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[ he makes it all the way back to the library, all the way to the room he knows alicent is in, and then can’t open the door. can’t even knock. the door itself might as well be wrought with poison, a curse, a death curse that he can’t escape. twice now, he’s had to enter a room and find —

his forehead thumps against the door, his hand falling away from the knob. it shouldn’t even be scientifically possible that he can produce any more tears, his eyes gritty and red-rimmed. he imagines opening the door, drawn back to the memory of hawk’s marble body laid out like a gift, courtesy of danny johnson. even the blood dripping from the sharp planes of his body had a certain artistry about it. danny knows what he’s doing. what if he opens the door and it’s alicent this time? (again?)

no, it won’t be. the universe wouldn’t shit on him that badly. (yeah, right.) after all, it’s only been nine days since he ventured from ash’s side to grab a drink and find more painkillers. he’d been gone ten minutes. maybe fifteen. when he’d opened the door again, the only thing that greeted him was the sight of ash’s corpse, still warm, overdosed on temp v. on fucking purpose. ]

Alicent. [ through the door. should he be loud? the library’s supposed to be safe. that was the whole fucking point. that was his mistake. ] Ash’s body isn’t — it’s not —

[ glossing over the obvious. ash is dead. moving on to the next crisis: it’s been nine days, and embry still has his body. how is he supposed to come back if he still has his goddamn body? ]

[ in a sectioned-off space beside an entrance to the library, barred by wood from the chapel, alicent watches over the makeshift infirmary. a few sleep, soothed by draughts from the more modern among them. none require her at present, though she hovers as if they might (thinking of aegon, breath slow and shuddering, his heartbeat a quiet, uneven thing compared to when she first held him in her arms). the doubts of her dearest — embry, alina — still ring out in her skull, blurring with all those who have dismissed her before. what a foolish girl she was, to trust her companion, to believe larys was her friend, to think cole might truly believe her worthy of service, with her gowns on the floor —

she hears embry before she realises it’s him, the bang at the door startling her. no chittering, groaning, slouching. her name like a whisper from the beyond, the stranger always trailing after her. no. the scenario settles in her mind, pulling the past into the present.

ash’s body. hawk’s body. rhaenyra’s lifeless in the foyer. panic rises in her throat, but she chokes it down. bitterness curdles in her gut, embry's accusations still fresh in her mind. you’re leveraging your position. you’re martyring yourself. she could deny him help and comfort, just as he demanded she withhold it from everyone else.

alicent cracks open the door and tugs embry inside, grip tight on his arm. ]

How long?

[ his turning represents the greatest threat. when one of them falls, they join their enemy’s number. ]

Embry, for how long?

[ has he been dead? or, worse, changed? ]

Edited 2025-02-20 19:19 (UTC)

[ it's the first time he's been in a room with her since she came back. it's not anything like how he wanted this to go, not anything like snatching her up into his arms when she'd shown up to his suite after his resurrection. he still has the flowers she left him — greer had taken it upon herself to teach him to properly dry a bouquet (though they were already crispy when he got them) and now they sit in an empty bottle beside his stash of stolen library books. he forgets, most of the time, that they were ever for his death.

he has no idea if alicent got any of the flowers he, greer, and ash had left in her room after her lakeside memorial, or if aemond decided to throw them all away (a disingenuous thought, but one he has all the same). he has no idea if his letter made it either, but he sure as fuck hopes not now.

her hand digging into his arm is the first living thing he's felt in days. ]

How long? [ his words turn to vinegar in his mouth, any compassion he expected dissipating in the face of hard logic. ] Why? So you can send someone to go kill him again?

[ he withdraws his arm with a scoff, blinking back the hurt in his eyes. ]

He killed himself. So that none of us would have to do that.

[ infuriating, that ash would always choose to do the right thing. that he would choose to leave him. he and alicent are alike that way, though he doesn't point that out. it feels distantly damning that he’s here. he could never leave ash any more than he can stay away from her.

his gaze wavers, then hardens, his words like broken glass. ]

You were right. [ he sketches a bow, a fluid motion despite his attempts to make a mockery of it, as if he was born to kneel for his king and queen, a knight searching for someone to pledge his allegiance to. ] I was wrong. My apologies. Your Highness.

[ he withdraws, spits unkindnesses in her face, and she tilts back, stunned. he is not your friend, she reminds herself, nor is he a man grown, despite all he’s been through. he comes to her as a boy, seeking a maiden mother queen to punish. her hands twist together before her, so she might defy the temptation to shove him back. it had not helped her before, when the vipers closed in. ]

Enough. [ hissed sharp and low. then, faltering: ] I’m not — a wife for you to hit when the world harms you first. [ she’s been that for men before. she’ll not do it again. every word and gesture is a humiliation, the kind of thing daemon or viserys would have used to make her small at court. it was embry who said things need not not be this way before, but now — her fingers twist, nails digging into her cuticles. ]

I’m sorry. [ for saying that. or for asking. for caring? perhaps even for his loss. quieter, then, expression shuttering away her own grief and hurt. ] I can — there is much I can do for you, but I cannot — not that. [ if he wants someone to deride, to rally against, alicent cannot weather it. she’s been the villain (second wife, wicked step-mother) for too many years already. ]

Should I — find Greer for you?

[ someone sweeter. better. to coddle him in his grief.

(does he treat her this way, she wonders, or is greer viewed as a purer thing, requiring better than a false widow?) ]

[ her blow lands, if maybe not for the intended reasons. ash will one day marry greer, because embry will force him to, and embry will never be able to show his affection for either of them in public. whatever sham marriage he has here is just that. he doesn’t deserve a wife, doesn’t deserve to call himself anyone’s husband. ash’s wedding ring is burning a hole in his pocket as he speaks. well, there’s always abilene. he just has to make sure he locks his door every night. his thoughts feel like a broken puzzle. senseless. he looks at alicent and all he can think of is that he’s acting like a withered cock. ]

Stop it.

[ softly. he doesn’t want her apologies, because he hasn’t earned them. though maybe he’ll take the one on ash’s behalf, if only because the thought of anyone hunting him down, zombie or not, makes embry want to raze the place to the ground. his eyes lower, and he nearly sways. ]

Let me see your hands.

[ they’re ragged again, nail beds raw and red. he pockets his gloves before reaching out for her, gently holding her hands between them. his are rough and cold, an old gash nearly healed across his palm, but otherwise unharmed.

he shakes his head minutely, his eyes still fixed on their hands. ] No, I didn’t — I only came here for you.

[ it seems like an important distinction to make. he wouldn’t be here in the library at all, if not for her. and she’s not interchangeable with anyone else. ]

Nine days. [ his icy thumbs whisk over her knuckles. ] That’s how long. There’s no heat in the room, and I didn’t build a fire, so his corpse probably has the dead equivalent of frostbite. I can barely feel my hands, so you should claw mine up instead.

[ when he first reaches out, she doesn’t give in, thinking that every bit of space is her defence. it’s ironic, perhaps, that she fears his hands when hers did him harm mere weeks ago. still, it takes a long moment for her to relent, hesitant as she reaches back. a final flinch, when he first touches her, either because of the cold or the latent fear of what any man could do to her, this close.

her hands aren’t as bad as they were during werewolf. alicent has only picked at them a few times, since the cold descended: when she first broadcast with homelander and embry responded, when armand died in her arms, and now — the initial tearing has scabbed over, the second round has been bandaged by homelander’s gift of care. the latest bleeds her ring finger.

why? why come? why be cruel, then kind? she watches him closely, wary as a spooked deer even as he folds in on himself, shoulders hunched. ]

Oh, Embry. [ pained and empathetic, but not surprised. armand has lain in his coffin since the fourteenth. she herself was gone for weeks, suspended in-between life and death. ]

That’s good. [ not the time gone, but — ] The cold. It’ll keep him as he was.

[ a hard swallow. she doesn’t yet dare reciprocate his tenderness, merely allowing it. ]

The others who have died… if they did not change, they’ve remained untouched, unmoving, for as long or longer.

[ so ash isn’t singular in his stasis, if nothing else. ]

[ the cold might be the only good thing about any of this. the stench of bodies during the blistering carpathian summers when things went from shit to shittier —

the others who have died. it startles him to think that life continued to happen outside of his own personal tragedies. so many people here are still safe under alicent and her american flag’s care, despite the death count she speaks of. would ash have been? more broken puzzle pieces to sift through. no, they would have killed him after the bite. embry would have lost precious hours with him. does it matter? he killed himself anyway. he fucking left you. ]

It feels like he’s not coming back.

[ he doesn’t say he’d thought the same about alicent, in miserable grief. that he was furious during her funeral. that he feels guilty as fuck that hawk put on a service when he died, and he threw a goddamn party by the lake in alicent’s memory, and for ash? nothing. tim was nice enough to do the whole catholic thing to any god who might’ve been listening, but for the most important person in the world to him, embry is letting his body rot in a dark room.

his fingers stop moving. there’s a chasm between them, and he briefly wishes he could throw himself straight into it, and fucking disappear. he slowly traces her pinkie, her bleeding ring finger. the two ash lost when he’d been bitten. a cruel joke, when all ash ever wanted to do was be someone’s husband and wear their ring. ]

Or when he does come back — it’ll be like you and me.

[ shattered. they used to spend their afternoons sunning by the lake. embry has told no one what abilene did to him but her — not even ash or greer. letting her hands slide from his, he steps away and wanders a pace around the small, makeshift room, unwilling to place the burden of comfort on her again. ]

You know, all this time I was mad at you. I kept thinking you came back different. You came back and didn’t want anything to do with me.

[ he picks at a candle, leaving a fingerprint in the soft wax. the flicker of light dances along the stubble at his jaw. he thinks of his inability to maintain any kind of stability with hawk. his simmering resentment at names that shouldn’t mean anything anymore, the impossibility of forgiveness. he turns around. ]

But I’m the one who didn’t come back the same. I’m the one who ruined this. You were right. And even if I couldn’t… I should’ve sent Ash with you, because I couldn’t keep him safe.

[ embry lingers near, the sort of intimacy that would have the kingsguard breaking the very fingers he curls around her own and alicent, in her weakness, allows it. she looks almost — hurt, by the tenderness, her expression cracked open, unsure. embry vacillates before her, emotions playing out on his fine features. he comes close. he pulls away. a man who does not know what he wants. no, a man who has been injured by his desires too many times.

alicent allows the distance, too. like you and me. yes, it seems they’ve fractured — a fault line running all the way back to his initial reaction to her war on his doorstep, a barely concealed intent to flee, a refusal to acknowledge her children as anything more than obstacles. he’s not yet a father, but he will be. perhaps then he’ll understand. ]

I came back from dying alone and in pain — for nothing. [ not for entertaining the attentions of a madman or to pay the price of a deadly game. it was utterly meaningless. ] My boys found my ruined body and were derided for doing what I taught them was right. [ by embry, yes, but also by others, who wanted to make that grief their own or demand attention, no, perfection from teenagers who lost the only person to ever protect them. they were never going to grieve perfectly. no one ever does, she thinks, looking at embry. ]

Much of my behaviour since has had little to do with you. [ For the two weeks before the storm, she was rarely seen. ] I am as I was. The lady of the lake — and mother to dragons. [ she’s always been both. she always will be, even if she flees to essos with her daughter, mother to one. ] When you first found me, I hurt you…because I am a prideful woman, and no man has ever served me without desiring me. I misunderstood you, or I thought I did.

[ in thinking he wanted her at all. he spurned her then, clear as day, in her hideous desperation. ]

You then begged I walk beside you in death through a screen. [ a proclamation bookended by insults to her character. and so, ] I don’t understand you still. I — wish you both had stayed, so I might have seen you safe myself, but there is no knowing whether that would have changed the outcome.

[ she takes a steadying breath, hands clasping but no longer twisting. ]

He’ll return to you, Embry.

[ he shuts his eyes, heart seizing at the reminder of her death. the prolonged agony of it. ash died alone, too. at least embry had had danny’s constant company, and the hazy whispers of his own deranged thoughts, muted by the amount of drugs pumped into his system. there’s a return to that weightless feeling now, ever since finding ash’s body. some moments are painfully sharp, jaggedly digging into him. other times, he’s encased in mire and can hear nothing at all. this is one of those times that alicent’s words penetrate like knives, twisted into brambles in his mind. she doesn’t want you. she hasn’t even thought of you. ]

You didn’t misunderstand in the way you think. I took advantage of someone when I shouldn’t have. [ hawk would hate to be made out as the victim, but embry knows what he did, can picture his face clearly when he forced him into his twisted game. he draws in a shuddering breath. ] I didn’t want to do that to you. Not after everything you’ve been through. And I couldn’t do that to myself again, either.

[ his flaws sound so damning, even laid out in the softness of her familiar voice. his emotions are a collar around his throat, shackles threatening to jerk him in a new direction in the next breath. instead of expelling the first cruel or lovesick thing that tries to spring free, he chokes on his words to give himself time to think. ]

There are people here… when Danny was named as my killer, there are people here who still flocked to him. Even now, he has them. [ once, it was anger. then it was grief. now, a dull hurt shimmers in his gaze, unhealed after all these months. ] Some of them were people I considered friends. I haven’t spoken to them since. You’re friendly with them, too. So even though I know you wanted to keep everyone together, that there’s safety in numbers, and even if I wish Ash had been here instead of with me… I still couldn’t have stayed. Because I can’t trust that if something happens to me, that anyone will actually take my side.

[ just a dead man. he sniffs, using the heel of his palm to press at his wet eyes. ]

If you’re prideful, then you already know I’m selfish. It hurts to see you like this. [ the sharpness subsides, leaving him fuzzy and half-hearing again. ] I wanted you to be happy. I had… big, stupid dreams. For you. We go to a party. I convince you to dance on a table with me. You make me eat cake off the floor. Or your tits.

Then I’m glad you didn’t.

[ that he protected himself, even at her expense. she has never wanted him to suffer. in her changed state, she acted without thinking — violence born of anger, not malicious intent. now, she approaches him slowly, each step a slimming of the chasm between them. ]

[ softly, ] I would take your side, if you would only give me the chance to do so. [ they did not tell her about danny, just as embry hasn’t informed her of his allies. old paranoia resurfaces, as she thinks over her various connections. who among them would tolerate one who killed embry and alina so cruelly? she cannot fathom it. she would have razed the manor to the ground to find his killer, if anyone had thought to tell her of the nefarious nature of his demise before hawk announced it peaceably. she would act now, whether or not his paramours were prepared for her crusade. ]

I have told you that Daemon walks freely here, beloved by Rhaenyra. [ her mouth twists, not jealous but disappointed. ] Befriended and defended by Hawkins. Adored by the younger men who fawn over him. [ her voice still cracks to speak of what comes next, and she hates herself for the weakness. ] He killed my grandson in his crib. He will take my son from me in time — and yet. [ he is loved, as danny is. he always will be. it drags bile up her throat. ignoring him has not fixed it, harming him as only made her stomach churn. there is nothing for it. nothing. ]

I don’t much care for sweet things. [ like cake, as rhaenyra always did, or perfectly innocent creatures, few as they are among them. embry’s bitterness is partly why she likes him above others. she extends her arm this time, fingers fluttering above his chest, then settling there’, curling into the fabric. ] But I understand what it is to be considered less. [ her feelings and needs as below daemon’s or aemond’s, even rhaenyra’s. this is the lot of the second wife, the second choice. ]

I don’t want that for you.

[ as for the matter of happiness, well, she can’t say she envisions it to be anything but fleeting for herself. a thought it wouldn’t help to voice, to one so desolate. ]

[ he believes her in that moment, something warm thawing the cold in his chest. that she would take his side. he believes that he would, ironically, have to talk her out of doing something rash on his behalf for a hurt he should have long since let go. they’re the same unfeeling words he’s always said to ash. you would let me go, because it would be the right thing to do. it’s not the same when a vice president dies than it would be to lose you. it’s just not. his life was worth less even before that, far before he even met ash, by virtue of his own selfish, thoughtless disposition.

the mention of hawk has his gaze flickering to hers, guilt swaying him. it would be so much easier if he could carve his feelings straight out of his chest, bludgeoned and ugly as they are. there are times when he would carve out the ones he has for her straight after. ]

Pretty typical of you to tell me what you don’t want for me, but to gloss over what I don’t want for you.

[ as he does the same. typical of the both of them, to disregard the possibility of better.

his eyes are sticky with tears, his breath rough, like the closer she comes, the closer he gets to unraveling. spending days with ash’s body has already run him ragged. he doesn’t understand how much more he could possibly unspool. he stills, his turn to be a spooked animal when her fingers find purchase in his collar.

slowly, he reaches for her wrist where it rests near his chest, his thumb tracing the underside to feel her pulse. alive. he wonders if she carries scars beneath her clothes like he does across his throat, from her death. ]

I did want you that night. Just because I shouldn’t — I always want things I shouldn’t. [ spurning her had been partially his own thoughtless cruelty and partially self-preservation, for what he might’ve done otherwise. ] I don’t want you any less. Then or now.

[ like a terminal fucking illness. he caresses her wrist, soaking in her warmth as his eyes shutter. ]

I don’t want to leave him for too long. [ a quiet whisper. as if ash is waiting for him to come back. a distant excuse to go, running as he always does. ]

Edited (do not perceive ) 2025-02-22 04:13 (UTC)

Embry. [ both a warning against and an acknowledgement of his desires. it had been — not easy but easier, to dismiss them through the screen, his insults obscuring any good intentions. she cannot judge him for his split devotion, when her own heart wanders the length of the manor, across the chasm of the very war that rends her realm in two.

his touch threatens to tear into her just the same. any tenderness as brutal as a flaying, peeling back armour and layers of skin to reveal her scarred flesh, her grieving centre. her heart takes flight behind her ribs. absurdly, she thinks it might tumble from her mouth, bloody and beating. ]

Let me go with you.

[ a desperate note creeping in, the same as when she begged rhaenyra come with her and leave all behind. she shakes her head, as if to rid herself of the sentiment, yet her lips part around tender offerings. ]

I'll not move him, I swear it. [ her fingers curl tighter, though her other hand hovers, hesitant at his arm. ] We've blankets to spare for you. And a radio.

[ she can't stay, but she can ensure he's better off than he was, freezing by his lonesome. please, her big eyes seem to say, only a queen does not beg. ]

Edited 2025-02-22 17:45 (UTC)

[ it stills him completely, breath and all. his heart ceases to move, not leaden in his chest, but suddenly weightless. how many times has he been asked to stay, a promise with all the trappings of failure when he knows the kind of man he is? he was twenty-two when ash started asking and he hasn't stopped letting him down since. embry, promise me you won't just disappear. does he know the weight of this ask, the toll it takes to be present in a life riddled with mistake after mistake?

his shock stems from simple unfamiliarity. he doesn’t think he’s ever heard those words before, never received the grace of someone else offering to go with him to his own dark places instead of trying to keep him in the light. ]

Alicent. You can come anywhere with me.

[ no matter how long. a day. a month. an hour. any amount of time a miracle against the reality of how quickly he can destroy something. the pleading note in her tone might not be fitting of a queen, but it plucks a matching score in his own chest.

he should be ashamed to take her back with him, where his food sits untouched by his bottles have been drained to the dregs, ash’s body wrapped up in the warmest blanket in the room so embry sleeps curled next to him on the cramped drawing room couch. it’s pathetic on a level he shouldn’t publicize, disturbing when his hands roam over ash’s still body, and even if — when — ash returns to him, there’s a part of him that’ll remain wounded from this, that will never, ever stop thinking about how ash’s death could come at any moment, and that he should’ve moved to canada and lived an anonymous life watching ash pick up pig shit, and told merlin to go fuck himself.

too late now. too late for a lot of things. he’s missed the full weight of her gaze, the electric thrill that comes with her attention. he never wanted it like this, but — who is he kidding? he spent years starving, existing on ash’s scraps. he’d do the same for her. ]

Thanks. He’d — [ it’s easier to spin some bullshit about ash’s very dead heart than acknowledge his own. ] He’d be grateful.

[ his hand slowly, reluctantly slips away from hers as he turns to the door, pulling his gloves back on. every brush of their fingers feels weighted with meaning — and every loss of it, too. ]

[ alicent softens, desperation easing with his answer. her name, upon his lips. perhaps she knows what this means to him, when no one has ever met her where she stands. instead, they ask her to change all for their sakes, to pretend at pleasure, giving of her body and life. a warmer wife, a dearer friend, a gentler mother, a pliant lover — so like her own mother, in certain lights. so like sweet aemma, in the dark of the king’s bedchambers, rats scurrying overhead, her name panted as if alicent were never there. she wasn’t, much of the time.

(only recently have aemond and aegon kneeled before her, returning pieces of herself long since gone away with them. for aemond is her anger made flesh; aegon, her weakness (her softness). she resents them because she understands them — because she made them, plucked from her ribs, not her husband’s. he gave them hair of silver and nothing more. she gave them everything she had left, hollowed out as she was. why not give a little more, to one who needs her now?)

alicent hooks a basket over her arm, already packed with supplies for another location, and fetches a blanket for good measure, folding it over the top.

the thing about raising boys, especially ones as prone to trouble as her own, is that alicent learned to be fast on her feet early on. no other way to keep aegon from shoving aemond down the steps, or aemond from sneaking away to the dragonpit, tiny hands reaching for their snapping maws. she catches embry before he can leave her and disappear, fitting her hand into the crease of his elbow, as she does when she walks with aemond and cole. a lady and her knights. ]

Then let’s not keep him waiting.

[ as if he still lives. she speaks of her sons the same way, doomed though they are. she’ll do so until she cannot talk any longer — maybe even after that. ]

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