A/N: Sorry for the re-post; it occurred to me that I may have been too subtle with foreshadowing "the rest of the story". I've updated one of the last paragraphs in hopes that it becomes more clear. . .
Elia did not understand her husband when his thoughts ran in odd directions. She could see strangeness coming over him like a wave washing in from the dark water that surrounded Dragonstone. He'd go quiet, his eyes would become hollow, he'd forget what he'd been doing or drop things if he tried to pick them up. She had to send Orland to remind him to eat.
One evening while climbing the stairs to bed she glanced through the window and saw him walking toward the shore by himself with nothing but a blanket and a lantern. Strangeness and strangeness hung about the man, certainly. But some strangeness could be born easier than others, so Elia called her handmaiden to help her dress again and set forth into the night after him. Cold sea air stung her face and hands the moment she pushed outside. Elia hugged her belly for warmth but set her jaw and picked up her pace.
Rhaegar had found a black wave-pocked rock to perch on, a few feet above the high water mark. With his long hair unbound, chin raised to the heavens, and legs spread apart dangling barefoot above the surf, he sat on his throne as if he were king of the elements. He might as well be, Elia thought. King of the wind and rain. Gods know he would be if he could.
She stopped some ten feet from him and tried to keep her voice playful rather than worried. "What are you doing when you come out here alone?"
"Searching for traces of the world beyond our world." Her melancholy husband did not so much as turn.
Elia frowned. From anyone else it would have sounded mad. Mayhaps it was. But Elia thought she'd known Rhaegar for long enough now that this strangeness felt in line with his other strangenesses—his visions of an icy doom that would wash over Westeros in the coming decades. Visions had to come from somewhere, she supposed, but that did not explain why he'd gone looking for his gods at night, on a rock, by himself, or why if he had to do that he'd forgotten to put on his boots.
Rhaegar seemed to realize that the person bothering him was his wife, because without warning he smiled over his shoulder and held out a hand to her. Elia found a path through the sharp rocks and dagger-like mollusks that grew along the beach to his side, at the hazardous place where dark land met booming black sea. She twined her fingers with his. She could see in his face that he was half gone still, his mind deep within his private place, but his palm was warm and he made room for her on his strip of rock.
Elia said, "You were praying?" although she knew that wasn't it.
"Yes," he agreed. He kissed her on the cheek. "I was praying. I just thought it sounded more eloquent the way I said it."
"What do you pray for?" This was how their marriage was formed, one moment at a time.
Rhaegar shook himself. He blinked. When he spoke, he sounded more himself. Or, at least, more of the himself he allowed her to see. "The Crone wishes to show me something. I can feel it coming on, but she hides her face."
"Yes, you dropped wine on your pigeons at supper," she teased.
"I wish she would lift her veil soon," he groused. "I meant to send that letter to Lord Lannister tomorrow morning. It would be nice if She gave me a hint, rather than endless dreams about dragons hatching chocolate-wrapped scorpions or stone dragons tumbling off tabletops. What am I supposed to make of that? Sweetling, if we commission a dragon statue let us not put it on a table above anything valuable."
Elia smiled.
Rhaegar said, "Blessed Goddess, please show me a lion and a dragon together or no lion and the dragon safe and unmolested where he is. I rather think you've made your point with the others: I shall try not to birth food and the statue is right out."
Elia wet her lips. "I think she should show you a dragon and a wolf," she said.
He dragged in a sharp breath through his nose. Elia sat frozen beside him, waiting for him to admit to his dealings at Harrenhal.
Rhaegar said, "I suppose I should not be surprised. Your spies are better than the ones my father brought."
"My spies know you better than the ones your father brought."
"That is true." His eyes were wide in the moonlight. Otherwise, he hid behind his implacable icy mask. "I wish you had told me you knew. The trip back from the tournament was agony. I couldn't bear not telling you, but then I thought, What good would that do? I will never see her again."
Raw steel forced its way up Elia's throat. She tried to swallow a sudden angry rush before saying, "Did you take her maidenhead?" but her words weren't as even as she'd have liked.
Her husband flinched.
She gripped his hand. "Did you?"
"No," Rhaegar said.
Elia's shoulders sagged. "I am glad. The poor women in this country have enough trouble without unexplained silver bastards. It will be you, or it will be Aerys they point fingers at. How foolish that a child should be fodder for a scandal."
They had weathered all sorts of weird storms over the years—that time when her health had gotten so poor that they had to flee Dragonstone for Sunspear, that time when Rhaegar confessed to her that he saw visions and she'd thought him making unusually morbid pillow-talk, that time when he caught her conspiring with her brother Doran against his father the King. Mayhaps he thought that she meant to take his discretions at the tournament in stride, because his mouth relaxed in visible relief and his relief became dry humor. Rhaegar said, "You Dornish do pity us so. Of course I did not take her. Outside of your oh-so-enlightened borders it is a terrible crime if a woman goes to her marriage bed already spoiled."
He was teasing her.
Let it go for now, Elia thought. I must turn this conversation back to other things. Now is not the time for anger. She thumped his arm. "How, exactly, can a woman be spoiled? Is she a cheese? Should you eat her up with some wine?"
His smile widened. "I should eat you up with some wine," Rhaegar said.
"Don't. You'd drop it on the rug."
"I don't mind licking it from your rug."
"Don't change the subject."
"From rugs? Sweetling, I wouldn't dream of it—"
"From weddings. The King is getting more dangerous. He wanted to kill that poor girl."
"There are indeed many weddings on the horizon," Rhaegar agreed. He sighed, and accepted the change in subject with immediate vigor that let Elia know, at least, that even if he did not regret his wandering from her bed—and she could see he did not—he regretted that he'd hurt her. "Stark and Tully and Baratheon. The Lords Paramount conspire, whether against us in the moment or their children against us in the future. My father's spy destroyed my chance to woo them to our side at Harrenhall and so they will count me as an enemy rather than an ally should it come to war. This Grand Council of ours is taking too long to orchestrate."
"Hush," said Elia. "You dragons like to do everything fast. Everything all at once, as if heat can only come in short, sharp bursts. That is no way to warm the land. You will burn and we will burn with you. Be slow, steady, and persistent."
Rhaegar toyed with her hand, running his fingertips up her wrist, lacing his fingers through hers.
Elia allowed him. "Now. Speaking of weddings, we must draw Tywin back to court. It's true that we are isolated now, with the Lords Paramount conspiring, but—"
"Yes, yes," her husband interrupted. "And one more wedding, if Tywin agrees to my proposal."
Elia hesitated. "He'll agree, but that wasn't what I was going to say. Things have changed. I don't think you should propose him. Send your letter to the Starks, instead."
Rhaegar went still. He stared at the ocean for a long moment.
Elia waited, heart in her throat.
Her husband rubbed at his eyes with the back of a hand. "Obviously I do not relish the thought of wedding Cersei but," he said slowly, "whatever my dealings, the North would make a poor ally for a Southern coup."
Elia said, "It isn't the North you would catch. If you wed the Stark girl in Lord Baratheon's place, her elder brother weds Tully's and the sister can wed Robert. Cersei can wed Viserys. You'll reforge the links to lead back to us. The Lords Paramount become your kin."
She could see his mind working. Rhaegar glanced at her. "You speak true, but I do not wish to make an enemy from Tywin Lannister. If I approach him now with a request for Cersei's hand he will be a sure bet in our effort to force the King's abdication. He will back me without hesitation once we call our Grand Council. I would be giving him high honor and revenge all at once. I will have wooed a smart man who can do much good for my reign as Prince Regent. I shall have him for my Hand, as Aerys did. What could Rickard Stark, Lord Tully, or my whoremongering cousin do for us?"
"They are numbers."
"And? What do wolves and fish and stag stand to gain from my seizing the throne? Stark's daughter would be junior wife to a far away king with less and little—in his eyes—to do with the North. I cannot exactly tell him that we must prepare for battle against myth and legend."
"You love her," said Elia simply.
His throat constricted against the top of her head. For a silly, childish reason, her chest began to ache. Before she could stop herself from asking Elia murmured, "Why?"
Rhaegar exhaled slowly into her hair.
"Husband?" It did not come out a plea. Elia Martell of Dorne did not plea.
"Do you really want to know?"
"Yes. Tell me." She tried to ignore her heart pounding in her throat, as if by ignoring that muscle it would stop existing.
Rhaegar shifted in place. He put an arm out—and she tensed, afraid he meant to try to touch her again—but he only moved to brace his back on the rock. He frowned at the ink-black sea under smeared grey-black clouds, no longer a king but a small man beneath a big sky at the edge of a big ocean.
Elia waited with forced patience.
Rhaegar said, "It was foolishness."
"You love her." Elia looked away. "You do not love me, whatever vows we made to each other. You will give me the respect of telling me why."
"I love you."
Liar. Elia said, "Tell me, and we will act quickly. If Stark is after power, we will give him the future King. If we wait too long your proposal will not only be untoward but also coarse. You must not be a dragon in this. You must be careful and even-handed."
"Like the sun." He tried to touch her hair, and she pulled away under guise to look him in the face.
"Fire doesn't only come from dragons. If you send the letter to Stark you must do it soon. You don't want him to see your approach as motivated by lust rather than politics. You don't want them to say to themselves many years from now, remember that horrible tournament at Harrenhal? Where the Crown Prince embarrassed his wife by crowning that girl—"
"I did no such thing."
"Words are wind and so are memories. Did Lord Baratheon blush and smile when you honored him for his upcoming wedding—"
"Yes—"
"—or did everyone gasp in horror when you declared your lust for his betrothed in front of the entire kingdom?"
He pulled away. "How dare you?"
"I dare. You dare. Tell me why."
His mouth hitched. He did not look at her.
Elia's hands began to shake. She hid them under her robe. This is what she had been wanting to say to him from the moment he returned with the Mystery Knight's shield and a hungry, wanting, young look in his eyes. He had told her about the Stark girl's antics and Elia hated the words he used, the admiration in his voice. He never spoke to her with such a voice. She said, "I am your wife. I am your advisor and your partner. If you will not tell me, then I am nothing to you and you will be nothing to me. I will stay for our children, but I will not be your wife except at court. Let us be schemers together, if we must. Let us rule together. No one will know what I do in my own bed or with whom I take comfort. I'll keep it a secret."
"Because you want to know about Lyanna Stark?" He sounded low and hollow.
"Because you do not love me and I do not wish to love you."
Rhaegar pressed his lips together as if it were another person inside him he wanted to silence rather than himself.
Elia said, "Do not deny it."
He said, "I love you."
"Don't say that again."
He sat up and straightened his shoulders. "Except for these few moments when we are finally alone to talk as husband and wife I am such a condemned man. My life is bought and paid for by warrant of my birth. I am devoured knife and fork by all the people and all the lords and all the duties of Westeros as well as the Gods."
"I do not pity you, my love."
"The Crone jerks me along as a wooden soldier on a pull-string. You and Doran want me to wait for the world to freeze before moving against my father the tyrant. I'm tired of looking at you and the children and fearing the future."
She smiled without mirth. "You want to say you were weak and it will not happen again?"
"I want to say I do love you, and I'm sorry I'm not in love with you. You are a better woman than I deserve. You will be a wonderful queen. I love our children more than I can bear. Aerys would exile me to some place without so much as a rookery if he ever discovered what we are plotting. He would use you and the children as hostages for my good behavior. The Small Council, on top of everything else, either wants me King or wants to cut my throat to gain my father's favor. And Westeros Herself wants me to play Cyvasse against a terrifying enemy I don't understand in a war that hasn't begun to stir yet. Oh, and let's not forget, Tywin Lannister wants me to get by his daughter. Seven Gods, in order to win one game I have to begin a second—and I doubt Cersei will look to the good of the country as our marriage's foundation, the way you and I have."
Elia laughed bitterly. "Do you know what it is to be married to a prophet?"
He muttered, "I expect it cannot be easy."
She gripped his shoulder. "Hush. You can't understand how it is. I don't want you to pretend, I want you to listen."
"I am listening. Every day. I listen. I am not a good husband, and I can no longer lie to myself that I am. I'm sorry. I swear by every God there is I would never do to you what the King does to my mother—"
"I want you to listen," she repeated.
He became silent.
She let go of him. Elia took a deep breath. She said, "You made a choice. You chose to be with that girl. I am making a choice, too. I choose not to be a helpless wife. Women in this country are expected to be silent, and I am not going to be silent. I want to you to wed Cersei Lannister, if that pleases you, or wed Lyanna Stark. Give us a powerful ally: Tywin Lannister, or the Lords Paramount. But I will not let you keep your cousin's wife as a mistress. In secret. In shame. Do you understand me? You will not do that to me, and you will not do that to our children."
Rhaegar stared at his feet. "Lord Stark is a man of Northern honor. He will not like my asking him to break a betrothal pact."
She said nothing.
He said, "Do you still hold me to your threat?"
"Yes."
"Then . . . because Lyanna Stark is no part of any of that."
Elia raised her chin, although he was not facing her and did not see.
Rhaegar said, "I don't have to be a prince, or a prophet, or the only line of defense between Westeros and total annihilation. Lyanna loves me because the day after I found her trying to hide her ramshackle armor in the woods I asked her if she could spar as well as joust. I hit her with a tourney sword and didn't try to be gentle. She is insightful, and courageous. She picked up a sword to defend her father's man and wasn't afraid to say so when she thought I meant to drag her back to face Aery's bonfire. She wants to travel to all the lands I used to want to visit: Asshai, Valyria. The uncharted world beyond. She is real, not a mask. She has a vibrant thirst for life."
Elia had forgotten to breathe. She dragged in air and said, "Look at me."
He looked at her.
She said, "Go on. Continue. I just wanted you to look at me."
A tremor wormed down his spine. Rhaegar said, "I'm finished."
"You did not fall in love with a pretty face attached to a sword. Tell me. What else?" She forced down the sick feeling in her stomach.
He shook his head.
"Then you did fall in love with a pretty face attached to a sword? That does not make it better. It makes it worse."
He said, hesitantly, ". . . She is enthralled with the idea of adventure, and like me she is an outsider in an orderly world."
Elia nodded.
He wiped at his eyes. She instantly wanted to apologize. Instead, she swallowed and waited for him to go on.
"She even wants to see the map I've compiled in my search for Lightbringer," he confessed. "She . . . when I asked her if she could spar as well as joust, her face lit up more I suspect than if I had asked her to be my second wife. I think if we had talked about this some months ago and I asked Lord Stark for his daughter at the tournament Lyanna would have despised me on principle. She is a wicked woman, contrary and unashamed. She is shameless . . . and by that I mean only that she is not afraid to be Lyanna Stark . . ." He trailed off, and this time he really had finished.
"What do I lack?" Elia said.
"Nothing. Elia, nothing. It is only I who lack."
"Kicking yourself does not lessen the sting when you kick me."
He fell silent again, so they watched the waves pound up the shore and listened to the white roar of foam in jagged rocks. After a while Rhaegar slithered down their rock and stuck one of his bare feet in the surf. He didn't bother to roll up his breeches, and didn't seem to notice when a wave drenched him up to his knee.
Elia exhaled slowly. "I don't know how I should feel, hearing myself compared unfavorably to a child in a borrowed suit of armor."
He whipped around. "Not un—"
"Hush."
He hushed.
"Listen," she said, "I know how I ought to feel. But I don't want to be one of those poor women who claw in impotent spite at her husband when his attention wanders." Rhaegar had not wed her for love. She had not wed Rhaegar for love. Elia thought it a credit to them both that they could settle their differences—his reclusive midnight perusing in the library, her need for people and society; his odd tastes in what an otherwise sane person might call 'interesting', her Dornish sensibilities in love and family life—as friendly adults. If they could not make their marriage work, how could they rule seven kingdoms? "Does she love you?"
"Yes," he whispered.
She relaxed. She bowed her head. "Then you should send our letter to Lord Stark, not Lord Lannister."
The grim expression in his eyes said, I won't because you would hate that.
Elia said nothing.
Her husband said, very quietly, "It was a foolishness."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes." And Rhaegar crawled up beside her, cocked an eyebrow, and muttered, "Although, if I were to wed everybody who loved me I think I'd have support enough to pressure the Crown." He was teasing her again. The moment had passed.
She'd had her say.
He'd heard her out.
The storm had ended.
Rhaegar said, "Do you think so? The ones not already smitten I could seduce well enough."
"I suppose that's a unique way to take the throne," Elia allowed.
"Certainly! And foolproof. You say Brandon Stark is to wed Catelyn Tully? Very well, let me play my harp for her sister. Thus we have Tully, who brings us Stark, who brings us Baratheon. And Dorne is ours. Griffin's Roost is already secure. Why, we're halfway there. It's a pity Arryn is a man; I think Jon would tolerate being the sole exception but picking up another for our harem would rankle his feathers."
Elia giggled despite herself. "And what of the Tyrells? I don't think they'll like your harem as long as I'm included."
"Included? No, no. As senior wife you would have your pick from the litter. Mayhaps you could have Lord Arryn, that would settle Jon. And in any case, Mace has a mother after our own minds. Let us woo her with reason rather than love."
Elia said, "You know, if you wed all of Westeros you wouldn't have time to read boring old scrolls at all hours in the night."
Rhaegar slumped backward until he sprawled, defeated, on the rock. "Oh. Well that's right out, then."
Elia lay sideways to murmur into his ear, "Think of all the parties . . . the social explosion . . . people everywhere, always coming and going . . . so many courts to visit . . . all the wives who will need your time . . ."
"Yes, I can see Jon getting fussy."
". . . no more mariners' maps or sudden trips to Oldtown . . ."
He rolled over to face her. "You're forgetting the hundred and forty-seven children we'll have."
Elia said, "Goodness, how could I?"
"Oh, indeed. The bedtime stories will get quite out of hand. We'll finish tucking the last one into his sheets by the time the first one is being roused for breakfast. Then it's a few minutes of red-eyed sleep before it's time to get up and start giving them all a good-morning kiss."
Talk of ludicrous nothings waxed into companionable silence. Elia and her husband lay in peace upon the lantern lit shore. Black waves drifted in and out through the rocks in gentle rhythm, unconcerned and unfaltering, there at the edge of the world. A few stars burned cold overhead, making tiny halos through the icy clouds. Rhaegar touched her arm with a hesitant fingertip, and she reached up to hold his hand.
Elia said, "If you could have been anything, what life would you have lived?"
"The third son of a rich but unimportant lord," he answered at once, as though this had crossed his mind before. And then he launched into one of his stories, only this time about a man who both was and wasn't: "Mayhaps my father would expect me to take the Black if my selling music to playhouses hadn't brought in more gold than anyone dreamed. My great duties would involve nothing more than writing ballads and seeking out old forgotten artifacts from far-off places. I'd bring you and the children rare delights from my travels. Let the War for the Dawn come in another hundred years. Let me have normal dreams about normal things." He squeezed her palm. "And you? What would you have differently?"
Elia squeezed back. "I would have us rule from Dorne," she said without shame. "There I was a person. Here, the women are treated so poorly that I am not a person anymore, I am the poor sick wife of Rhaegar Targaryen. Poor sweet but worthless woman, who cannot even bear him more children. Poor man who has to put up with such a worthless sick wife."
Rhaegar said, "Let him who calls you worthless suffer to learn the hard way. Slowly, and in great detail."
She smiled. "Do I make you suffer, my prince?"
"Have I called you worthless, my princess? I am very fond of un-worthless women."
She said, "People here think that anyone who cannot swing a sword is meek and worthless. As if wars are only battles. Words can raise up or fell a dynasty."
"Which brings us back to Tywin Lannister," he said, distantly.
"I suppose it could."
Rhaegar groaned. "Tomorrow I will send our letter. 'My dear Lord Tywin, please do let me take your horrible daughter for my second wife if in exchange you will back me in forcing my horrible father from the Iron Throne'."
Elia smirked. "I would not use those particular words."
"I will think up a pretty lie. Oh, Gods."
"You may wait a week or a month, if you prefer. There is no rush for this as yet."
"No, I need to do this tomorrow before I change my mind. Not change my mind," he added quickly, "lose my nerve. If I succeed I will be wed to a cruel woman who will take effort to work around, and if my letter is intercepted I will be imprisoned in exile in a tower somewhere without my family. I fear that above all else. Aerys would not allow you to join me there. I suspect he would send me to Dorne with whichever Kingsguards he trusts least as gaolers, so he could both keep it secret and hold your livelihood over Doran and ensure that I found no allies to help me escape my tower. I will have no one. Not even a raven. Solitude in the desert could drive a man mad. I would have to wish that someone heard of my exile through one of my gaolers before his departure. Oh, Gods, I am envious of the man who is his father's third son. The one who composes ballads all day long and was shipwrecked last year on his way to Lys, but never saw a vision and thinks the world will ends some day so far off it might well be called forever."
Elia snorted. "Does he have to have been shipwrecked?"
"Yes, it was quite terrible for him. He wouldn't shut up about it for weeks."
Elia shook her head. "Prince or bard, you have the soul of a poet."
Rhaegar kissed her cheek. "And you are the sun."
And they were two people holding each other for warmth at the edge of the sea.