For a number meme.

Anon asked: 15, 32 for Arthur x Elia


15. "I miss you."
32. "It never gets easier."

She thought she'd never see him again. He'd joined the Kingsguard and her betrothal trip had failed, and she thought that would be the end of it. Perhaps they'd cross paths one day, at a tourney or a coronation, but otherwise who they were to one another would fade away in time.

She couldn't have been more wrong.

They meet at Lord Robert's tourney first, the day her betrothal is announced to the realm. Her only vindication is that there's the same raw pain in his eyes as she feels in her own heart, that she doesn't suffer alone. That he's moved on no more than she has.

He pulls her into an alcove after the feast when everyone's too drunk to notice, leans his forehead against hers. "Don't do this," she whispers, even as she longs to touch him. It's been five years, five long years, and for as angry with him as she still is for leaving, more than anything she wants him.

"I miss you."

"You can't miss me. It's far too late for that."

He doesn't say anything, but she sees the dangerous hint of challenge in the set of his jaw. You were mine first, it seems to mean, and I was yours.

It doesn't get any better after her marriage. She doesn't even get the distraction of Rhaella, Viserys, and the bustle of King's Landing, for Rhaegar whisks them off to Dragonstone. She is grateful she does not have to suffer Aerys's rages and lechery, but being here is its own special kind of torture. The times Rhaegar goes off to Summerhall are nearly unbearable. It would take no effort at all to slip out of her room and into his, to finally quench the burning heat inside her.

"Is this how it's going to be until the end of our days?" she asks him one night. She's so close, if only she moved an inch to the left, she could feel his lips on hers for the first time in years.

"It has to be."

"When does it get easier?" Through her bedgown she can feel the heat of his hands on her waist and thinks, Just a little lower.

"I don't know," he says. "Maybe never."

Never. The very thought makes her ill. How could she go through a lifetime of this? Yet how could she not? The times he's gone are even more agonizing than when he's not. He's her poison, and her antidote, the best part of her, and the worst.

Her rise, and her downfall.