I planned this as a part of my Live to Love story but I realized that, in fact, it doesn't quite fit. My main OC would marry Aegon V's youngest son but this isn't his story, it's hers before him. On the other hand, events and consequences from this fic still affect some details of my AU stories Lady of Dorne and The Victors, so I decided it would be better just to have this one done, instead of doing lengthy A. N.s of explanations.

Love to Live

The salty kiss of sea and caress of the wind were always a company Aelinor Gargalen enjoyed greatly. Especially this sea and this wind. The sun over Salt Shore made the Summer Sea far lovelier than the Narrow Sea she had last seen in the day she left King's Landing.

Forever.

It felt weird, to know that her life was no longer there. She had been born there, spent much of her life in the Red Keep. But now, she would be a woman wed and her future lay on these shores. Not that she had minded leaving the capitol too much – tensions there had started running too high for her liking.

Her uncle wouldn't really force Rhaella and Aerys to wed, would he?

She stared hard in the blue and gold radiance of the sea, trying not to think of the bleak despair in their faces as the King's resolve grew. She couldn't help them. And she shouldn't feel guilty for her own good fortune, either. Eltor Dayne had been chosen for her but she had loved him from the start – since she had arrived here a few months ago to make sure she was prepared to adopt her part of a Dornish lady and wife and handle it brilliantly.

In front of her, the Summer Sea glowed like her heart. Indeed, she feared that a single heart could not hold so many hopes and happiness! The waves came to lend her their warmth, brilliant and pale green, and the dark blue depths called to her with a male voice. And female capriciousness, Aelinor reminded herself, for fierce gales and drowned souls were not a prerogative of the Narrow Sea alone. Still, today she only heard the song and saw the blue hand presenting her with the gift of happiness, as wide as the sea itself.

"Why are you alone?"

She spun around, the pounding of her heart calming down immediately after recognizing the newcomer. "Because I can," she replied. "Because I wanted to. How did you know where I was?"

Her brother shrugged. "Doran," he said, by the way of explanation.

Aelinor shook her head and laughed. "I should have known," she said. "This boy has eyes on his back and another pair on each shoulder. Is there anything going on around that he doesn't know about?"

"Not my fault," Alric Gargalen said, quite defensively.

Of course. In this respect, her nephew took entirely after his mother, which was a good thing for a future ruler. Aelinor gave some credit to the boy's prolonged staying in the viper nest that was King's Landing, too. As his uncle Mikkel Gargalen's squire, Doran had followed him to the capitol when Mikkel had been forced to take over his ailing father's duties as the King's Hand. The boy had looked just as happy as Aelinor to leave. But he had learned some lessons there, too, no doubt.

"When I left, he was in the bailey… with his back to me," she went on, amused.

"Enough talk about my son." Alric's dark eyes were suddenly serious, holding her purple ones with purpose. "I came to ask you whether… whether you think we might postpone the wedding."

Despite the warm day, Aelinor shivered. Her hand reached for her forehead and removed a suddenly offending lock of silver hair. "Why?" she asked. "What happened?"

Alric sighed. "What not." He paused. "Father is dead, Aelinor," he said flatly.

For a while, they were both silent. To Aelinor's surprise, tears welled in her eyes. She knew that she should be happy for her father who had finally found relief from a life that had been no life in the last two years but she could not help it: she grieved for who he had been before ailment changed and chained him.

Alric held out a hand and she let him hold her, the wind drying their tears.

"That is not all," her brother went on after a while, in husky voice. "On his deathbed, he tried to get the King to denounce that wood witch. Uncle started promising that he would follow, that he wouldn't force Aerys and Rhaella to wed."

"And?" Aelinor asked, feeling creeps running down her back.

Alric's arms held her tighter. "Father died before the King could finish. "I pro…" he said, and Father died."

The girl fervently tried to understand what that meant. She might have seen only eighteen namedays but she had celebrated most of them in the Red Keep. "He won't keep his promise," she breathed, not quite believing her own words. Surely her uncle wouldn't think of not honouring a promise made to his long-time friend? His Hand? His goodbrother? He wouldn't renege on a promise made to a dead man? The very thought of it stirred dark fear deep within her.

"He doesn't think an unfinished promise is binding," her brother confirmed. "Aerys and Rhaella will be wed in less than a moon."

The sympathy she felt for her childhood friends immediately gave way to horror. "What about Mikkel?" she asked, holding her breath.

Alric laughed bitterly. "Don't you know our big brother? It didn't sit well with him at all. He claimed that politics, he'd understand, but forcing them to wed each other because of a prophecy was either lunacy, or a very grand design that he couldn't possibly fathom. He threw back the badge of Hand that Uncle tried to give him, had words with Jaehaerys, claimed that he had had enough of them and their madness, and left King's Landing."

Mikkel and Jaehaerys being at loggerheads! Over such a thing as a prophecy? Aelinor shook her head and clung to Alric tighter. "So he and Mother are coming home?"

"They only stayed as long as they needed to bury Father. The King wanted a grand funeral but Mother refused and when Daella Targaryen refuses, well, you don't do it."

Aelinor's tears kept falling. She had lost her father and as if that was not bad enough, the family was drawing a divide over his very grave. "Do they want me to postpone the wedding?" she asked. "So they can be present? If they are on their way?"

Alric shook his head and pushed her slightly back, so he could look her in the eye. "No. It was my idea. I suppose they'll be pleased to attend. And anyway, do you feel like being wed almost over Father's grave?"

Aelinor didn't need to think twice. She looked at the sea and suddenly saw it cold, glinting with fake light. "No," she whispered.

"Can we really afford to postpone?"

Alric looked on his right where his lady wife had materialized all of a sudden. Naturally, the truth was that they just hadn't noticed her arrival.

Arianne Martell, Lady of Dorne, sat on a big boulder nearby. The sea splashed over the hem of her dress but she didn't seem to care. Her huge black eyes took them in steadily.

"Why aren't you resting?" Alric asked. After their arrival late last night, he had assumed that Arianne would keep to her rooms. She had given him a son not even a moon ago and while both mother and child were healthy – something that he cherished very much after their two sons' deaths and the fright they had had last year with Elia's birth, - caution was always good.

She shrugged his concern off with a small gesture. "I am fine, Alric, I assure you. Aelinor? Will you join me?"

The girl did so since the rock was big enough for both of them to sit comfortably. Side to side, they were the exact same height. But when they were standing, Aelinor, who was by no means tall, towered a head taller. Her legs just kept going and going while Arianne was a petite brunette – no doubt one of the reasons some of her lords thought she was more biddable than a ruler ought to. It was hard to take orders from a woman two heads shorter than yourself.

Most of these troublemakers had come to attend the wedding already. No doubt they wouldn't take well to being denied their entertainment. And keeping them a few weeks more at Salt Shore was simply not an option. They would deplete the warehouses entirely.

"Your father always wanted the wedding to take place," she said. "He knew how important it was to prove…"

"Yes, yes," Alric interrupted. "I think we've both heard it a thousand times. Gods, how weary I am of always having to prove something to someone! I started when I was two year old and it doesn't look like I'll get to stop, ever! And Aelinor can use some delay before she starts proving, too. Why, Arianne, can't you see? There is no use! We cannot turn time back and not be born at King's Landing to the King's daughter, no matter how hard we try."

He spun around and walked away without a single word. Both women stared after him, not daring to look at each other.

Arianne's breath hissed between her teeth when she saw the figure approaching him where coast met dry land. "If he takes off with this blonde bauble…" The threat was left hanging.

Aelinor gave her a look of surprise. Given her brother and Arianne's extraordinary… arrangements… she was quite stunned by this display.

"You would… have words with him?" she asked. Surely she must have gotten something wrong.

"Of course." Arianne's eyes glinted. "What would you have me do, compete with this boring, simpering child for my husband's affections? She's been placing herself in his way since before I went into my confinement."

All of a sudden, Aelinor felt that she was falling into a quagmire that all her years in King's Landing hadn't prepared her for. "For the life of me, I cannot understand you! You never cared about his women in the months you spent apart. You even have…"

"I never have anyone while he's here," her goodsister spat. "And by the Seven, he won't have one either!"

Aelinor blinked. She could understand a marriage of fidelity, for that was what her parents had. She could understand a more… unchaste one, too. What she couldn't understand was the mix of licentiousness and passions she now discovered between Alric and Arianne.

Holding their breath, the two women saw him approaching the newcomer. To Aelinor's enormous relief, he only nodded and kept walking along the coastline. Arianne exhaled deeply and bowed her head. "I am not being fair to him, I guess," she admitted, reluctantly. "He hasn't stayed in one place for more than two weeks in months, with Yronwoods using my confinement to stir trouble and what has been happening in Essos. He's very tired and disheartened. And now, this news about your father is a new blow to him. He's on the verge of his nerves and I am not helping."

"You've been quite troubled yourself," Aelinor reminded her. In the bright sun, with her feet stretched before her so the sea could splash over them, it was easy to forget that the Lady of Dorne was no mischievous child but a woman who had suffered losses. With Mors and Olivar's deaths and Elia's frail health, Arianne had spent her last pregnancy in extreme anxiety. No one could blame her for being unable to help her husband deal with his own burden.

Arianne's dark eyes did not leave Alric's frame. "Still. I am not being fair."

Not being fair not by assuming that he'd take a mistress but that he'd do that in her presence? Not being fair by taking it for granted that he'd just become reconciled with things like interests and politics and go on to prove his loyalty to Dorne once again? Aelinor was suddenly so very pleased that she wouldn't have to balance the responsibility of a ruler with love and passion, and jealousy, and what not. She would only have to take care of her own husband and family.

"What's going on in Essos?" she asked, to steer the conversation in a safer direction. "I only know he's concerned with those so called Ninepenny Kings…"

Arianne shivered. "He's written to King's Landing, many times," she said. "And he wants me to summon a council immediately after the wedding. After his last visit to the Free Cities, he's convinced that the beast Maelys Blackfyre will try to seize the crown once more."

She rose in all her short stature and gave her young goodsister a look of extreme sympathy. "I am sorry about that, Aelinor," she said. "I don't wish you to get wed under the shadow of your father's death, truly. But we cannot afford any delay. I mean to have the lords and ladies convene here, at Salt Shore, the very day after the wedding. Should we postpone it, many of those intending to attend won't bother to come. And Lord Alor… he wanted this match."

Arianne's excuses kept going through Aelinor's ears without much notice. Alric was right, she was thinking bitterly. We have to prove over and over that we're loyal. We had to prove it to the rest of the realm who didn't want a Dornishman for Hand of the King. Now, we have to prove that we don't think ourselves above the rest of Dorne. Is it ever going to end?

When she finally tore the black cloud of bitterness wrapping itself over her mind, Arianne was already far away. Aelinor saw her approach Alric in the distance. She was probably saying something to him, for he was shaking his head. They were too far away for her to see their expressions or hear their words but it became clear what transpired between them when Arianne sat him on the nearest rock and held him close. A moment later, he rested his head against her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

He's the blood in my veins, the marrow in my bones, Arianne had said, simply, when Aelinor had once gathered courage to ask her whether she loved her husband. And still, she could never keep to an empty bed, it seemed, although she never strayed when he was home. Of course, he was no better…

I'll never live like this, Aelinor vowed and summoned the face of her betrothed in front of her. I'll marry the Sword of the Morning, the second son of a lesser House, and I'll be happy in the most ordinary way. No scandal will ever come across my way and no major disturbance.