A/N: I added a short epilogue.


Rhaelle never quite forgives. She wears the black and gold, avoiding the bolts of scarlet her sister sends her and casts the rubies her brothers bring into alms plate of nearest sept. Her words are measured, calculated courtesies that cut quicker than any sword. She never asks to come home and Aegon wonders if his daughter even considers court her home anymore.

He still remembers her words to him before she left home, the words of a brave, generous-hearted girl trying her best to console her guilt-stricken father.

"It will be a great adventure. Like when you were Ser Dunk's squire. Lord Lyonel might not like me at first, like Ser Dunk didn't like you in the beginning, Father. But then he will grow to love me, like I am his own daughter. You'll see."

Five years later, Lyonel Baratheon is no more. The Laughing Storm is finally at rest, while Aegon sits in Lyonel's solar facing his daughter, feeling as anxious and uneasy as if he is the one facing the judgment of the Father Above.

"Was he kind to you, Lord Lyonel?" Did he love you like a daughter? He wants this for her, prays and wishes this for her sake, even as his heart is breaking remembering the kind of father he should have been to her. What sort of father uses his own flesh and blood to pay his debts? Aegon's other daughter Shaera had asked, not long before she herself threw caution to the wind and accumulated other debts for her father to pay.

Rhaelle, though, Rhaelle had only paid. She never took.

"Lord Lyonel was honest," Rhaelle replies. "He did not pretend that things are what they are not, or that they could go back to the way they were before."

Aegon hesitates, before asking, "Is that what I do? Pretend?"

She smiles, fleetingly, a quick turn of the corner of her mouth that looks nothing like the huge grin she used to share with him. "You see what you want to see, Father," she says, gently, her eyes not quite meeting his.

What is it that he wants to see? The sunny, chatty girl who used to sit on his lap peppering him with endless questions while he was dreaming of a better realm? The trusting girl who did not hesitate to run to her father when she was hurt, angry, sad, happy, eager, excited, surprised?

This girl, no, this young woman, she watches her father with eyes that shine with civility rather than warmth. This daughter looks like she would rather bite her lips till they bleed rather than run to her father for any kind of comfort or consolation.

But perhaps Rhaelle would have grown to be this young woman in any case, in the normal course of things, even if she had not been forced to leave home so soon. Even if she had not been used as coins to pay her father's debt.

He is only fooling himself, he knows that deep down.

You see what you want to see, Father.

"When will the wedding be?"

"Early next year, after this year of mourning for Lord Lyonel is done."

"Do you really wish to wed him, Rhaelle?"

"What is the point of even asking the question, when you know full well my wish has naught to do with it? Or do you think it will be easier to break my betrothal now that Lord Lyonel is dead, and the new Lord of Storm's End is a young man still uncertain of his footing?"

"No, of course not. But Rhaelle …" he stops, not quite knowing the right words to say.

I am thinking of you, child. Of your future happiness. But he fears her rebuke; he fears that her reply –her very justified reply – to that will be, Pity you did not think of me five years ago, Father.

"You made a promise to the Baratheons, Father, to pay a debt of honor caused by Duncan's folly. And you made a promise on my behalf as well, when I was a child too young still to truly know what that entails. But I am not a child anymore. I will not cause you to betray another promise, nor will I allow you to make me a betrayer like my brothers and sister. I will keep your promise, and mine as well."

"I could not bear to think of you so unhappy, day after day, year after year."

"Marriage is great gamble and a long journey, Mother told me. Even if you begin with love, you never know where the journey will end. Who knows where our journey will lead us, Ormund and me?"

It will be a great adventure, Father. It is not quite what she is saying now, this young woman who had been the girl saying those words five years ago, but Aegon hears the echo nonetheless.

Rhaelle never quite forgives, but her heart reserves a space for her father still. He does not deserve it, Aegon knows that full well.