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Touch my mouth, and hold my tongue, I'll never be your chosen one---
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- “Because you do not love me and I do not wish to love you.”
- “I love you.” / “Don't say that again.”
- “I do not pity you, my love.”
- “I want to say I do love you, and I'm sorry I'm not in love with you."
- “Do you know what it is to be married to a prophet?”
- “What do I lack?” / “Nothing. Elia, nothing. It is only I who lack.”
- “I don't know how I should feel, hearing myself compared unfavorably to a child in a borrowed suit of armor.”
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She is always a sickly child.
Her younger brother flings himself from cliffs, returns to the Sandship wearing a grin and bruises he can’t explain, makes friends with travelling merchants and desert-dwelling salamanders and all the while, Elia is confined to a bed and a room with only one window to let in the light. Oberyn tells her all his stories, of course, but Elia does not care for stories. She is hungry, so hungry, and for life, for baked sand beneath her feet, for adventures of her own.
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“I wish I knew my kingdom better,” he admits to her unexpectedly one evening, hands resting on the balcony of the Sandship solar, “I wish I could go amongst the common folk and live with them, just know what life is really like for them. Gods…I so want to be a good King, one who really under stands the lives of his subjects.”
Her first thought is to offer a teasing retort but the wistfulness in his voice is as raw as pain and her mouth grows dry to hear it. She knows what it is like to want something as hard as that.
“You will be a good King,” she soothes and in that moment, seeing the fire flash in his eyes, she believes it too, “and they will love you even more than they do now.”
He looks at her, surprised both at the depth of what he revealed and at her response. After a while, he takes her hand in his and squeezes the fingers gently.
We are kindred spirits Elia thinks and the realization makes her bite her lip hard.
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In King’s Landing, there are always eyes always watching and though their words are kind ( how lovely you are, how lucky our prince is ), they remind Elia of a pack of wolves, circling their prey, ready to pounce at the first scent of blood.
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After Rhaenys’ birth, Elia miscarries twice, each time putting her in mind of her first moon blood, the inexplicable feeling of loss as her body bled itself into oblivion.
Rhaegar would have liked to hold her as she shook in the aftermath but his wife shied from touch, in times of duress, like a skittish mare. The tears would cling to her lashes but they would not fall and eventually she would rise from their marriage bed, a brave smile on her face and kiss the creases of concern away from his face.
The children fade from her body into nothingness but the scar tissue remains, etched into both their hearts, a wound to never heal.
(And all the while, the wolves circle closer, sensing weakness, sensing the end).
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My love is too thick, she is dimly aware, the love that begins at conception not birth, loves each child whilst they are still in the womb as though life is a guarantee, a foolish luxury to indulge in the world they live in, it needs to be more thin she thinks as she clings desperately to someone who is already slipping away.
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Rhaegar shares all his secrets with her until one day he does not.
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That night she lies next to him, his hand curled around the bone of her hip, his head cushioned on her stomach, beneath the rise of her breasts, and she breathes the words, soft and light. A test. It is only a test.
“I love you,” she whispers, the words heavy and still and tepid in her mouth. Not like the songs. Never like the songs.
Rhaegar’s lips twitch, his eyes remain closed. If he hears her, he shows no signs of it.
The next morning he rides out for Harrenhal.
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She is sick of waiting. By the gods, she is sick, sick and tired and exhausted and spent.
She dismisses her women in a voice of steel, save Ashara, and waits until their timid steps have faded away in the great halls of Harrenhal before she grabs a vase from her nightstand and heaves it, all her strength behind her arm, into the wall. It shatters on impact, a great loud noise and oh—she is making a sound, the mouse queen is making a sound, she is there and tangible and substantial and she is not waiting, not anymore—
She falls to her knees, an ugly, wracked sob torn from her throat.
Her fingers dig at her skin, leaving bright red marks behind and Ashara kneels beside her, pulls her head into her breast, whispers promises and vows and threats towards the Stark girl in Elia’s ear. She hacks out dry sobs, her throat numb and burning beneath her hand.
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(She does not hate Lyanna Stark. Does not feel anything for her except for envy—not because the girl has her husband’s love, now, not because now the world will always remember her, a siren, a temptress, while Elia will always be that Dornish Princess, unable to hold on to her husband. No. Elia envies her because the girl had not waited, had not waited the best part of her youth away, but had instead pounced, jumped on her prey, had taken the direwolf on the banner of her house and made it her own.)
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Elia says, quietly, “Do you love her?”
“I chose her.” He says. “It was a choice. I chose to ride down to her, I chose to talk to her, and I chose to give her the wreath. I had a choice, Elia. I’ve never had a choice with anything else my whole life, but I had a choice with her. My whole life I’ve put my duty before myself, I did as my father wished, I put the seven kingdoms before anything I wanted. I needed to choose something, just once; I needed to have a choice. I chose her. You have to understand.”
Oh, Rhaegar, she thinks in pity. You beautiful silver fool.
You never had a choice at all.
What a child he is, to think that he is alone in this collective misery, to think himself a martyr for his realm.
“So you chose Lyanna Stark.” She says. “You chose the wolf girl, and she is the only choice you’ve ever made. That is fit for a song, Your Grace.” She stands, and she feels infinitely light, as if she can jump of the edge of a cliff and fly instead of fall. “Let me tell you of some other choices you could have made. You could have chosen to say something when your father gave that deserter to the flames. You could have chosen to close the wound between House Targaryen and House Lannister. You could have chosen to recognize your father’s madness. You could have chosen to do a thousand things differently, and you didn’t. Instead you only choose now when it’s a woman, a child.”
Her voice does not rise. She is calm, she is reasonable, she is gentle, almost. She speaks the way her mother used to, the hint of steel in her voice, her hands cradled in the crooks of her elbows. Her back is straight, her spine curved inwards, and her chin is high, as if she is walking in between the thousands of guests at the Sept of Baelor again, the world hushed, waiting for her every step.
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When she hears about the Tower of Joy, the mysterious kidnapping of a Northern maid, the fair, innocent girl-woman who will bring seven kingdoms to their knees, Elia has to cling to every shred of self-control she has, sensing if she starts screaming now, she will never stop.
You cannot take him from me she wants to howl he is mine, given to me. You cannot have him.
(After all, they have taken everything else, everything she has ever truly wanted: Dorne, her mother’s legacy, the son born of her flesh and blood. At the very least, they could leave her her husband).
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(She tries to reassure herself: Rhaenys would be saved by her irrelevance. She was just a girl, could inherit no crowns, posed no threat to either the storm lords or the bloodthirsty wolves, just a girl, and her mother’s daughter at that. She would ignite no love affairs, start no wars, bring no stories screeching to their ends).
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(The streets are noiseless, even rats hold their breath when the lion roars.)
The only sound she can hear is the thud-thud of her own heart.
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sources:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/343685
jun 6 2018 +