay in how deeply he wanted her to reach back—how desperately he longed for her to close the space between them, to lay her hand upon him and smooth the ragged edges left by years of neglect.

He wanted her to fill the hole their parents had left behind, to soothe the ache that throbbed between them. But that wanting—oh, that wanting—burned fiercer than the frustration, scorching everything it touched, leaving him raw and exposed.

One of the reasons Aegon slipped the rat into her hands that day was simple, in his mind at least—it was his twisted plea for her attention, his way of forcing her gaze upon him. He knew her too well, knew how easily her temper could ignite, and that was exactly what he craved: to push her, to drive her to the very edge of her infamous inferno. He wanted to see the fire rise in her eyes, to melt the icy walls of her usual cold indifference and break through her unyielding fury and consume him completely.

In his own way, the rat was his invitation—his reckless demand for her to notice him, to acknowledge his existence in a world where she so often remained distant, far. If it took anger to make her see him, to make her feel something—anything—then he would gladly stoke the flames, even if it meant watching her burn.