Two: Years One to Two, For Me and You
IV
Alyssa Targaryen grows up spoiling for fights like a dragon blights the air with heat and ash. Before she walks, before she talks, these brawls take root in the crib, in the nursery, battle lines drawn between wet-maids and Septa's and a toothless babe that rival the etchings of the Painted Table at Dragonstone (not that any of Alicent children would know that. They've never visited their ancestral seat as of yet).
But first comes the struggle for life.
She is not a sickly babe. Not from what the Maesters can tell. Neither is she slow of mind or weak of heart. Yet, Alyssa refuses to suckle. From a wet-nurse paid handsomely from both the Crown treasury and the Hightower coffers, from their very own mother who tries but fails in a desperate bid to get the babe to drink something, to a portly woman they secret in from a Silk Street brothel, Alyssa scrunches her face up and screams and screams until she's taken from the breast in despondent woe. Only then does the crying stop, and the crying start fresh for their frazzled mother.
Rumours strike up like lutes in court, murmurings that Alicent Hightower's green blood was showing. A mother who could not get their babe to suckle? Not once? A sign, an omen, surely.
It brings back memories of another time, another Queen. A long line of dead children sired by Viserys in the hunt for an Heir. Alyssa, they say, will simply be another ghost in the halls already full with them.
It reaches a crescendo at the whispers of Maester Mellos in a corridor, surrounded by loyal fellows and Otto. If the babe refuses to suckle by the weeks end, the balding, aging man in grey asserts to Lord Hightower, it will be dead by another.
It's Ser Cole who saves the day (whether that's to ingratiate himself further to their mother who had fallen to her knees at Viserys's feet to plead his case after the… untimely death of Ser Joffrey Lonmouth, or because he sincerely was trying to repay a debt, or because an alive child by Alicent was another swipe at Rhaenyra, is less sure).
Ser Cole was not like the other Knights of his ilk, like the Lords and Ladies of the court. House Cole was a small noble family of little regard, with no actual land holdings to speak of. Ser Criston himself was born to a mere steward of the Dondarrions, a far more powerful House fostered from the Dornish marches in and around Blackhaven.
In short, he is the odd man out. The lone Dornishman in a sea of First Men and Andals and Valyrians, with neither title nor riches to ease the blow of his rather common birth.
It is this common birth that saves Alyssa from the too-soon embrace of the Stranger.
Ser Cole rounds up flour, bread, fresh cows milk, and barley in the kitchens, gets a cook to stew it all up to mush in a big tin pot, a fine paste they come to call pap, and once cool takes it to the wet-maids with an order of feed her this.
Alyssa eats it all, sucks the lot right off the spoon, and even goes as far as having a second helping.
It's a common practice amongst the Small-folk, he tells Alicent later, after the babe is full and sound asleep in her crib, and the two watch on over her. Small-folk who, when they lose a mother to the birthing bed, cannot afford the wet-maids Lords can employ.
It matters little, Alyssa eats and Alyssa lives and Alyssa grows-
Grows to be a pain in everyone's necks (Aegon wouldn't have her any other way).
V
The day Alyssa Targaryen learns to walk, and quicker yet to run, the Seven Hells break loose in the Red Keep.
Aegon knows personally, has seen for himself too many times to count, that it was not a rare occurrence to see the young Princess careening down a hall, her minders and maids scrabbling after her, tripping over themselves to get their runaway charge back before they would have to alert the Queen and King they had lost her (again). Her hair, which had lightened in the following year, not quite reaching the Targaryen silver but settling in an unsettling red so bright she looks like she'd been set aflame and let loose, trailing licks and curls of fire behind her as she swerved and weaved her way through legs and doorways and grasping hands to supposed freedom.
She has not learned her tongue yet, can only babble and spit, but by the Gods is she fast.
Sometimes all you hear rather than see is indiscriminate angry screeching zooming past a window, sometimes a bright colourful peel of laughter bouncing off the halls, the swift plat, plat, plat of bare feet on flagstone.
It is this noise, like rain on canvas, that is Aegon's only warning as he is barrelled into as his sister bolts around a corner he too had been taking to get to the library.
She is too little to knock Aegon back, but he is too big not to knock her down. She does not cry, though, Alyssa. Not at the shock of ending up on her arse, even if it must have stung. Instead she looks up to find Aegon looking down, a possible fellow conspirator, lifts her still chubby hands, flexing tiny fingers, and pulls him into her plot with very little effort, only a look (he was wrapped around her finger even then).
He manages to pick her up and stuff her into the alcove at his back by the time the maids come tumbling around the bend.
"My Prince,"
They bow breathless.
"Have you seen the-"
Aegon cuts them off with a lazy gesture down the hall, the way he had came, for this wasn't his first time put in this very spot (nor would it be his last).
"She went that way."
The maids, as they do, waste no more time, taking the Prince at his word and his hand the direction of the wild hunt. Aegon uses his numbers to count down from nine and ten before he turns back around and peers down.
Alyssa's standing in the crook of the hollow, fingertips in lips, mischief in her mismatched eye. Aegon gently pries the digits from out her mouth one by stubborn one, a habit he knows their mother is trying to break her of. A habit Alyssa seems intent on keeping just because she could.
"Let me guess-"
He asks as he takes to fiddling with the unbound knot of a ribbon on her green sleeve. As a child himself, though he would swear he was a man grown already (Aemond was the child, Helaena the child, not him) he doesn't have to bend down far to meet her head on.
"Bath time again?"
Alyssa doesn't answer him, not in gabble or giggle, but the evidence of her sleeve is enough. Bathing Alyssa was akin to trying to herd a bull through the strait lanes of Fleabottom. Hopeless.
It was not that Alyssa did not like bathing, nor did she distrust water, not according to their mother, but only that it was mother who bathed her.
Anyone else so mentioned heating coals for a tub and Alyssa was gone, the sound of plat, plat, plat on stone.
Sighing, Aegon scooped the babe up, balancing her in his arms, a tiny weight that wiggles.
"You know you should wash. You stink."
She doesn't. Alyssa smells sweet still, that distinct candied almond coating babies have, that Aemond still has, that Aegon remembers Helaena having, dusted along with a tart sharp lemon of the cakes Ser Cole keeps feeding her.
Alyssa, in challenge, gnashes her teeth at him. A threat of a bite. Aegon only laughs as he begins walking away with his feral sister at hip. She has teeth now, only two, the front ones, and it makes her look like a rabbit. Bucktoothed and bright eyed.
"Yes, yes, I hear you. No bath. How about some lemon cakes fresh from the kitchens, then?"
Alyssa perks up, tugging on his hair in tight fisted excitement, as if she were pulling on reigns, saying go-go, now-now.
Aegon is meant to be heading to the Maester in the library, for lessons on Lords and Houses, but if he's caught out in the kitchens he can easily lay blame for the whole affair on Alyssa, saying he found her wandering the halls and took her to warm up by the fires in the kitchen (it's not really a lie, is it?).
She gets her lemon cakes, he gets out of a headache.
What else are siblings for?
VI
"Oh sweet sister-"
Aegon sighs forlornly, staring down at the contemptuous glare staring up at him with an ill-sorted gaze, small hands strangling the stout bars her cheeks are pressed tightly against. A knee-high face scowling out between the cleft.
"It is a shame to see you like this. A life of quisling escapades, the finest foods of the land and all the delights one could ask for, now here you stand, accused with no trial, left to rot in a cell by your own family."
He bends down steep on his haunches, bouncing on his knees, regarding the angry pinched mouth now level with his own.
"Tell me what heinous crime you have committed to be sentenced to this lonely end?"
The bars, much like those from a crib, are a new edition to Alyssa's nursery chambers, custom made by Essosi carpenters to fit the hinges of the door, to latch and unlatch when needed. The bars do not go high up, do not fill the entryway, Aegon himself can lean over and peer right over the top, but the clasp is far out of Alyssa's tiny reach, and thus, has kept her trapped behind the bars since they had been installed.
Much to the easy sleep of her Maids and Septas now.
"She ran away from Septa Limwich again, and was found by Ser Arryk in the courtyard trees collecting twigs."
The voice comes from the hall, soft and dreamy in the only way Helaena can be.
"They don't understand yet. They don't see you can't hold lightning in a hand."
And just like Helaena, nonsensical followed by the sensical.
Still, she tells him what he needs to know, in a round about way.
Twigs.
Alyssa, over the last moontide, had taken the strangest turn of being seemingly fascinated, and equally aggravated, by twigs of all things. She picks them up wherever she goes, rips them off of trees and shrubs, swishes them this way and that way through the air, as if she were playing with swords, only to end up frowning by the end. Then they would end up under foot, snapped, and Alyssa would be off hunting for her next soon-to-be-discarded branch.
"I see."
Aegon says with a dramatic flare and a sorrowful shake of his head that's partially true. He hasn't seen this menace in a while, too long, his lessons with the Maesters and Sers and the odd one with his Father are taking him away more and more from children's games. from being a child. The burden of being a first born (but not the first born. Not the Heir. Rhaenyra has that like she has fathers love).
"The foulest of treasons, then. And so young too."
Playfully, he flicks her on the nose that is pressed through the bars, almost as if it was trying to scent the liberation of the halls and castles out of sight and out of reach. Not so playfully, Alyssa tries to bite him back.
She misses, but that is half the fun.
"You are going to have to start using your words rather than your teeth soon. Father will be most embarrassed if you bite a visiting dignitary. Go on, say Aegon. Ae-gon."
In reply, Alyssa rattles her gate as if to say I will speak when I am free. Or, perhaps, get me out. Or, most likely, just to make noise.
Standing once more, Aegon leaned over the bars and plucked his sister up and over the mountainous gate of her prison, settling her into his grip with well practiced ease. She seemed happy to be there, happy to be out, unlike Aemond who, currently being carried sleeping in Helaena's arms, had thrashed in Aegon's hold and kicked him in the ribs and dribbled on his favourite doublet. Brothers.
"Unfortunately, sweet sister-"
This is a lie too. Alyssa may smell sweet, but she is anything but.
"I have a worse fate in store for you. The blackest of punishments. A cruelty right out of the Seven Hells."
Helaena scoffs, picking up stride beside them as the siblings work themselves down the corridor and deeper into the Keep.
"Do not call our family dinners a punishment, Aegon. If mother hears you, she will see you buried in books for the next moontide."
Perish the thought.
Nevertheless, Aegon turns to the girl in his arm, the wild thing of wild hair and wilder eyes, and he grins down to her.
"You'll protect me, won't you?"
Mouth still puckered, brows still heavy and frowning, a look more at home on a man of Ottos age than a babe, Aegon could swear, swear until he was blue in the face (or poor in a Silk Street brothel), that Alyssa gives a jilted, but stern and determined nod.
VII
Alyssa's first words come at the expense of Otto Hightower's dignity, and Aegon has never been so delighted before.
The dinner starts out much the same as it always does. A terse greeting of each other as if they are strangers crossing paths in the night, a blind eye turned by King Viserys who sees only what he wishes, a nervous shuffling of children ushered to chairs they would rather be anywhere else but in.
As Hand of the King, and Grand Sire of Viserys's green speckled brood, Otto has been invited to the dinner and sits on the Kings right.
Aegon is placed on the left, down from his mother (down further yet if Rhaenyra was here) and Alyssa is beside him, opposite Aemond and Helaena. It goes as well as it can, given who's privy to begin with, and Aegon mainly keeps his attention with his errant sister so he doesn't have to try and focus on the politicking the men at the head are murmuring about.
She has a fruit porridge before her and on her, a silver spoon in hand she is seemingly refusing to use in favour of her hand. The hot cereal is everywhere within minutes after mothers prayer, in her hair that despite mothers best efforts still resembles the druff of a dandelion, down her silk dress and up her sleeves and smeared across her face in clumps and oaty clods.
Aegon thinks this is why he has a partiality, a fondness, an inclination towards his younger sibling. Only eleven moontides older than Alyssa, and Aemond is still using his cutlery, has not a speck of egg upon his vest, is sitting still and quiet and watchful (too watchful for one so young). Helaena, when she is not talking in circles, speaking in riddles, is as soft as summer clouds, as misty as a seas rain, is everything a Princess should be. He himself has learned his courtesy, had the manners of a Lord bashed upon his head until it came natural, know's exactly when to smile, and how to nod, and where to place his hands when addressing someone of high status (it's not enough for his fathers love. It is never enough).
And there is Alyssa, as feral as the cats you sometimes find prowling for mice in the bowels of Maegor's Holdfast, the ones with the notches in their ears and a hiss for a kiss, and she eats with her hands, and she runs barefoot through the halls, she bites people and wiggles and slips from grips-
And she is everything Aegon wishes to be, and can't be. The wildness, the spirit, she hasn't had it trampled out of her yet, exchanged for graces and duty and boring Maester lessons. Oh, mother has tried, mother has tried until she's blue in the face, until she has had to pay a pretty coin for Essosi carpenters to build a babe a prison, but it is a spark that can't be doused, a light that can't be snuffed. Maybe one day (never actually), but until that day Aegon finds a vicarious joy in watching his sister run rampant and untamed.
"Aegon."
It's Otto who speaks to him, addresses him head on so Aegon can't pretend he doesn't hear him.
"Maester Mellos tells me you are still struggling to remember the Great Houses and their words?"
Aegon sinks back into his own plush chair, fork stalling over a sausage. He doesn't need a reflection to know how he must appear. Startled and pale.
It is not that Aegon struggles with study per say, neither does he struggle with the Maesters he is appointed to, it is the books they level upon him that Aegon cannot get a grapple with. He opens a binding, stares at a page, and the words swim across the parchment, dancing like candlelight until his head hurts and his own words are jumbled messes on his tongue and he is reading whole sentences backwards and upside down.
The tutors and Maesters don't believe him when he tells them thus, however, tells them the words move. They instead tell his mother and father he is a wilful child who is easily bored and distracted, and that only makes him shoved into a chair with a book longer, so he never makes another go of it again, never mentions it again.
Otto's sigh is long and suffering.
"I must say I am disappointed in your lack of enthusiasm, Aegon. You are seven namedays old now, and nearly a man grown. It is time you take your studies seriously, instead of-"
PLAT.
it is not the sound of footsteps this time that makes the noise. The noise that cuts the lecture of Otto Hightower sharply off. Oh no. And while Aegon's eye had grown watery, he does not miss what he sees. Utter bafflement as the chambers spin to silence.
Worse yet, the spoon Alyssa had been holding was loaded with her porridge, and now that porridge was dripping down Otto Hightowers face.
She makes a sound beside Aegon at the end of her buck teeth, a f-f-f-f-f before-
"Fok-eh!"
And as it is impossible not to put two and two together, to see Alyssa had thrown a spoon full of sticky sweet porridge at the Lord Hightower, it was similarly impossible not to, despite the strange, almost northern accent of her voice, to not understand what that word she yelled was supposed to be.
Fucker.
Alyssa got one more good handful thrown at their grandfather, another belted out Fok-eh before the shock suddenly wore off.
"Alyssa!"
It's their mother who barks, but the King who comes to first, heaving out his chair to come and heave Alyssa out her own. He holds her out at arm length, careful of getting her sully on his own fine doublet, but there is no mistaking the fondness in a barely suppressed smile, as if he was seeing something from times past long ago (Aegon would learn later that Daemon, their uncle, first word had been cunt, aimed at a brother who could find humour in it now as he couldn't as a child).
"Now where did you learn such language, eh?"
Alyssa kicks and wiggles, and she speaks.
"Ot'ho Fuck'ed."
Otto fuck-head.
Said fuck-head who was now slowly using a square of pocket silk to clean up as much porridge from his face as he could, thought he would have to wash the beard.
He-
He giggles, tears long gone.
"Aegon."
His mother hisses in warning, but Viserys is doing what Viserys does. Sweeping over the ugly parts and pretending they don't exist.
"Aegon, why don't you go take your sister to her nursery to be freshened up? Later we can discuss acceptable language at the dinner table."
Aegon is all to happy to get out of there, to steal his sister from his father, but unlike his father, uncaring of holding her close in fear of getting dirty. He is already half way out the door when he hears Aemond-
"Fucker!"
Aegon doesn't stay for the blowout, instead dashing off, only daring to speak three halls away when he knows they are both out of ear shot.
"Otto is a bit of a fuck-head, isn't he?"
Alyssa grins, gnashes her teeth, and giggles.
Next Chapter: Dragon eggs are hatched, celebrations are had, and the Green Targ siblings bond…
Helaena: My life is a little too much panic and not enough disco.
Alyssa: My life has too many guns and not enough roses.
Aegon: My life is a little too much chemical and not enough romance.
Aemond: My life is too much imagination and not nearly enough dragons.
A.N: Happy holidays everyone! Whether you are celebrating Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, or Las Posadas, I hope you all have a fantastic winter! I am not sure whether i am going to be able to update any of my fics before Christmas, as i have a lot of travelling to do, but if not, I hope you all liked this chapter, and it made you smile.
As always, if you can, dont forget to drop a review, and i will hopefully see you all soon. Until then, stay beautiful! ~AlwaysEatTheRude21
