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Chapter Text

The castle shakes with the storm. If Luke lies he can say that’s why his hands tremble. 

Lord Borros reminds Lucerys of his father. The Lord's voice bellows with an assuredness seldom seen in any common man, his features are dark– stern with a fatherly burden Luke has not seen in years. He’s not his father though, no matter how hard Luke tries to see Harwin the differences are obvious, whereas Harwin had kindness in his heart all angles of Borros are sharpened like steel. 

Vhagar is at his back. Her roars bellow, blowing the door open in crashing noises. Luke barely pays her any mind. The real threat stands plainly beside Borros: Aemond, stuck into the shadows and smiling as if he had already known Luke’s plan. Perhaps he did, but Luke made a promise. If dealing with Aemond is what it takes so he does not have to see more blood spilled for his birthright then he will manage. Everything in his life always comes back to Aemond, at his worst moments he is there. It’s an omen and Luke ignores it. He is surrounded by threats and all he can do is ignore them. 

“I’ve come for an audience at the request of the Queen,” he tries to muster courage, but his voice squeaks. Aemond laughs. 

The rest is a blur. It’s a failure, that he knows, but where he failed was already pre-ordained. There’s nothing he could have done. Offered one of his toddler brothers to marry a full grown teenage girl? His mom gave him no bargaining chips other than honor and Lucerys knows that’s not enough to convince men of war. Blood breeds war, his mother taught him that young, and Aemond whispering in the ear of one of Borros’ daughters had already sealed their fate. Aemond has always been bent on his destruction ever since the night Lucerys can’t bring himself to regret. He hurt to defend his family. He is not above doing it again. The promise to his mom lingers but he has no options. 

He goes to leave, to reconvene with his mother but Aemond stops him. He screams at him for his eye and throws down his dagger. His body is heaving. He is a mad man and Lucerys wants to scream at Borros that this is the man he is letting his daughter marry, one that craves blood at any cost, has no limits and demands the impossible. He is a monster forever connected to Lucerys for the simple fact Luke took something from Aemond he can never give back. Luke feels sympathy for the Baratheon girl, they are both a means to an end in Aemond’s world forever bound to owe the ungivable to him: Love and an Eye. 

He almost wants to do it. Carve out his eye and be done with Aemond forever.

Borros shouts, “There will be no blood in my court.” Lucerys had forgotten about him. The man looks frightened like he has lost control of a situation he can not fathom. He is a stag with its horns stuck. Aemond obeys, his face settling into a grimace, his dagger still thrown on the floor. Borros looks at Luceryes, something akin to pity in his eyes, “Guards, arrange rooms for our guests befitting their stations. I will not so easily give up the opportunity to host two princelings.” He looks at Luke, “The seat of drift mark grows richer under the sea snake, and allying with the heir could see our treasuries rewarded. My aunt sits on the throne with her husband. Not to mention their techniques used to conquer the stepstones could one day help in fending off the Dornish squabblers.” 

Luke had almost forgotten he would have a seat, that he would have money at all. He swallows, his throat growing dry. He should’ve made that point himself. 

Aemond starts to protest, his face growing darker by the minute. Borros raises a hand, silencing him, “A prince in the family would be an asset as well, not to mention your skills as a fighter, and your dragon warrants a prestige that must be noted.” He strokes his beard, deciding upon something and smiling a cold smile looking at both the men. “However, the lines of war have not yet been drawn, the Starks remain undeclared, the Tyrell boy king has not spoken, and the Tully’s old ruler is sooner to die than plunge the Riverlands into war. The Greyjoys pillage the coast of the Lannisters making one of the biggest allies of the king enraptured in battle. There is much still to fall into place and I will not be the first whip to lash.”

It’s a chance. Luke has learned to thrive on those since he was young; all second sons have. He had come as an envoy, meant to arrive and leave, but cannot afford to disappoint his mother. Not yet. Not with his family at risk. If he leaves now, Aemond will swoop Borros back into his current and away from Luke like water lapping at his father’s casket. It is decided without any hassle. He will stay and fight to convince the lord of his worth. He has spent his whole life doing such, and this will be no different.

—

The room is dark and it is only then that he allows himself to breathe. The air smells of rain, storms, and thunder. It reminds him of Dragonstone. A small smile blossoms on his face. It is a different air there, humid instead of cold but still, the scent of wetness lingers in both. He wonders if Jace is fairing any better in the Vale, which is meant to be the easiest of all, if his mother's claim is challenged on basis of sex, Lady Jeyne could as easily be deposed of. The Starks will be harder, there is no reason for them to get involved other than honor and Borros has taught Luke personally that that is not enough. Perhaps Jace will even encounter another sibling of the greens, Daeron coming out of his hole in Oldtown to convince the Starks to raise arms against his mother. 

Luke sighs, Borros is right: there is too much to be decided. 

His sleep is light. The knowledge that his uncle is creeping around the castle not allowing his mind to be fully calm. Once he opens his eyes and thinks he sees Vhagar staring into his window, waiting to eat him. He drifts in and out of conciseness. His eyes are alert even in his sleep. It is full of dreams that do not make sense, of fish being trampled, a Kraken thrashing against a shore wishing to rule the land, Lions with their teeth cut out, his hands closed around a sapphire holding it as though it is precious even as it cuts him.

Aemond wakes him in the stillness of night. He does not use his voice or even movement. His presence is enough to make Luke’s hair stand up on end. The curls in his hair have frizzed in the night leaving him rumpled and sweaty and hyperaware. He is not sure if it’s because of the nightmares or it’s because Aemond stands in the corner of his room, simply watching him, the eyepatch obscuring the disgusted look on his face. His features are long, stuck onto his face haphazardly, and dragged down by some unknown burden. What could a prince have to mourn? Luke does not know. He does not want to know. 

His heart startles, pulling up the sheets around him as though they could protect him. 

“Do not bother, I would’ve killed you already if it would not go against guest rights,” Aemond says simply, holding the dagger in his hand as though that’s what he came to do,“Slaughtered you like a pig in his sleep silently, plucked out your eye, made a necklace for my mother, and been gone before the Baratheon knights even knew your throat had been sliced.”

“Uncle,” Luke greets because he’s not quite sure how to respond to that .

They stare for a moment merely observing each other. The damp air has treated Aemond’s hair much better than his own, it falls in silky waves around himself in the color of moonlight streaking through the window and onto the dagger. His one eye is focused on Luke, a dark purple. A scar curves around the other one. His stature is towering and Luke feels the base of his gut coil. If he looked like Aemond would his life be easier? The whispers of bastard disappearing where ever he goes. He doesn’t wish to know. Aemond’s lips purse, the final sign of restraint in a man who knows none.

“You do not know how to be content,” Aemond comments, he crosses his arms and sneers, pocketing his dagger, “even in your sleep you thrash like a squabbling bird and in the daytime, you seek to own what others already possess.” He moves towards the edge of Lucerys bed peering over him, “Was the eye not enough for you? What more could you desire? You kill Vaemond for his seat, a weak move for such a Strong boy and now you come back like a possessed puppet of your mother to steal my brother’s seat. You’re a ghost of my past that returns from the dead the moment I earn something rightfully: first Vhagar and now lord Borros’ men. If it was an eye for the dragon, what is the cost for an army? Will you slaughter my bride? My dragon?”

Aemond has always sought to understand things that evade him. In their youth it had been dragons, him pouring over scriptures and books to make sense of why a dragon had not chosen him. Luke used to pity him then until he grew into too much of a prick to be worthy of such things. 

The moonlight makes Luke wanton and earnest, if he squints this close in the darkness Aemond is returned to the boy who never stopped asking him what it was like to have a dragon. The boy he would ask him what it was like to be a true Targaryen. Luke didn’t know how to answer him and was too young himself to tell Aemond that despite his dragon no one sees him as a true Targaryen. 

Luke sighs, still half convinced this is another of his weird dreams. He does not want to lie to Aemond, go along with the narrative that he’s an evil bastard for the sake of it. For as much as Luke has done to his uncle, he has never lied. “I want only what is fair. My mother to have her crown with little bloodshed.”

“That is all?” Aemond is closer now. His breath smells of wine. It makes his words stick sweetly onto Luke’s skin. He grasps the sheets above Lucerys with white knuckles. 

“That is all.”

Aemond laughs, swirls, and sways on his feet as if in his own dance, “Am I supposed to believe you? You want fairness? Fairness is an eye for an eye and you can’t even give me that.” He staggers back, “You and your mother, hypocrites clinging to notions of fairness and ignoring that fairness and justice is blood. It is a fight. The world does not give what you do not take. But you would not know that would you, you have never had to take something have you? Ser Daemon killed Vaemond for a seat you don’t deserve. You have been handed everything from birth: your dragon, land, a mother who loves you and yet you take from me. How is this fair nephew? You stab my eye and sabotage my marriage pact with nothing but what you were swaddled in. You’ve earned nothing and have everything.” 

Lucerys doesn’t know how to answer. Aemond has always been bitter, always a madman and a monster, but now it has morphed into almost jealousy. It reminds him more of Aemond before he mounted Vhagar, of the little boy who just wanted to belong in the dragon pit. He rubs his eyes and yawns, thinking of how Jace acted when Luke easily surpassed him in Valyrian lessons despite only working half as hard. “I know you think the world hates you,” he starts solemnly, “that it stole your destiny or great prophecy or whatever you think is owed to you and gave it to Aegon or Jace and or even me, but truthfully, I want nothing from you.” Luke looks at Aemond and the eye he had stolen. He does not regret it, the ugly mass of tissue hidden and marring an otherwise pristine face. He cannot regret it. Aemond has the type of face Luke should have instead of his soft cheeks and dark eyes, Aemond has strong cheeks and eyes that border upon beautiful. He swallows, “You have nothing to give me, Aemond.”

It is the truth Aemond would rather ignore. He has no lands, no inheritance. A second son in all the ways Luke is not: loved, renowned, and yet unseated.

Aemond yanks him out of bed with hands fisting his sleep shirt. Luke jolts at the cold settling into his bones. There is a tight frown on Aemond's face and his eye is glancing across each of Luke’s features. He almost looks as though he will pull his knife on Luke this very second. 

“I will take everything from you,” Aemond seethes, Luke can feel the spit from beneath his clenched teeth land on his cheek. He grabs Luke’s face with his hands and drags him until they are the same height, “Slowly, one by one and you will know what it is like to have to fight to belong in this world. First I will take your mother's crown. Put that bitch down like the rabid whore she is. I will take your bride-to-be and burn her with the same dragon that killed her mother. I will take your seat, melt Lord Corlys’ throne till all that remains is a charred corpse just like your father. And not that queer you pretend is your dad, but your real dad who wasn’t strong enough to raise you right. High tide will be stripped of its wealth and it’s navy granted to my brother. You will rule over rubble. And just then,” Aemond says his face impossible close to Luke’s, his nose and breath ghosting against Luke’s still smelling of sweet wine, “When you think the world could not get more unfair when you are surrounded in your misery,” Aemond brushes his thumb against Luke’s eye, just the barest of touches. It is almost gentle, something Aemond hasn’t been capable of in years. He whispers, barely above a murmur, “I will take what’s mine and you will be ruined”

Aemond digs his thumb into Luke’s eye until the boy is wrenching away onto the still sweaty sheets. He instinctively covers his eye cowering at the blinding pain shooting through his nerves, scuttling towards the window. It feels like fire has doused his eye and rubbed it raw. 

Boots clack on the door, and Aemond joyfully declares, “Sleep well, Nephew.”

Luke does not sleep the rest of the night, instead listening as the storm rages in tandem with his heart. 

Chapter Text

Every day becomes a small war meeting. 

Lucerys entire being is consumed with thoughts of war, death, and destruction. His mother urges him to come home, if Borros sides with Aemond it is almost a certain immediate death for him. He can not fight on his own, his mother does not want him to and Lucerys isn’t sure he could. He has never had to, there has always been Harwin or Jace or Daemon. He can not bring himself to admit defeat though, Aemond’s words still linger in his ear, the promises of his life slowly crumbling if he succumbs to even an ounce of defeat. His safety is less important than his future-- than the future of his family. 

Lucerys has always been fighting to hold on to what is his: his seat, his heritage, his identity. But never has he cared so deeply as when Aemond threatens his family. Aemond does not make empty threats, he states what he intends. 

“I do not know why you hesitate,” Aemond appeals to Lord Borros, the man's council surrounding both of them like vultures readying for a meal. “I intend to make your daughter, Cassandra, my equal. She will be lavished in the red keep and draped in the finest of jewels. Our children will come to ride dragons as have all the Targaryens before them. I offer more than some mere whispers of future gold, your Grace. I offer you fire.” 

“You promise me blood,” Borros corrects, “Your blood for the blood of my men.” 

“We both desire your men,” Aemond says, he paces, hands behind his back, “I only offer glory to the Baratheons that the usurper cannot promise.”

Aemond is in a strange state that becomes stranger each time Lucerys sees him. There is a small desperation to him that is so eerily similar to their childhood Luke feels his head spin. Aemond ignores him after the first night, only addressing him when it is to critique him. It’s an unspoken truce; speak not lest be spoken too.

“My mother does not desire men,” Lucerys finds his voice. He had to learn how to be a diplomat as fast as possible, the lessons Rhaenyra pushed him into settling into his mind: Reign with peace, not with power. “She desires loyalty in exchange for her loyalty and the Velayreon loyalty. She asks not for war, but for understanding. My mother wants peace.”

“You are here gathering war allies for peace?” Aemond asks. He scoffs, “You cannot expect anyone to believe that.”

“Not war allies,” Luke corrects, “My mother only desires simple alliances, that is what I seek. Whereas your brother might see the need to end this with war, there is no such anger on my mother's part.” Luke looks at Borros, “Your men might not even fight, with the Vale secured by my brother the scales tip more in our favor. We wish to secure enough support so Aegon has no plan but to abdicate.” 

“You are fighting a false war?” Borros asks, “Coming here simply so we will not join the greens.” 

“That is what my mother has planned, yes.” 

“And what do you have planned?” Borros leans forwards, eyes sparkling as his Maester takes notes. 

Luke has learned the right answers, shuffling his words so that a mirage might appear before Borros. He does not lie, no, but he has learned what things to emphasize and which to diminish. It’s a skill he succeeds at, learning what to say and what to not. Aemond is too brazen for diplomacy, too intense and honest. It is the one thing Luke has beaten him at since that night. “I wish to secure allies for my future seat at Driftmark. I need wise commanders for my fleet and places to defend with them. The Baratheons are a treasured seat that I would aim to help.” 

Borros smiles and the council seems pleased. Luke sends a silent prayer to everyone that has ever helped him. 

They are excused without much more fanfare. Aemond sulking on his way out, his pleas for violence falling on deaf ears. Luke smiles as he leaves. 

“You have always been so manipulative,” Aemond says as they leave the main hall, almost conversationally as if he has not threatened everything Luke loves, “and yet no one sees it. You blind everyone near you.” 

Luke kisses his teeth, “I believe the only man I’ve ever blinded was you.” 

“You consider yourself so clever.” 

“Lord Borros seems to think so,” Luke says with a nod. His mother’s want for peace seems to please the man in a way Luke could not have expected at first. Maybe he is more similar to his father than Luke first thought. Borros comes across as intense but still caring. He speaks of his men with care seldom seen by great lords. Luke almost admires him. 

Aemond glances at him for a moment, his eye drifting up and down Luke’s frame, “Your backbone has made a return. I remember you cowering before Vaemond as Daemon protected you. I almost feared my dear nephew lost his balls when he took my eye.” 

“An aversion to violence is not a weakness.” 

Aemond laughs, and it’s a sound Luke hasn’t heard since he was seven. It reminds him of when they were kids and laughed at silly jokes one another made. Luke doesn’t know when the last time he himself laughed was.  “The funny thing is you think that to be true. You have never been averted to violence. You swung a knife at nine and even in our training, I remember you attacking Jace with a ferocity that Criston Cole himself sneered at. Jace may have gotten your mother's softness, but you were never like that. You were always Harwin’s son, such a flagrant bastard the world refused to see, violent and ready to lash at the slightest outburst as Harwin lashed out at Criston at a mere taunt.”

They walk through the halls, several of the Baratheon servants nodding as they pass. Luke has not gotten the chance to know their names as he had at dragon stone. The servants can sometimes be one of your most important sources of information, Daemon had taught him that. 

“Harwin is not my father.” Luke does not know why he rejects it anymore. He is not sure what it even matters. 

“And here I thought you were getting clever, nephew,” Aemond tuts. “You strut around as a peacemaker, but I can see who you are, who you’ve been forced to bury. One day you will explode in rage, just as your father, and then,” he leans in to whisper into Luke’s ear, “You will be burned like him.”

Goosebumps rise on his arm despite the humid air. 

Aemond suddenly turns to leave, walking in what Luke recognizes as the direction of Borros’ daughters' chambers. He sighs to himself. He supposes threats of burning him alive are slightly better than ruination. 

—

Arrax is not used to all the storms. Every time Luke visits him he can see the slope of the dragon's wings droop even further. The Storm Lands namesake has become apparent to Luke in the little time he’s been there: there is always strong winds and a looming storm waiting to swallow the land up. It’s the first day Luke has been here where the sky is clear. The winds still blow but rain does not sprinkle. Despite the clear skies, Arrax looks sad, almost lonely. Back on dragon stone Arrax often played with Tyraxes, the two best friends not unlike their owners.

“I know,” Luke laments, “I miss them too.” 

He brings one of the sheep Borros has offered him and Aemond for Arrax. His dragon is small enough to stay in Storms End proper, becoming a marvel for the small folk. Vhagar has been placed in a cave not too far off of Shipbreakers bay in some location he’d rather not know. 

Luke pets Arrax as the dragon eats its meal with one command of ‘Dracarys .’ 

“We will be together again soon,” Lucerys mutters into Arrax’s ear. “I’m working on it.” 

“Do you often talk to your dragon?” 

It’s a voice that’s high and soft. Almost kind sounding. Luke takes a moment to place its owner, the girl lithe and pretty in ways that remind him of Rhaena: the feminine beauty Luke has never quite found himself pulled towards. It’s Borros’ eldest daughter, the one that had been standing next to Aemond when he first arrived, Cassandra. 

“Sometimes,” Luke replies, scratching under Arrax’s chin. He hasn’t talked to Cassandra before, the list of priorities being skewed away from her. “They say a dragon comes to recognize its owner's voice more than the owner's appearance. It’s how they know who to listen to when we command them.” 

“Who told you that?” 

Luke swallows. He had almost forgotten it was Aemond who taught him that. The little boy being so espoused in dragon knowledge, he shot it off like a loose spigot. At the time Luke found his obsession with dragons endearing, Aemond looking up to him simply because he had a dragon. He was the only person who has ever looked up to Luke, everyone else preferring Jace who was firstborn. 

“Aemond,” he answers simply. 

Cassandra nods, staring at Arrax, “He told me you two grew up together, that you were once close. It must be hard now.”

Is it? Luke honestly hadn’t thought about that. He finds it easier to set aside his childhood rather than dwell in it. “He was different then.” 

Cassandra laughs, covering her mouth with her hand in a way ladies are taught, “As are all children. I remember when Maris used to dote on me as if I could do no wrong. Now everything I do seems to be wrong to her.” 

Maris is one of Cassandra's sisters. Perhaps the meanest one from the little time Luke has spent with the girls at dinners. He's not sure, they all blend together. 

“The woes of siblings,” Luke comments idly stroking behind Arrax’s ears. 

Cassandra stares at Arrax, a curve in her mouth of distaste. Luke’s never seen such outright distaste for dragons before, usually, people are amazed. “Would my children ride one of those?” 

Luke had almost forgotten Cassandra held the burden of a possible marriage to Aemond. She seemed too sweet for that even in the few minutes he had spoken to her. 

“If born from Aemond probably,” Luke says, noticing her look of fear towards Arrax.“They are not as dangerous as they say. Arrax here has never hurt anyone.”

Cassandra hums, blinking slowly at Arrax, her black hair getting caught in her eyelashes. “He could still burn down the whole city in minutes.” 

Luke shrugs, “Vhagar could do it in seconds.” 

“Comforting,” she remarks, “I can’t imagine giving my children that power.” 

He’s never heard someone talk about dragons as a negative. It’s always been a given in his life. He is a Targaryen and therefore he has a dragon, it’s not something he’s allowed to have an opinion on. “Why not?” 

“The power to decide who lives and dies is with the stranger,” Cassandra says, “it’s not a burden fit for us.” 

“I’ve never thought of it that way.” Luke says, taking his hand off of Arrax, “it’s my right as a Targaryen to have a dragon, a privilege.”

It was who he was born to be. Same as he was born to rule Driftmark, he was meant to ride a dragon. It’s one of those givens of his life he has no reason to question. 

“A burden is a privilege when you are born into it,” Cassandra says, eyeing Arrax with almost distaste now. She crosses her arms, “You only realize it’s placed upon you when a decision is presented.”

This is not only about dragons Luke realizes. Her tone betrays a bit of sympathy as though she too understands this burden Luke never knew he had. 

“You are burdened too,” Luke comments observing her mannerisms. The way it seems she is talking about something else without ever naming it. 

She nods. Thinking of her words carefully before explaining it, “I must marry who my father decides, it’s a burden all women carry, not even your mother was exempt. If my father decrees it, my children will be like gods.” 

Luke understands that pain, Rhaena is nice but he feels no love for her. “I have no choice in who I marry either.”

Cassandra shakes her head, arms still crossed tightly around her chest. “It is different for women, you have your own name, your own seat even. Everything I am will go to my husband, my children, their future, and my future. It's my privilege.” Cassandra takes one last look at Arrax and shakes her head, before leaving, “I hope my father chooses you.” 

—

Aemond wakes him in the middle of the night again. It’s the same stillness as before, the same intensity that Luke’s known since he was young. There is no dagger in his hands and Luke takes that as a good sign. 

 “Do you have something to say?” Luke asks. 

He should feel threatened. He doesn’t, too tired and thinking of what Cassandra said to play into Aemond’s games. 

“I used to do this when we were young,” Aemond comments, all hesitancy abandoned, “When I couldn’t sleep and I found the passageway hidden behind my tapestry. The only place it led was to you.”

“I remember,” Luke says, groaning as he sat up. His dreams of falling dragons disappearing as he rubbed his eyes, “You would climb into my bed and tell me stories of dragons, of Balerion and Quicksilver fighting, and how you would’ve won despite the disadvantage. We’d fall asleep like that.”

Luke would rather not think of it. It’s so far away that it doesn’t matter anymore. His idealistic childhood has fallen into negotiating a war treaty.

“Aegon the uncrowned was always your favorite wasn’t he? Fighting for his birthright that had been stripped by his uncle,” Aemond crosses his arms, laughing at the irony, “How fitting.”

“And your favorite had always been Maegor, who cared only for his dragon and power, stripping his nephew of what was owed to him,” Luke mocks him. “Fitting.”

Aemond shrugs, “Maegor beat Aegon did he not?”

“And yet he ended up with his wrists sliced on the throne and no heir.” Luke says, “The usurper loses in the end.”

Aemond tuts, leaning against the doorway. He rolls his neck. Luke can hear it popping from all the way over here. He changes the subject, “Cassandra told me you spoke of our childhood.”

“Not really,” Luke sighs remembering the look of fear in the girl's eyes at who he was born as, “She asked if it was hard now when we grew up together. I didn’t know what to say.” He looks at Aemond the long hair that’s grown in place of what used to be short and frizzy. The eyepatch where there used to be a purple eye. “It’s different now.”

Luke almost asks if it has to be. All this talk of his childhood makes him yearn for when life was simple. When he dreamed of dragon fights instead of preparing for them. 

“Do you truly believe peace is an option?” Aemond asks, genuinely interested rather than anything else. He sits on the edge of Luke’s bed. His personality has shifted, violent like the waves. Aemond has always been this way. Venom one moment and sweet the next. It’s dangerous. Luke doesn’t do anything about it. 

Luke swallows. He wants to say yes so badly. He doesn’t want to lie. He can’t do both.  “No, I don’t think it’s been an option for some time, not since Vhagar.” 

Not since I took your eye , remains unspoken. 

Aemond hums, laying back on the bed. If Luke closes his eyes it’s like their kids again, sharing stories under the moonlight. “I knew you could not be that stupid. Always manipulative and a liar, choosing whatever fits your narrative and abandoning the real truth.”

The way Luke has had to survive is by lying about who he is. It’s not an option for him, it’s the only way he can live. He has to feed off people’s assumptions and turn them away from him. He was born to manipulate in some ways, it’s the role his mother has burdened him with. He used to think having such a high title was a privilege, but what Cassandra said comes back to him. Is his title a burden he constantly has to defend? As a child he saw all titles as feeding into the inevitable death of his loved ones, the need for heirs only constituted by the equal cause of death. Maybe he was right as a child. It doesn’t matter. It can’t anymore. Maybe he is a manipulator. He doesn't care if it keeps his family safe. 

“I do believe you called me clever this morning,” Luke says, and Aemond grunts. The night clears into something almost peaceful-- it is nights at the red keep spent in the same bed for no other reason than that it was comforting. Aemond is both Luke’s closest friend and his biggest enemy within these walls. “Do you think Borros believes there could be peace?”

Luke feels Aemond shrug against the sheets, this is the most honest they’ve been with each other in years. The fight leaving and getting pulled in by the moonlight, “He’s a foolish lord. He doesn’t know our mothers. It’s possible he underestimates them. They are bound to fight by merit of station, lords cannot understand it. If your mother wins,  my siblings and I will be beheaded.”

Luke sits up staring at Aemond. His face is the same as it always is, the face Luke should have and is always punished for not. It’s beautiful when not sneering or frowning. “That’s not true.”

“Yet another lie,” Aemond sits up, his usual venom replaced with weariness. His eyes look tired. The desperation on such a full display Luke feels trapped. 

“My mother would not do that,” Luke wants to reassure Aemond somehow. He doesn’t know if he can. 

“She already has,” Aemond says, something like fear clouding his voice, “Coming here was her war decree in and of itself. How can you not see that?”

“She does not want war,” Luke says softly. Looking into Aemond's eye as if that could convince him. 

Aemond stares at Luke for a minute glancing across his whole face as if trying to find something. His eye is open, the clearest purple Luke has ever seen. It is like the sea at Driftmark, clear and beautiful. 

“What we want rarely matters in this world.”

Luke blinks. Aemond almost sounds soft, like the thought of war has sanded him down until all that’s left is the real him without any pretenses. The trance is broken in a moment, the truth of Aemond rushing against Luke like cold water. He is ruthless and dangerous. Luke should be scared. He should be mad. Aemond wants him dead. “What is it you want? To see me destroyed right? Me burned? Isn’t that what you said just this morning? You want to feed Rhaena to her mother's dragon and stab out my eye. Peace isn’t an option because you took it away.” 

“You threaten my family,” Aemond answers simply as if it’s obvious. “I have to destroy you.”

“You threaten mine and yet I don’t want to see you destroyed.”

Aemond throws himself back down on the sheets staring up at the ceiling as if it might give him answers. He whispers, his voice barely above a murmur, “You scare me. You always have. If I don’t destroy you, you’ll destroy me.”

“You know I don’t want that.” Luke has never wanted that. He wants peace. He wants his family to be safe. If Aemond insists on getting in the way then he’ll of course fight him as he did all those years ago, but Luke does not want that. Protecting his family is a privilege he was born into, and one he does not take lightly. He doesn’t care if it’s a burden or a privilege, all that matters is his family stays together. 

“It’s not up to you.” Aemond sits up in a hurry. Climbing off the bed he looks at Luke, with anger as if pulled back into his rage and venom, quick to flip like the storm now raging outside. “You always make it so easy to forget.”

It’s an accusation. Luke doesn’t know what for. 

“Forget what?” Luke asks, but Aemond is already gone.

Chapter Text

Aemond has never known peace. It’s a simple facet of who he is: he’s constantly being thrust into situations where peace is not an option. He’s always had to fight, to triumph, to show the world he’s worthy. Not in the way men think of fighting now, tourneys for sordid glory, but the real bloody fighting with no rules. Rules have never suited Aemond. If he listened to them he’d be meek and timid, one of the forgettable second sons. 

Cassandra looks at him, her brow furrowed, “You look troubled, your highness.” 

Aemond looks at the sky rumbling above them, only sheltered by the small alcove surrounding the round hall. “Who’s your favorite Targaryen?” 

Cassandra pinches her mouth in the way she always does as if she’s better than everything in existence. “I don’t see the point in idolizing the past.”

Smug bitch. Cassandra is always talking about things she knows so little about. A sheltered daughter considering herself a poet. Aemond despises ignorance when one has so much available to learn. He grits his teeth, “Humor me.” 

She hums, pressing her cloak tighter to her hair, “Rhaena, maybe. She never accepted her station and fought to live how she wanted.” 

It’s a foolish choice to idolize something you can never have. Aemond used to believe in hopes and dreams, and then he got the biggest dragon in the world and was relegated to a mere diplomat in a war. He wonders if Cassandra will ever accept the fact her only purpose is to be married off. He looks at the sky raining down and imagines riding out of Storm’s end, into the storm. Aemond could fight thunder. He cannot fight what lurks in Storm’s End. It seeks to destroy him so slowly that he does not even know he is coming undone. “I used to like Maegor. He was strong, usurping someone too weak to rule. He didn’t bother with diplomacy or power but fear. No one could touch him. If one can reach that level, inheritance doesn’t matter, only what one can take.” His inheritance is set in stone, not even his mother who is the only one who has ever stood up for him cares to challenge it. Aegon is a drunkard, a rapist, everything that is wrong with power, and yet he holds so much where Aemond holds so little.

“Who is it now?” Cassandra asks.

Aemond crosses his arms over his chest feeling the dagger in his scabbard and comforted by the fact that he can cause destruction any moment. “Jaehaerys.” 

“A second son,” she notes. “A peacemaker.”

Aemond doesn’t respond. When does fighting lead to peace? Only after all the retribution has been given. He can not even get retribution for himself, his eye aching at night making it impossible to sleep. It is a hopeless dream. 

–

A small feast is held every night: dancing, music, roasted meats, the whole nine yards. Aemond has always found such formalities trivial, it’s an event for people like Aegon who are dedicated to partying and whoring rather than any duty or honor. Aemond is better than that. He’s always been better than his brother: his dragon is better, his fighting is better, his morals are far superior. It’s never mattered.

The feast tonight is a boring affair. His should-be bride, Cassandra, merely glances at him as she jokes with Lucerys. His nephew is charming in an innocent way, but Aemond is dangerous, a prince, and handsome in the way only real men are. Lucerys is pretty in a way only women can be: curled hair, long lashes, and flushed cheeks. Aemond glowers across the table as Cassandra laughs at something. Nothing Lucerys says is ever that funny and nothing is funny about a war looming as they sit here and play nice, but once again he is the only one to see the world for what it is as everyone else pretends. 

“Isn’t this nice?” Borros bellows, cutting up his fourth steak since Aemond’s been here, “Dinner between two sides of a war? One might think you two were a proper family.”

Lucerys nods like the timid bitch he is. 

“Speaking of war,” Aemond starts, “I have received word from the red ke-”

“Not now lad, it's dinner.” Borros silences him instead inclined to listen to Lucerys' tales of Dragon Stone. 

Aemond stabs his knife into his steak looking into Lucerys' eye. This is not how it should be. He has fought for his right to be here, he’s had his eye stabbed out by the same bastard smiling across the table. What has been handed to Lucerys, Aemond almost died for. Fairness has never been something Aemond believed in. It was not fair that his father didn’t love him where Luke had three dads that loved him. It was not fair that Aegon was firstborn. But where he has doubted fairness, he has always believed in justice, the violent correction of wrongs. He believes in an eye for an eye and takes what is his, what he deserves. He can’t stand for this injustice anymore. He’s never been a bitch that can be put down by mere words. He’s a dragon that soars above clouds and conquers lands, that reigns fire on his enemies. If he is not a peacemaker, he will be a war starter; it’s who he was born as– a correction to the world of injustice that keeps spiraling on with lies. He was born to destroy. 

Luke has always been his enemy in every way that's ever mattered. It’s easy to forget when Luke looks so honest in moonlight, when he reminds Aemond of all the things he could never be but wants so badly: a seated title, born with a dragon rather than with a struggle, natural charm, loved, an innocence he was forced to lose– but when poisoning those around him with a smile and his eyelashes, all Aemond can think of is the dull pain stretched across his skin. That is who Lucerys is meant to be: an enemy, a bastard, a manipulator, it is who he was born to be. It’s his privilege to be the son of a Queen. Fate does not change because one wills it so. Aegon was always fated to be king over him. 

He stands, chair clattering behind him, “Nephew,” he smiles gesturing at Luke with a toast. He tastes delight on his tongue at the reminder of their last dinner he toasted at. He hopes for a similar reaction. “Borros is right, surrounded by dinner it is almost as if we are back in our youth.” Luke smiles the same one that makes people forget that he is cruel-- forget that he could take from Aemond and never give back. Aemond at least does not pretend with his smile. He is better than Luke in that way: all Luke’s family are is pretenders: bastards, whores. “Perhaps we shall celebrate with a spar? as we did all those years ago when we were family.”

The smile falls off Luke’s face. It’s a triumph. 

“Come on girls,” Aemond continues, directing his toast toward Borros’ daughters, “Wouldn’t you like to see the princelings fight?” 

Cassandra has the pinched expression she always seems to have: equal parts disgust and intrigue. Marris is excited turning to her father, a glee for violence only possible by those who have not lived it, “It has been so long since we’ve had good fighters in our court.” 

Borros strokes his beard, a wide smile growing, “it would be a joy to watch what the most elite training can do.” He turns to Lucerys, “That is if you’re okay with it boy.”

Luke cannot say no without looking weak, and no second son would ever risk the chance of weakness. True Targaryens do not reject challenges but rise to them. It’s a fact that plagues both of them.

“Of course,” Luke says. It’s the same tone he used all those years ago when Aemond foolishly fawned over him simply because of a dragon: shyness mixed with a distinct trace of knowing that something is deeply wrong even if he cannot name it. 

–

Aemond has not trained since he arrived at Storm’s end and there is an itch in his bones that needs to be satiated. This is how he’s meant to fight, not with the soft words of diplomats but with steel and blood dripping down from fresh slices. There is a storm gathering in the sky, but that does not stop Borros and his daughters from coming out to watch the spectacle. They stand there like the guest that interest themselves in tourneys, or more accurately like Aegon who interests himself in fighting pits; a disgusting greed to see one fight for survival. Aemond has never hated the Baratheons more. He spits at the ground, watching the dirt lap it up as though hungry for more. Even the dirt in Storm’s End is greedy. 

Luke stands not even five feet away from him. Sword drawn and feet planted so awkwardly Aemond can think of multiple ways to topple him with a simple jab. He won’t though, he does not want to simply embarrass Lucerys, he wants to destroy him. 

He remembers the words he said, If I don’t destroy you, you’ll destroy me. They are fated in that way: Lucerys draws Aemond into the waves like a siren, he simply has to remind Aemond of what was rather than what is and he is undone. Lucerys has always succeeded in making people forget reality: the certainess of war, the truth of his father, the real heir to Driftmark. Aemond is no exception. He is a victim of the follies that triumph around his nephew. Aemond knows he’s not innocent in this cycle either. He brings Lucerys into his circle of wrath, the ever-present battle inside of himself to be worthy. He drags Lucerys into himself, meshes the boy's personality with himself so much that they become one in his mind. Wherever Aemond has existed so has Lucerys, linked in ways Aemond wants to destroy the only way he knows how– violence and blood. Lucerys wants Aemond to drown, to forget who he is. Aemond wants Lucerys to burn, to have never existed.  If he does not break Luke, they’ll destroy each other. Aemond has never waited to act, he will not start now. 

The fight starts fast. It is quick hot passion. Their feet slide in the ever-present mud of Strom’s end turning the fighting into a desperate mess. Luke does not pretend to have honor, he bites and kicks at Aemond’s knee. It’s the side of Luke only meant for Aemond: the desperate bitter side that admits all his faults so Aemond can absolve him. Aemond is not much better, he does not bite but he finds Luke’s hair and fists it so he can throw his knee into his nephew’s face. Aemond keeps finding reasons to let the fight go on, restraining his swings to mere hurting rather than being lethal. At no time does Aemond lose the upper hand. It is how the world is supposed to be: the strong defeating the weak, his nephew below his foot. 

The rain starts to fall, turning desperation into torment. Each blow is not about winning, but proving their worth. They fight the way they’ve learned to survive, clawing for a mere chance at victory. They no longer strike blows to end anything but to satiate an unspoken need. The Baratheons had traveled inside when the storm started to get violent, Borros saw to break them up, but Cassandra was the one to stop him, telling him that the exercise will do the princelings well. They are fighting in a storm, fighting against thunder together with each blow they trade. He is out of breath when he decides he has had enough. He merely sweeps Luke’s leg out from under him and pins him into the mud. It is everything that the night he lost his eye should’ve been. At any moment he can take Luke’s eye, it is one simple swipe of a sword, and yet he does not. Luke owes him something and an eye is not enough anymore. 

He looks into Luke’s eyes, the fear in them pushing him forward toward an unknown precipice. He has never known where he is with Luke, who is losing and who is winning in their constant battle. Is Luke burning or is Aemond drowning? Luke is pinned beneath him and Aemond still does not know the answer. His skin is wet with water. It’s a Velaryeon funeral, the waves lapping at his sides waiting to pull him in. He stabs his sword in the mud beside Luke’s head.

“I will always be better than you,” Aemond sneers, “You may delude the world into forgetting who and what you are, but I can’t forget.” 

 Aemond understands Luke more than he understands anyone else, perhaps more than himself. They are bound in unspeakable ways, in the shared ending of childhood, in sleepless nights spent in each other's comfort, in the expectation of proving oneself, in the same ways they constantly fail despite trying their hardest. They are the same in every way that matters, yet so different no one else sees it. Aemond has always been the only one to see it. He’s the only one that can. Similarities do not matter, only what divides them: their families, their birth. Lucerys is a ghost that haunts him, appearing each and every time Aemond needs to achieve the impossible. He is the only constant in Aemond’s life.

“You are not better than me because you wield a sword,” Luke shouts over the storm. “You are mad I have what you don’t. It’s not just my seat anymore, is it? You are furious that the Baratheons like me more. Even your bride-to-be likes my company over yours,” Luke spits in his face, “Does it remind you of your father, huh? That despite you being his son, he defended me more than he ever defended you.” 

Some feral sound breaks out from Aemond’s throat taking out the dagger from his hip and pointing it into Luke’s eye. The handle is familiar in his hand. It helps to ground him. “Don’t forget that you have a debt.”

Luke swallows. Aemond can feel his throat bobbing from where his hand is pressing it into the ground. “I don’t owe you anything.” 

“You owe me everything ,” Aemond says, “All you are is a stain on our bloodline that takes what he doesn’t deserve and flashes it around as if you earned it.” 

“Everything I have I did earn,” Luke screams, struggling against his grasp; the lightning makes it so no one can hear them, “You don’t know what it’s like to have to prove yourself every single day of your life. I don’t have any choice in who I am, you can be anything: a warrior, a manipulator, a kind person, but I never got that choice. Look at you!” Luke wiggles under him, bringing a hand to grab Aemond’s hair roughly, “You have never had to prove that you deserve to be called a Targaryen or that you deserve your birthright or that you deserve anything. You have the silver hair and the purple eyes, and that’s all that matters in our family!”

“That’s all that matters?!” Aemond holds the dagger steady above Luke’s eye. He should plunge it straight with no mercy as Luke did to him. He hesitates. His voice is steady and calm, “You haven’t earned a single fucking thing. You don’t know what it’s like to not have lands, to be second to a brother who only cares about whoring and drinking while you did everything to be better than him, and your mother still chooses him to be king over you. You don’t know what it’s like to have to prove you deserve your dragon every single day. You were born with a dragon egg that hatched, that’s all that matters in our family.”

“Who fucking cares?” Luke fists his hair tighter, “You have a dragon now, I can’t fix how I look. I try to, I wear all reds and blacks, and hold myself with Targaryen grace and it still doesn’t matter.”

“It’s not my fault you’re a fucking bastard,” Aemond sneers. 

“It’s not my fault the best you can be in your life is second.”

Aemond wants to scream, to command Vhagar to roast Luke alive so he’ll never have to hear his voice again. 

“It’s your fault I don’t have my eye,” Aemond says, “It’s your fault I’m not whole.”

For a brief second, Aemond had been whole. He had a dragon and an eye. Yes, it was an exchange he was happy to make, but it was not one he should’ve been forced to choose. What justice is there in a world that only takes?

“What do you want,” Luke sneers, “Are you looking for an apology, For me to beg you not to take my eye?” Luke scratches Aemond’s cheek, digs his nails in until it leaves marks, “I will never apologize for protecting my family, especially not to someone who has everything I could never hope for.” 

Aemond's arms slacken at the words. Had he wanted an apology? Is that retribution? Is that all he needs to feel the peace he’s never truly thought within himself? Luke pushes him off with a hard shove Aemond had not known him capable of. He crawls off the muddy floor, slipping on his hands and knees. Aemond lets him go.  He does not know why. 

Aemond lies in the mud staring at the sky as Lucerys retreats into the Round Hall. Thunder clashes all around him but there is no fight in him to challenge it. Rain slickens his cheeks until he’s not sure if he’s crying or the water has melded into his body and become one. He has his answer: He is drowning. 

Aemond has never known peace. 

Lucerys will not let him.

Chapter Text

Aemond’s room is tucked into a corner of the Round Hall.

Luke has to keep himself silent as he makes his way there, avoiding the watchful eyes of servants bustling in the darkness. Mud is still stuck in between his finger nails. He’s picked at it, stabbed it out with the hilt of his sword only for it to dig deeper. The moment keeps coming back to him no matter how hard he tries to rid himself of it. Aemond taunts him: His face of shock, the pure anger as he tried to stab Luke, the hesitancy when he didn’t. It’s been stuck in his brain all night causing him to lose far too much sleep. Aemond has no right to torment him. He was the one that started the fight, he’s the one who starts everything and leaves Luke to suffer with the consequences. 

He stands in the doorway for a moment unsure of what to do. Aemond is sleeping, his face smashed into his palm. His hair glows. The scar stretches across his eye with no eye patch obscuring it. It’s the first time Luke’s seen all of it since it healed. The scar is ugly in all it’s glory, and indent carved in the middle of Aemond’s eye creating an uneven divot as though the flesh had been flayed straight off. Luke did that. The rest of Aemond’s face is serene, sloped at the cheeks with a nose that follows, his lips are a cupid’s bow, the type women have in fancy portraits. The only traces of violence on Aemond is Luke’s creation. 

“Aemond,” Luke hisses pulling his cloak down from his head. Aemond does not stir. “Aemond,” Luke calls again. Still no reaction. Luke steps closer. The slight fall of Aemond’s chest becoming more apparent the closer he gets. There is a stain of mud caked across Aemond’s cheek as though he missed it in his bath. It’s on the apple of his cheek right below where his hair falls in straight lines.

Luke tuts. Aemond always used to be covered in mud when they were younger, finding stray puddles to jump at and never afraid to use his short height in training to get under the opponent’s legs. It’s why Aegon insisted on the Pink Dread being the perfect mount for his brother: A pig for a pig. Luke licks his finger and rubs at the dirt on his cheek. 

In an instant Aemond’s eyes shoot open, his hand grabbing Luke’s as it swipes at the stray mud. The sapphire opens and glimmers at Luke. It’s such a deep blue, sparkling like the most precious things in life often do. Aemond’s other eye blinks open, thrown wide and stretching at his scar. He grits his teeth, “Don’t touch me.” 

Luke takes his hand back, not even aware of his action until it was over, he rolls his eyes at Aemond’s overreaction. “There was dirt,” Luke says, “I was just wiping it away like I used to.” 

As children Jace used to say that Aemond caused messes wherever he went, smoldering clothes from getting too close to dragons, dirt from giving it his all in training, and then Luke was the one to clean them up, wipe the dirt and ash away so they could continue on their adventures. When he cut Aemond’s eye there was so much blood: gushing from everywhere on his face, dripping into the ground and growing. Luke knew it was over then, he couldn’t clean up this. There was no wiping away a cut eye. 

“You can’t do things like that anymore,” Aemond sighs. “You don’t have the right to do things like that.” 

“I have the right to do what I please.”

Aemond presses his lips together, slamming his head against the headboard. The sheets fall down around his hips, exposing his bare chest. If Luke looks closely he can see a slight pant causing Aemond’s chest to rise and fall at a rapid pace as though scared by something. He prefers to not look.“Why are you here?” 

“You could’ve cut out my eye,” Luke says, the same moment replaying over and over again in his mind. Aemond, so close to getting what he wants and then denying it, “There were no witnesses and yet you didn’t,” he swallows, “Why?” 

Aemond sighs, “Does it matter?”

Of course it does. Taking is all that mattered between them for years. 

Luke does not say that, instead staring at Aemond with a bored expression, “Do you wish to have something over me? Is that why you didn’t? So you would make yourself look like the better person? Are you truly so much like your mother?”

“Of course.” Aemond says, “Things are always about appearances with you. How it looks to others, how it’ll make you appear. Not everyone thinks in terms of what others think.”

Their fight mere hours ago would say otherwise. The desperation in Aemond’s eyes: you make me not whole. It was almost like he was begging Luke to understand. Luke would gladly let him beg.

“Yes,” Luke says, “The boy so obsessed with not having a dragon cares only about his own thoughts.”

“I’m not that boy anymore,” Aemond looks out of his window and away from Luke. “What people think is only of consequence to themselves.”

It’s so close to what Jace told him that he wants to cry. It will always matter what people think. It doesn’t matter what anyone tells Luke, the thoughts of others are valuable. They are in a war of opinions, constantly fighting to sway Borros’ opinion this way or that. To not see it is foolish.

“That is not true,” Luke steps closer to the bed, willing Aemond to look his way, “It will always matter who people think we are. We can’t be ourselves when people are constantly telling us that we’re wrong.”

“And who do you think you are?” Aemond looks straight at him smiling. It terrifies Luke. The sapphire twinkles, an accusation without any words. “Meek and timid? Kind? Lovable?” The smile drops. “You’re cruel Luke. You’ve always been. We were friends and you let them give me a pig. We were friends and you took my eye. You always make a show of your empathy and then shum me from it. Whatever you think you are, you are wrong.”

“I didn’t give you a pig,” Luke corrects, “I thought it was funny, yes, but only because you’re so easy to rile up. You take everything so seriously. You take every little detail so personally as though the world revolves around you. I’m not cruel. No one else thinks that.”

“No one else knows you,” Aemond says; simply as if it’s the truth.

Luke sighs. He should’ve known Aemond would never give him the answers he wants. All they are is a violent cycle: take and wait to be taken from. “You’re so conceited. Taking my eye was beneath you, wasn’t it? You don’t think I’m worth it?”

“Do you want me to take your eye?” Aemond asks, crossing his arms. He looks out the window again, staring for something. Perhaps Vhagar. “Is that why you’re here? To beg me to rid you of your guilt? I won’t absolve you of anything. I want you to suffer. I wan’t you to sit and regret.”

The dagger above his eye is all he can think of. That steel would carve him irreversibly. How sure he was that Aemond would not hesitate, and yet he did. Luke thought he knew Aemond and he still thinks he does. Part of knowing Aemond is always being wrong about him.

Luke sits on the bed, it is softer than his own. The sky is beautiful, it is the first time he’s seen stars in Storm’s End. “I don’t know how to regret,” Luke admits softly. He’s tried, sat alone with only his thoughts and guilt. He’s grown lethargic with guilt, vomited until his own teeth felt like they were rotting out. He stared at his eye and mirrors with knives in hand simply hovering until he fell into tears. He’s never felt regret. “I can’t regret. Our world isn’t made for it. Blood is made to be spilled and never thought of again. You of all people should get that.”

“I have never hurt anyone.” Aemond sneers, the moonlight painting his face and bare chest. “I’m not you. Have you dropped your righteousness? This ruse: That it was to protect your family rather than just because you wanted to?” Anger laces through his words and straight into Luke. “Admit it. You wanted to taste violence. Even if it was just for that moment you wanted to punish me for some perceived wrong.”

Luke ignores him. He can’t respond to that, can’t let Aemond dement his mind with words. One more attempt, and then he is done. “Why didn’t you take my eye?” 

Aemond looks towards the window again, chewing his cheek. “I told you.”

“You didn’t look at me.”

“What?”

“Whenever you lie you look away,” Luke states it simply; it is a fact. “You wanted to, I saw it in your eyes. You wanted to and then you didn’t,” Luke pauses hands on his knees. Gripping his sleep pants. “You never wait. You didn’t even wait to claim Vhagar after Rhaena’s mother died.”

Aemond crosses his arms and sneers, all defense mechanisms laid out. “Dragons don’t wait.”

“Yet you did.” It haunts Luke. He needs answers. He can’t sleep or think. The rest of the night spent in his room like it was right after the incident on the edge of destruction and rebirth. “ Please , I need to know.”

He needs to know how Aemond is capable of mercy and he is not. 

Luke has never said please in his life. He’s never had to; given whatever he wants since young. 

“I don’t know,” Aemond looks at Luke, expression blank. “I was going to, and then it wasn’t enough. The one thing I’ve been wanting for years, and it’s not enough.”

“Enough for what?”

 Aemond glances all across Luke’s face, “To feel peace. You took that from me and I thought I could get it back but I couldn’t. In that moment, with the knife in my hand looking at the thing I’ve been so fixed on... nothing could’ve made me feel more tortured. Isn’t that pitiful? You ruined me and I can’t fix it.”

The words sit in the air. Luke chews on them and spits them out before shoving them down his throat again. He wants to understand, there’s a desperate part of him that’s grasping at Aemond, at something that used to be normal. He swallows the bile that wants to twist the truth: to laugh at Aemond to prove he’s better.

Luke cannot muster any strength, his body is drained. “At that moment,” he starts, “I thought the only thing that could bring me peace was if you did it. If you took some part of me and never gave it back. I wanted you to do it.” Luke doesn’t know who he is anymore: Aemond has changed and so has he. “I think that is more pitiful. To want someone else to maim you for peace?” Luke throws himself down across the bed, his back landing across Aemond’s legs with a thump. “I wanted to be done with you.”

Aemond leans his face so he’s over Luke’s, he is equal parts grim and taunting, “I don’t think we can ever be done with each other.”

Luke brushes his thumb against the dirt on his cheek under the sapphire eye. Aemond only flinches slightly. “Does it still hurt?”

Luke doesn’t know if he asks because he cares or if he wants Aemond to always be in pain because of him, wants to haunt him how Aemond haunts him.

“Sometimes more; sometimes less,” Aemond tilts his head with his words. “Sometimes I remember you did it and feel proud.”

The words make Luke’s hand still. “Proud?”

“That I broke whatever restrained you then. When we were young, we were soft. I was what made you snap: turning the perfect child towards violence.” His lips curl up. The moon almost makes it into a smile.

“It wasn’t you,” Luke argues before realizing it was. Every time his irritation bubbled over to wrath it was because of Aemond. It’s always because of Aemond. 

“It was,” Aemond says, cracking his neck. “We’ve always been linked in that way. Friends ruining each other: it’s a tragedy the maesters would write of.” 

“It’s not for them,” Luke says, he considers pressing his thumb into Aemond’s eye as he did all those nights ago. He doesn’t. “What has happened between us is only for us.” 

Luke does not want to be known for his cruelty, for this game he and Aemond play, he wants to be known for peace, for diplomacy. Or better yet, he wants to be known for nothing at all, to fall to the tides of history and never be resurrected.

Aemond pauses, looking at Luke. The scar is so unnatural on his face Luke wants to wipe it away. “The maesters will write of us simply because of who we are. We’re on the cusp of a war that we will deci-”

Luke cuts him off, sitting back up on the bed. His hands are fisted: anger and desperation and exhaustion pulling at his skin. “I am so sick of preparing for a war that neither of us want, of having it shape who we are, of having to compromise who we are for others. It is not fair.” Luke does not look at Aemond. Neither of them want to be here. He knows this. Aemond wants to fight, to start a war and burn down all that remains. Luke wants to be at home with nothing to his name other than the things he decides for himself.  “Just for tonight,” Luke whispers, “Can we not be friends again?”

He is so lonely. He misses Jace and Rhaena. The only friend he has here is Arrax, Cassandra is more confusing than anything else, and saying a dragon is his only friend is so pitiful. He wants to cry. He wants to sleep. He wants to go home. His chest is full of longing so strong it consumes his rationality. Aemond is the closest he has to a friend and he clings to it. Not taking his eye is an olive branch, a truce even just for the night and Luke will lavish in it. 

“You know that’s not possible,” Aemond says, his face almost sad “We have obligations, not even 10 hours ago we were beating each other into the mud. We cannot just forget that.”

Why can’t they? Their whole lives they have always been fighting against what others think and for one night Luke wants to forget that. “Just for tonight. Please, I just need tonight.” His body is tired and bruised. Their fight from earlier dragging his brain further into desperation: he wants to feel normal. To feel something other than dishonesty and self-hatred. 

“Tomorrow we will be back to fighting,” Aemond reminds him. Luke still does not look at him. 

“Then I will fight tomorrow.”

Aemond sighs and Luke can feel the bed shift, “You make it so easy to forget, you always have.” 

Luke leans back on the bed, a slight smile to his mouth, taking the admission as acceptance. “Do you remember when you wet the bed while we shared it? The maids would always sneer at me because they thought I did it.” 

Aemond laughs, reluctantly, and almost exactly as he did when they were kids. “That’s not nearly as bad as when you kicked me off the bed in our sleep. I had a bruise on the side of my face for a week and my mother wouldn’t stop bothering me.”

And like that, they are back to who they once were: sharing stories and japes with little heat. The fight forgotten in way of something softer. Luke misses this part of himself. Wants to coddle himself in his childhood until that’s all that remains and not the messy present he finds himself in. Lying and fighting do not suit him even if that is the role he’s forced to play.

Under the moonlight he can simply be.

Chapter Text

The mood rots like lemons plucked from a tree too fast– sickly sweet and puckeringly sour. 

Aemond is his enemy, Luke knows this but nothing in his life is ever that simple. Because Aemond is an enemy that refuses to strike. At his core, Aemond is raw violence, a brutality only known to those who have no choice but to bear it. Those who have to prove themselves against the world. It’s a silly thing though, princes not even spared from the violence of history, of making a name. Aemond is like Daemon– kind if distant until a perceived insult drives him to bloodshed. It’s a comparison that would make both of them laugh or kill him, a coin flip like true Targaryens. 

Luke knows he is brutal too, everyone in their family must be, whether it’s Jace whip smarts or Aegon’s sordid masochism or even sweet Helena’s promised prophecies, but it is not the same. His mother dons her role like a knife– ever present a reminder of duty. One misstep and she will slice an enemy to the bone. She has protected him from the worst of the world, as Daemon had Vaemond, slicing through threats before words even leave their tongue. It is why he does not have to. 

Alicent is not the same. In some ways, she may be a better person than Rhaenyra– devout, dutiful, faithful- but she is not a better mother and her children carry this burden with them; Helena’s lack of lucidity, Aegon’s lack of decorum, Aemond’s lack of restraint, each a mirrored fractal of the worst of Alicent’s nightmares. 

But Aemond showed restraint, more than Luke would’ve and what does that mean?

He is the kind one; the sweet boy of his mother. He is also a bastard, a manipulator, and a maimer. And like Alicent has burdened Aemond, forcing him to be perfect in a world where perfection is results more than person, Rhaenyra has placed these things upon him too.

The maester of Dragonstone had once told Luke that the sins of the father are heaped upon his children.  Except Luke does not have a father, or perhaps has too many that none are real and Viserys neglected Aemond to the point he had no father as well. Does that mean they are sinless? Surely not, something in the birth of dragon riders is too cataclysmic not to have cosmic retribution. 

Whose sins are better to bear, the mother or the father? The mother of the seven does not have sins. She is perfect, compassionate, and nurturing-- the Rhaenyra of his childhood and the one he sees when he closes his eyes. 

Perhaps Luke has spent too long with his eyes closed turning his head to childhood. The letter in his hands screams at him.

“My dearest Lucerys, 

Come home. I need you with me. You are not safe there, if Lord Baratheon intended to declare for us he would have by now sweetness. Word has come that Jacearys has reached Winterfell and is working with Lord Stark on an alliance. Aegon has refused to renounce his claim, worst yet he’s grown a taste for it. They want to divide the seven for us. Split my birthright in half as if it were a pig. I do not want for war, you know this darling. But I am Queen. My father named me such. It is my duty and the people deserve unity. You’ve done well, love.

Come home,

Mhysa”

He can read between the lines. War is coming but his mom will not start it when he is here, when he is in danger. It’s a contradiction, the realm stays at rest as long as he is in danger, but once he is safe, back in his mom’s arms the realm will not merely be carved like a pig– it will be gutted– intestines squirming on the ground for vultures to pluck at. And what is a dragon if not a stronger vulture, teeth, and wings made for crushing and destruction?

His mother has come knocking, the sins of her father a weight the whole realm will bleed under if Luke goes to her, and clings to her skirts as he longs to do. She has pressed this weight that will level a whole realm onto his shoulders and he shakes. Lucerys always thought he’d do anything his mother asked of him, but he cannot do this, not willingly. Perhaps he would have no caution if she had not shielded him and had instead let the blood their family was built upon fully weigh into him. Aemond would not hesitate. He longs for war and bemoans its absence every second. Luke fears war and has learned to twist his way through the world's harsh realities rather than confront them. 

If his mother had been Alicent, perhaps he would’ve listened. 

What a contradiction, a worse mother could have made him listen, but instead he had Rhaenyra who taught him independence and politics. The letter finds its way into the fire. Luke imagines it as the whole of Westeros as it burns far too quickly. 

–

“There is no peace,” Aemond grits his teeth at Borros. The stone behind him is hot with summer, burning Luke’s hand each time he skims his fingers across it. 

Summer has come with her golden-rayed sun and sweat-furrowed brow. The whole castle knows what the passage of time means. Aegon still sits in King’s Landing, his mother in Dragonstone, the impasse fraying until it eventually splits.

It’s the same argument they’ve had for months. They’ve made a dance out of it, the anger, the stray remarks at one another. Even in their volatility, they have become perfectly predictable. He purses his lips and steps into his role, “It would be possible if you could convince your brother to abandon his claim,” Luke reminds. 

“How about your mother accepting the peace deal we supplied?” Aemond counters, “You say peace is all she wants and yet we are the only ones offering.”

It is true. Luke knows this in his bones, his mother has said as much. As much as she longs for peace she longs for something much greater, her birthright. She needs it in a way Luke could never understand. His birth right, Driftmark, he looks at with little fervor, it is his, yes, but he could not imagine fighting for it if he was made to. Maybe he is simply not a fighter, or maybe he is too privileged to realize what losing a birthright truly means. 

My siblings will be beheaded, Aemond had said . As sure as Luke is that his mother would not, that she could not,  looking weak as a ruler drives better men than his mother to do worse. It is in all his time away from her that he thinks he finally understands her, his mother does not do what she wants as everyone thinks, she does what she must– lie about her son’s parentage, claim her birthright– because the only thing stopping all of them from being beheaded is her, and a mother will do much more than sin to protect.

“The peace deal is a farce,” Luke turns his head to Lord Borros, the words so easy to say he could almost believe them,  “It would have her abandon your people to the usurper. Let Aegon rule you from Old Town instead of King’s Landing, the ancestral seat of our house. They propose that the Hightowers have half of the realm, your grace. No one can truly say that is in the best interests of the realm.”

Even as he speaks it he begs his mother to merely take it, and let the realm rest. He knows why she can't and still, he wishes she would. 

Borros’ eyes are deep set, the small sparkle that reminded him of Harwin long gone. “Enough of this talk.“ He says, “If there was peace there would be peace now. Months we have stayed in this castle as your mother and brother have stayed in theirs. It is summer, and do you know what happens in the summer?”

Luke feels his stomach drop. Aemond smiles.

“The men prepare for hunts.” He says. It is that simple. Luke’s worst nightmares come true and all it takes is five words. 

“No,” Luke looks at him. He does not even mean to do so. It’s in his very nature. “You can’t plunge the realm to war on a whim.”

“A whim?” Borros laughs, “I have entertained you and your uncle for months with my own food and coin. Letting you try to convince me there could be an ending to this without war, now that was a whim.”  All of the softness of his face has dripped away with sweat. “Boy, tell me where is your mother’s wish for peace now? Aegon has tried to negotiate, is it a good negotiation? No, even I could admit that but it was a start and your mother didn’t respond. Do you know what silence breeds boy?”

He doesn’t respond, his throat dying in his throat. Aemond laughs. 

When the voice responds it is not from in front of him, but the one that haunts him. “War, Luke,” Aemond says like a seductress, “Silence brings war.”

It is only fitting that Aemond mocks him for the war he failed to prevent. 

–

He does not leave right away. He should, his work here is done. Borros' alignment if it leads to war was always plain, Aemond offers him marriage, the only thing Luke had was the promise of peace and that has fled.

He can’t leave though. The world here is unfinished: Cassandra and her depressing fate, Borros and his sudden mania for violence, Aemond and Luke’s understanding of him. 

It’s the last one that has him pacing in Aemond’s room long after he should have left. Peace was never an option, he knew this, tasted it in his very gums as he lied at Borros' feet, but this? The reality of what that means, it's unfathomable. 

“Why did you do this?” Luke asks him, he feels like raging, like throwing Aemond to the ground. He tips a bowl off the nightstand. “Are you truly so vengeful the world needs to bleed at your feet.”

“I did nothing,” Aemond reminds, “It’s your whore of a mother that refused peace.”

There is truth in that he can’t accept. Luke drags his hands through his hair, he thinks he scratches at it, tears at it. “How could she have accepted that? It would’ve jeopardized everything,” his nails dig crescents against his palms, “It would’ve made her look weak .”

Aemond nods, sitting primly on the bed without a care in the world, “and weakness kills.”

He says it solemnly with no pretense of any madness that tints every edge of Luke. 

What had Aemond said all those months ago, I was what made you snap. Luke snaps. He always thought his breaking would be soft and meek but instead he is anger and violence, he is seven again with a knife in his hand and his mother’s back turned. “No, shut up with that. ‘ War is silence, and weakness kills .’” He mocks, “All those are platitudes to make you feel better. Men kill, Aemond, you kill.”

Aemond sits like all this is a foregone conclusion, like he saw this months ago and the worst part is he did. He even warned Luke of it . Your mother sending you here was a war declaration he had said, begged Luke to understand and he had refused. Luke did not believe him then, but now? Now he has no choice, and that drives him mad; Aemond seeing something he hadn’t.

“As if you are blameless,” he scoffs. “A war on our hands and all you can think of is my role in it. Guess what Luke, I'm not the villain of your life. I’m not waiting to take your eye at any minute. I had the opportunity and I didn’t take it because I’m not who you think I am. You think I want this war?” Aemond laughs like every action he did didn’t indicate that exact thing, “That I want to go into the Riverlands and burn grass until it catches fire? You truly think I have nothing better to do?”

Aemond is pathetic, his life as a second son so insignificant that war is his only chance for glory. The idea that he would scorn that based on morals? So hilarious Luke is gasping with laughter. “You have never had anything better to do. You are violent and war-mongering and wish my entire family dead.”

This makes something in Aemond break and where Luke thought Aemond would break in anger and violence instead it's meek and timid. They’re the inverse of what they should be right now. Everything is the inverse of what it should be.

“Because I’ve never had a fucking choice.” Aemond puts his head in his hands, “You see me as a villain and I played that role because what else can I do Luke? I can’t have anything that I want, I can’t be king, I can’t have my father’s love or land or my mother’s favoritism or the certainty of a cradle dragon. I need you dead because you make me feel like I am dying. You are everything I hate about myself and you just stand there and you don’t even acknowledge it,” he’s not crying but it’s a near thing and Luke laughs at it, taunts his act of sadness for the mockery it is. “And the worst part? You are the only person I can be myself around, the only one who embraces the worst of me because you expect no kindness and you return it tenfold, and maybe the worst of me is the most honest. Maybe I am horrid, but no matter what you are always worse.” Aemond breathes, and his voice is tearful like he is even capable of remorse, “Remember that Luke, you’re worse.”

And what bullshit is this? Luke rips a curtain off the wall and scratches his nails against the rough stone, “I make you feel like you are dying?” he mocks, “Get a grip, people are going to be burnt over this Aemond. You aren’t suddenly some victim because you showed one ounce of restraint in your pathetic fucking life. You didn’t cut my eye out, do you want me to throw a fucking party?”

It’s so ridiculous. His entire life is ridiculous, his mom refused peace and Aemond showed restraint and sadness and everything is wrong. So wrong Luke feels the need to counteract the whole world, shift it back into balance, but all his power flows out his hands like sand. He has nothing, in the scheme of this war, he is nothing.  

“I showed more restraint than you, Luke.” Aemond rebuts, “Don’t forget that, whatever you think of me, in reality, you’re worse.” 

This conversation is so pointless, pointing fingers at each other like children. It's a waste of time. It doesn’t matter who’s worse. “And so what,” Luke says, “the realm deserves to burn? The people deserve to die?”

Aemond scoffs, “You think I have any control over that?”

Luke grabs him by his lapels, shaking him with each word, “You ride the biggest dragon in the world you fucking idiot! You have power. You act like you’re some timid boy, but when this goes to war the most blood will be on your hands. How do you live with that?

That’s the truth of this situation. In a war Luke is nothing. He has a small dragon, no lands of his own yet, and weak combat training, but Aemond? In a war he is everything . He was born for war, a fact Luke never thought himself capable of jealousy for until now. He is a tool in his family’s hands and all they will tell him is to butcher. 

“I act like a timid boy?” Aemond meets his gaze, eyes red, “Look at you, you’re feral Luke, like the cats you used to throw stones at in King's Landing. Yet you trounced around here like a diplomat. You’re a fighter Luke, more desperate than I ever am and if you think the most blood will be on me, you’re wrong because every kill I make, every stupid Riverlander that feels Vhagar’s dragon flame will equally be on you and do you know why?” Aemond cocks his head and breathes his next words like a whisper, “because you created me.”

“No,” Luke shakes his head and drops Aemond back onto the bed. “Whatever fucked up monster you are your mother created not me.” He drags a hand through his hair again, it gets tangled in the curls and he yanks, “Don’t put that on me.”

Aemond is still looking at him, his eye unnerving in its purple hue, “My mother didn’t make me learn the importance of viciousness,” He stands up pacing towards Luke. “That if I don’t fight like I’ll lose an eye then I will. The world is strike or be stricken, and when I refused to strike, you were there to teach me that refusing violence only causes harm to yourself. That was all you Luke, you may think me a monster, but I can never be worse than you because all I am is yours.” It’s a sick confession, ‘ I’m yours ’ saved for lovers in fairy tales, not whatever this is. “All I’ve ever been is yours since you branded me, struck out my eye, and kept it for yourself.” 

“I don’t want you.” Luke pushes away from him creating more distance, “If I created you then consider yourself dead, uncreate yourself.” Kill yourself , he doesn’t say the words too cruel even in the cruelest of moments. “I don’t give a shit because if I truly created you, you would see this for the senseless violence it is, for the violence that haunted our childhood and cursed us.” He drives the point deeper, “For the violence you said created you. You would see this war as the biggest mistake of your life.”

If Aemond is a tool, the winner of the war is that which yields it. Luke has never been above manipulation to stay alive. If Aemond is the villain then Luke will yield him whatever role that forces him into: Bastard, sweetling, liar. None of it matters in the face of war.

Aemond laughs, tearful, maybe even mournful, “I thought you couldn’t regret it.”

“No,” Luke agrees because he can’t, because looking back like they have been is a death sentence in this world, “but I can stop myself from repeating. You can stop this from repeating. Arrax is too young to make a difference if I sit out, but Vhagar? That is the strongest dragon in the world. You have a choice here and you’re choosing wrong.” 

“So the right choice is to refuse to fight and let my family die?” Aemond sits down again on the edge of the bed. “I don’t have a choice, Luke, I never have. I didn’t have a choice when I lost my eye, I didn’t have a choice when Aegon bought that prostitute,” he chokes on that admission, “I didn’t have a choice when Aegon took the crown but begged me to do it instead. The only choice I ever made was Vhagar and look what I became for it.” He looks up, “Look what we became.”

Luke shudders at the implication that he’s like Aemond, but in doing this isn’t he? He uses whatever tricks he can to gain power, but he’s different this is for the greater good, for the people.

“We can become better,” Luke promises, begs, and wishes all at once. “Take me with you to King’s Landing.” 

That makes Aemond blanche, knocking him off balance from his pacing, “You’re volunteering to be my prisoner?”

“No, I’m not anything to you,” Luke reminds, not creator or half of, he says to himself. “I’m protecting the people. You refuse to fight because you think my mother will torch the red keep, then take me there. Refuse to fight and take me there. She will not let a single dragon flame touch the red keep it if she thinks I am within those walls.”

Come Home , his mother’s letter begs. Daemon would say that a dragon has no home, not since Valyria, but Luke knows that for the lie it is. His home is his brothers, his mother, and step-siblings and he is willingly abandoning them for this. It is what he must do, the only power he can possess in war is the reins of others.

“You think your mother loves you that much?” Aemond asks, “You think she’d look weak for you.”

“I know so.” The letter haunts him even when it’s gone from the world, the ghost of it begging him to listen, but the rest of him knowing he can’t.

“And you’d turn that against her?” Aemond asks, but he already knows the answer. “Use the fact that your mother loves you to staunch a war?”

“She wants peace, I’m only giving her a way to have it.”

Aemond grunts at him, “She wouldn’t want it at the cost of your safety.”

Luke shakes his head and wraps his arms around himself, “My safety is nothing compared to the people.”

That makes Aemond laugh, true and full-bellied, erasing any of the tear tracks from earlier. “How selfless of you,” he mocks, “Truly sacrificing yourself for the people. You’re still holding onto your delusions of goodness, that this is anything else but trying to relieve your guilt?”

Relieving guilt or saving lives, the result is all the same, and in a war, the result is lives saved. 

“And will you do the same?” Luke asks, “Relieve your guilt and sit out the war.”

Aemond hesitates, considering, “You promise no harm to my family.”

“Take me there and she would rather lose than torch it. All she does is for our family.”

All I do is for our family too, Luke thinks, he can only hope his mother will see it. That she can forgive this. 

Aemond nods, barely perceptible. “Jahaerys,” he mutters. 

Luke does not know what he means by that until he thinks more on it. A Peacemaker. A Great ruler. A second Son.

He nods back.