Sweet and Bitter Fancy
By: Phoenixflame
Rating for violence, incest, dubious consent, and Maegor the ace F-bomber.
A/N: My entry for the 10th round of the GOT Exchange on Live Journal. Le Prompt: 'Maybe he would love his brother if he didn't hate him so much.' Make it dark, make it messy, make it fucked up. No need to pull your punches […] Actually, bonus if their hatred is mutual. Most likely WOIAF will shatter all my headcanon. Chalk it up to a really drunk maester at the Citadel who decided to write some RPF?
I.
When What is Comely Envenoms
Maegor finds half a hundred reasons to ignore the Seven. At three-and-ten he's seen enough to know. He finds their words on poverty, chastity, and humility laughable at best. But what he hates most is their mockery.
Balerion, the blackest terror the world has ever seen, melts stones and burns the souls right out of men. Father is only a man when he watches them spar in the training yard. Nothing he does can make Maegor better. Or make Aenys better—though the Seven and Balerion combined couldn't manage that. When Father rides Balerion, he is the Conquerer, melting castles like wax and driving kings to their knees with one flying shadow.
But even Balerion can't fight the Seven, and their unending jape that Aenys was born first. Maegor can't burn that, break that, or forgive that.
Whispery footsteps drag him from his groggy haze. He must've dozed; the fire burns lower and the moon has shifted. Maegor straightens in his chair, untucking his knees and sitting more like Father.
"I didn't say you could enter."
The maester has that twisting smile like he humors a squalling child. It's more insulting than ignoring him entirely. "I am charged with your health. Do you require more milk of the poppy?"
"Do I look like a woman in childbirth?" The poppy dulls Maegor's simmering temper, but now blunts only the worst of the pain. His shoulders throb and his cracked ribs suffer to keep him upright. He still sits straight. "What happened to Aenys?"
That indulgent smile again. He knows it's mockery. The old bat's hands are hidden within his knee-length sleeves. Maegor's always wanted to coax him near an open flame, just to see the fire fly up those dirty rags. He remembers the iron fireplace poker leaning against the hearth, several arms-lengths from his chair.
"The queen made him aware of his mistake." The maester has the gall to sound impertinent…somehow. "The prince is abed now. I can help you to your—"
"Do I look like a cripple?"
Mother knows he's strong. She knows he wouldn't need her softness even if she had any. Not like Aenys who must have everything soft as silver. Maegor knows his fuck-headed brother must be smiling now, grinning like a jackal that he's grown some teeth. Borrowed some.
The maester gives a dry chuckle. Scoffs, really. "Like a prince of twelve. Better to realize you are mortal now, while your mother can still save you."
Three-and-ten! That fucking smile. The poppy-haze makes his thoughts weave. Smash that smile off with iron—he distantly knows he's reaching for the fire iron, wondering more if his skinned knuckles will bleed through the bandage. Doesn't he know what happened to the last maester? It's Maegor's tongue that bleeds though. He halfway bites it off when his wound tears and pain rips across his chest.
An annoyed sigh and the old bat's hands flutter free, tugging aside his blood-splotched robe. "You've torn your stitches. Enough games."
"I will see to him."
Mother stands in the doorway, and whatever's left of that weasel-smile flees at her iron voice. The maester bows, ratty sleeves dredging up new dust. Blood too, Maegor notices. He's bleeding more than he thought. No doubt the maester stitched it wrong.
"Your Grace, I will need to change the sutures—"
"Get your tools and bring them to me." No one argues with his mother. He's not sure why she's here. His stomach writhes from the milk of the poppy, but also that look of hers like she's weighing every reason he's worth the air he breathes. It wasn't my fault. But when she has that look, he knows it's not entirely true. "Can you stand?"
Standing makes his blood plummet and he reels on useless feet before grabbing the chair. Mother hates wasted time though. She hooks an arm under his and hauls him to the bed. It's softer than he remembers, even if sleep is the last thing he wants. There must be a basin of water—she's wiping away the blood with something cool.
She's stitched her own wounds, sitting atop Vhagar as men died boiling in their armor after the Field of Fire. This late at night she wears a tunic, and the wide collar doesn't cover the star-shaped scar just under her collarbone. That's the kind of scar Maegor wants. Not one that makes him feel like chewed-up gristle.
"Why?" She's looking at his wound, her tone unreadable. She presses with another damp rag to stop the bleeding.
"The dragon bit me."
Her dark eyes flick up, and he grits his teeth when she presses down harder, in some spot that sends a jolt down his arm. Her warning. "How did asking to bring your brother to dinner end with this?"
He bites back a laugh, knowing the more he talks the angrier she'll likely be. It's not only the end that got him mangled flesh and cracked ribs, but everything before it.
The Seven may have pulled a jape, but nothing can change that Maegor was stronger at nine than Aenys was at eleven.
Maegor only remembered Dragonstone's smell when they first returned, like sulfur and salty rain. Home. At least until Father's new castle became more than bedrock. Maegor has never forgotten Vhagar's wings flaring and the she-dragon plunging ahead when they first caught sight of the dark cliffs. The dragon hadn't seen them in almost a decade.
Dragonstone is made of crags, spackled with fields and forests. Fierce, secretive. None of those white nanny-knights dogged him when he first explored the forest around the castle, climbing the rocky hills, standing on the shale cliffs, and ranging to the closest crofters. The dragons were always close. They know the smell of Valyrian blood and the smallfolk know the smell of burning flesh.
Aenys has less taste for Dragonstone. Maegor tolerates him at the best of times. He's boring, always talking or reading or begging Rhaenys to take him flying. And yet, most times the arms master has pushed some lord's son "better matched in temper" toward him, the day has ended with Maegor threatening to punch his face in or the fool mistaking a threat for a challenge…which has ended poorly every time.
Somehow, Aenys is one of the few he can stand for more than an afternoon. He'll follow, at least, when he's coaxed to explore a new cave. Always bitching about his clothes but curious when they find a jagged maw of stalactites or what he calls a scenic view. It's rare Maegor desires company at all, though the times he does he's always seething if his brother refuses, sometimes even for the company of their sister. Velaena left half a year after they returned though, to follow Orys' Stormlander wife.
Then Quicksilver wormed his way into the world.
Aenys was given his egg over a year before Maegor. He forgot about it, in truth, until the little beast slithered free a year later. Mother had taken him to Aenys' chambers herself, Rhaenys and Father already there. His brother was wide-eyed and stupid with glee. "He's silver!" Maegor held his tongue in front of Mother, but he thought the little creature's scales looked more like cataracts.
Quicksilver soon made Maegor think of a bird more than a lizard. Something wily and sharp in his pale green eyes. Aenys doted on him, perching him on his shoulder like a scaly parrot, letting him drink from his own cup. When he was hound-sized, Aenys cried having to leave him outside, even more when the creature buffeted at the balcony windows, before vanishing altogether. "Learning to be a dragon" Rhaenys soothed.
Maegor thought his brother was finally coming around when he sweetly asked to explore the woods. The moment they found Quicksilver in a clearing a year ago, his muzzle buried in the charred guts of a stag, Aenys flung himself into his own world.
To be refused makes him seethe; to be acknowledged then ignored is worse.
His dragon, still asleep in its egg, will terrify men the day it hatches. A shade after his thirteenth nameday, it's been almost a year. Where his brother's was silver and gray, Maegor's egg is black and bronze. He's never been one for jewels or even fine swords. This is prettier. But still useless. Aenys' egg grew harder and warmer the closer it came to hatching. His egg grows colder and darker. When he wakes to his room smelling like a swamp, he'd scooped it up and gone to ask Mother.
Mother is with child; it's made the lines around her eyes a little softer. Not that he's ever feared Mother as most do. Maegor marches into her solar, standing near the ebony table as the maid explains his visit.
When the queen sweeps out of her bedchamber, she's dressed no different. Velvet breeches, supple boots, flared white sleeves buttoned at the wrist. The only thing Maegor notices is the looseness of her jerkin and the small swell at her belly.
"There's something wrong with it," he says the moment her eyes meet his, and carefully sets the egg on the table to show her.
It crunches open like soft bones, and his throat lurches at the wave of rot. A…thing tumbles out. Not the sleek black scales he imagined, or blue-webbed wings like Vhagar's. It's a corpse-gray little lizard. He can see the dark table through the hole in its chest, and its long scaly tail limp and peeling.
Mother is sharp and steely as Dark Sister, iron-voiced and merciless to those who cross her. Maegor looks from the broken thing to see her hand at her mouth, another at her belly, and her skin a shade paler.
A trick of the light.
She's sharp and salient once more. Ordering a servant to take the remains away, she steps close enough to put a hand on his shoulder.
"Birth is a battle. Not everyone wins."
He doesn't understand the strange weight in her voice, the way she looks at him too long. When she steps away as the servants trundle in, he takes it as a mild dismissal. He's not sure how to answer. Even if she rarely rides Vhagar outside of battle or travel, he's seen her stroke the dragon's neck after they land. Maegor can understand that. Vhagar is a weapon beyond compare, a bodyguard and trebuchet and fire made flesh. Not like his withered thing.
He's still puzzled when he goes to dinner in the family chamber. Suddenly Aenys is there, eyes sad and hand moving to where Mother's was.
"I'm so sorry—"
"Shut up." He shoves him away without stopping. What does Aenys have to be sorry for? His beast was a worthless bunch of scales at first but Quicksilver grew into something loud enough to be annoying. He'll grow into something fierce. However little his brother deserves it.