RunAway Gentle Dragon|| Naerys Targaryen

I

From the beginning, she reached for light that seemed desperate to flee her.

She didn't even have the strength to cry, all the power in her scrawny body being used to keep her heart beating. Everyone expected the stranger to take her, and she remembered thinking they wanted her to die.

When she was a child and she looked down at her twig like arms and legs, or when she was too weak to move from my bed, or she cried because Aegon called her a sack of bones waiting to be delivered at the Stranger's door, but Aemon was always there for her.

He always knew how to make the pain go away.

He would clasp her hand in his and put his mouth to her knuckles. Between small and tender kisses he'd murmur: "Naerys the Willow Blossom, Naerys the Soft Fallen Snow, Naerys the Gentle Dragon, the White Hind Bounding, the Silver Crane Gliding, the Kindest Heart that ever lived."

Aemon was her champion and her companion in every way. She would practice on her harp, long thin fingers plucking at notes, while he read the poetry she so loved. He'd read stories of knights, magic and the Children of the Forrest. He'd tell her that once he became a knight he'd scour the world, from the Summer Isles to Ashai, until he found a cure for what ailed me. She would either laugh or shake her head.

No one understood but him. They didn't know what it was like to walk up steps and be gasping for air and clutching the wall when you reach the top. They've never learned how to eat like a sparrow, taking the most delicate bites of the smallest portions, lest you retch and bring back up what little was gained.

Sometimes she imagined what it would be like if she had a different body, strong and healthy. She could dance all night in the Great Hall with Aemon. She could learn to ride a true horse without fear that she'd fall and break her frail body on the stones. She could leave Kings Landing and visit another kingdom, and be the Targaryen princess everyone wanted her to be.

The only glimpse she received of such excitement, such endless possibility, was when she would sit and watch Aemon practice his swordplay as she sewed and embroidered cloth.

"You are going to be a great knight someday," she noted when he swung his sword in a particularly brilliant flourish.

"For you, my princess, I shall be the greatest knight in the world" he grinned impishly. She would smile and lowered her eyes back to her work.

Without Aemon, she surely would have given up on life.

All the pain, every hurt and suffering that the world offered, he knew how to make it go away, as if it had never existed in the first place.

Aemon's love sustained her.

She became a very slender woman, yet she stayed short. Everything about her was small, from her feet to hips and breasts, except for her eyes, which Aemon told her are large amethysts in a face like a winter moon. She dare say she was the palest person in Kings Landing. Her father sometimes said that if she stood with the sun at her back the light would still shine through, as if she wasn't there. Her father had always been a strange man. He was stern sometimes, and cold, too, but when he held her close, she felt like she was the luckiest girl in all of Westeros.

But that happiness faded when her father had betrothed her to Aegon. Her elder brother. Aegon was the most charming and the most dashing of her brothers. He also endlessly insults her and was always dismissive of her presence.

He was unfeeling. he was unable or unwilling to stop any of his desires from controlling him. He had numerous bastards already and wasn't particular about creating more - nor where they came. He bedded noblewomen, whores, septas, pirates, beggars and dancers. He drank until he passed out and hunted until the sun went down and his saddle bags were bursting with game. He danced until every lady had been in his arms and hawked until the bird drooped in exhaustion. And still Aegon was not satisfied, with any of it.

He always hungered for more.

If she were marry brother , it certainly should not have been Aegon. She thinks even Aegon himself argued the point with Father. She knows Aemon certainly did.

Yet every argument and plea were made upon deaf ears.

""It's for the good of the realm," Father stated, firm as stone, "for the prosperity of our family."

"What good does it make?!" She had heard Aemon scream in a unfamiliar anger. "A pig such as Aemon doesn't deserve her!"

Their father had not replied and Aemon had stormed from the room, his fair skin as red as the walls of the red keep. Aemon had been so angry he had not noticed her standing there, gapping at him as he stormed away with his fist clenched.

Naerys endures the preparations for her wedding in silence. She felt numb inside, as if she had fallen into icy waters, she felt as if her heart had been torn from her body.

It is night time when the sound of a fist pound at the door of her chamber awakens her from her slumber. She goes to the door and hesitantly opens it to find Aemon standing in the hall, clad in a beautiful tunic of black and red.

"Let's get married."