Chapter Text
nine pomegranate seed
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Gods were fickle creatures. Every single one of them. But as any tale would prove true and every lesson they entail.
Love was the most dangerous of them all.
Aemma Arryn was many things. Selfishness was never a trait she was ever told to be. She was shipped off and straightly married at one and ten, a blushing child bride to another boy on the cusp of being a man.
Viserys had never been her own choice of groom or she ever was given a choice at all. But he was kind at least, gentle oftentimes and they would rarely quarrel.
But sometimes, just sometimes when the pain and the facade of grim acceptance she wore didn’t manage to quite hold on, her only choice was to hide.
The markets and districts of Flea Bottom were a welcome reprieve other than the nauseating stench that wafted from the people and in the streets, but she didn’t mind it one bit.
Clutching her cloak tighter she walked to the direct of the streets of flour where she became a common patron, the stench was also replaced by the scents of freshly baked breads and pastries. Walking on cobbled streets she sighs.
It would be a while until Viserys would search her company, and another gentle coaxing that they should try again as the eldest to Prince Baelon, he needed a child – no, a son to secure his position at court. She couldn’t say no and tell him to stop. She was tired of another miscarriage, of another babe dead at their crib before a fortnight. Aemma is tired of everything even if she pretends not to, she knows her duty and she shoulders them like any woman of her station.
She just wished that –
She ducks into a corner reaching a hand to open the door to a store when a much larger hand reaches for it first. She falls back nearly stumbling but an arm shoots out to grab her waist, saving her from an embarrassing fall.
“I apologize my lady” came a melodic voice if the source was surely that of a man.
Aemma hurriedly secured the cao of her cloak “No, no! My lord– you shouldn’t”
Aemma looks up with purple eyes widening when she finally sees
“–apologize” she weakly adds
What is perhaps the most beautiful man she has ever laid her eyes on
His name was Alyn
Aemma sat in a daze as Viserys looked at her with concern.
“Aemma– are you alright?” He looked over her “Does something ails you?” he frets
Aemma blinks a few times to clear out the image of red hair and blue eyes in the corner of her vision.
“Oh yes” She finally says taking off the gentle hand of Viserys on her shoulder “I feel fine dear.”
Viserys still frowns at her. The image clashed with the fine youthful face of a man with a bright smile. Aemma blinks the image away and smiles gently
“Yes. No need to summon the maester”
He sighs “Thank the gods”
For a moment peace reigns between them in silence, when Viserys puts a warm palm on her stomach. She detachedly had been carrying their child a few moons before.
“The council. They–” He starts but Aemma already knows what he means, smiling as if doesn’t pain her voice out the words “I know, we shall try again.”
He beams back at her, before leaning in to lay a kiss between her brows “I’m so grateful it is you”
He was so grateful to have such an understanding wife, that she would allow pregnancy after pregnancy to ravage her body, and she should be grateful also, that she was even asked, when they both know she never really had the choice but to agree to begin with.
She hid the pain with a smile and leaned into his arms like they didn’t feel like they were choking her “And I, with you”
Just sometimes, sometimes she wished, she had a say in anything, just in something at all.
She dons her cloak the next morning.
She sees him again, just as breathtaking as the first moment she had seen him.
“Lord Alyn, what a coincidence” Surely such face and build can only be someone of noble birth, and then he moves as if the air itself moves with him in grace.
A strand of long red hair peeks from his cloak as he nods at her smiling. His blue eyes scanned her form, and Aemma ducked her head in embarrassment at what, she didn’t know.
“My lady” Aemma, she wanted him to call her but halts such nonsence
By the gods, his voice, Aemma tilted her head dazedly as if enchanted before shaking her head off with her thoughts.
You are a married woman. He doesn’t know but you should at least act like it.
But sometimes, she wished she wasn’t any of that at all.
His smile was as beautiful as the evening twilight she used to admire in her chambers back at the Vale “Would you terribly mind if I’d ask for your company this fine morning? I find myself lost for some time as I am unfamiliar with the place”
No, not twilight, but the stars converged itself. Aemma though.
“No, not at all my lord.”
She gave him a smile of her own. And when he offered his hand. Callous if soft. She did not think twice to accept it.
Sometimes, just sometimes. She hopes she can get away.
She thinks she should stop.
Aemma the moment she knows that Viserys or any of her family wouldn’t find her, hurriedly bolts off to her chambers while nervously taking out the cloak she often uses hidden under her marriage bed.
She uses the secret passages and on her way makes sure that no one follows her. It isn’t very difficult with everyone paying attention to the culmination tension between the claim of Princess Rhaenys and Prince Baelon.
She sees him first, terribly, irrevocably just as breathtaking.
“Lord Alyn!” she shouts his name making the man turn to face his face breaking off a smile that takes the air out of her lungs.
“My lady!” he calls out
She felt silly, she looked like a fool but she didn’t care, she ran not caring who could have seen her only wanting and wishing to be near him.
He caught her by the waist she stumbled a step laughing as she looked up at him “Woah! My lady you should be careful!”
She only grins back at him “I just missed you is all”
Her grin was reciprocated teasingly “Oh is that so?”
She squeals when she finds herself being lifted, her face burns at her position.
She could feel the beat of his heart but she was sure her own was louder
“Then I must endeavour to make this excursion more worthwhile than the last”
He declares with her still in his arms.
During these times, she can pretend to forget.
She feels that she should stop.
“Blue brings out your eyes” he compliments, as he crowns her with the hyacinth flowers they snagged off a shop selling herbs.
It was like the songs she heard, but she was duly the princess who was already married and he was no prince.
“You think so?” She asked him with wide eyes. Fingers lightly gracing atop her head to feel the petals.
He smiles, gentle and adoring it nearly brought tears to her eyes “I’m only stating what I see my lady”
“You think it suits me? Really?” She didn’t know what to think, what to do.
Fingers tilted her chin, her face directly facing to his own. She stutters in her chest and she feels herself stopped breathing.
“No. I think you're beautiful” he concedes truth shining in ocean-blue eyes but shake his head “but wrong, beauty is only for appraisal, to be looked at, and I think you wittier than the Maesters I have met, you could have been greater than them if you wish – I meant that it is not a matter what things would suit you, for your not just beautiful. I think you're beyond that”
Something inside her break
The night after was when she and Viserys fought. The second time since their marriage.
“The maester had said that–”
“But I do not want to!” Aemma screams at him
He looked terrible, her husband. She knows that his insecurities are showing again, he feels being demeaned by the council as cousin Rhaenys already had one son to fight her claim with and Viserys has no child to speak of.
“Why are you being stubborn about this!” he shouted back, Aemma glared at him.
“It is you who cannot understand. You only mourn what you can see, you don’t feel every child I have inside me die Viserys! You will never understand! Never–”
He hugged her and she fought futilely for a few moments before sobbing into his arms.
It only took him the next morning to convince her again. She only gazed at him and nodded blankly.
She needed to stop
“I am married,” She tells him he blinks at her in shock
She expects him to pull away, to eye her with disgust. He does none of those things and instead pulls her impossibly closer to him and kisses her.
It’s like the songs. She mourns. But life is no song.
They parted gasping for breath and in surprise, he cradled her delicate face in his and gazed at her straight in the eyes.
“Then run away with me.”
Her tears fall before she can even think through his words.
“Come, Aemma” Queen Alyssane calls out to her.
“Mumuña, how was dragonstone” She starts sitting just beside the Queen, her often companion Princess Gael was nowhere in sight and perhaps noticing her searching gaze
“Gael had chosen to stay at Dragonstone for the meantime. Tell me, child, how are you and Viserys?” The older woman asked cradling her tea
Aemma hesitates before answering “We are doing well, Your Grace”
Blue eyes looked at her searchingly with worry “I apologize I wasn’t present when you last miscarried” she said slowly
Aemma gulped her tea ignoring the heat as burning her mouth.
“it is alright, Your Grace, you have more important matters to attend to” was her bland practised reply. She had no one to blame but herself.
“He shouldn’t have–that boy…” Queen Alyssane closed her eyes as if relieving something painful “Shouldn’t have rushed into things”
He shouldn’t have taken her to bed too young and beget her with a child her frail body wouldn’t nurture properly. He shouldn’t have pressed more the moment the first miscarriage occurred. He shouldn’t have listened to the whispers of what he lacked at court and focused more on learning from his own father how to rule.
He shouldn’t, he should have. Aemma was tired of it.
“Tell me, your grace, have you ever regretted –” Aemma paused “Have you ever wished things could have been different”
Alyssane graced her with a wistful pained-filled smile.
“More than once, child. More than once.”
She couldn't, she tells him. Too much was at stake. Her paternal family would be shamed. The royal family will lose face. And as much as she hated her situation, she did not hate her family, and she never will.
“Can you stay?” He asks her “Just tonight, even if it will be the last. Can we pretend the way we did before?”
For a moment she forgets her husband, her title, her role, and her duties.
“Gladly”
She’s a woman of no worth besides the blood she carries. Her body, her gowns, her dowries, everything had been given to her and expected her obedience in turn.
But just time, this time she will have a choice.
“Make me forget” she leans to him bumping their foreheads as she closes her eyes.
Aemma Arryn had no choice in love. She had never been given one.
But tonight she has.
She never sees him again, but she hears the whispers of a battle in Stormland. Of a man with red hair fighting valiantly and dying in the sands.
She was inconsolable for a moon. Viserys couldn’t understand and she never told him anything.
Another moon was when she noticed that her moon blood didn’t arrive and the Maester confirmed her pregnancy. Viserys was of course overjoyed and never thought that her womb housed another man’s child when he graced their marriage bed often enough. Aemma thought that too.
Aemma was numb till the end of her pregnancy. This time seems stronger than her previous ones.
The pain was as excruciating but she heard the wail of a child–
“It’s a girl, my lady!”
Joy courses through her. Alive, this one is alive.
“Give her to me!” she demands the Maester.
She hoped and dreaded but heaved a painful sigh of relief at the sight of silver instead of red.
But then her babe opened her eyes. Aemma expected that it would be similar to the blue of newborns, she had seen before but no–
Indigo, purple, and violets. The stars she had seen in his eyes. Those same gleam blinks back at her in a tiny form.
Aemma was struck at first but then cried.
She hadn’t lost him.