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bbygirl-aemond · 1 year

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In Your Grave

Kudos to this post which implanted the idea in my brain of Alicent giving Viserys the death he deserves at the end of Episode 8 and making sure he goes out in both mental and physical agony as all child and wife abusers should ❤️ So here is the result! This is cross-posted to Ao3 here but you can read it in its 2.7k entirety below if you want! TW for references to canonical events such as Alicent's SA and Aemma's death.

Viserys was always heard before he was seen, these days. His broken wheezing echoed down the corridor long before Alicent stepped through the door to his bedchambers and he came into view. It rankled in her ears as she drew up short, as a careful stillness settled about her shoulders and her spine.

The servants had rearranged his limbs haphazardly about, such that he more closely resembled a discarded doll than a King. He was lying on the left-hand side of the bed, she noted idly. They must have placed him there while unconscious, for he would never have chosen such a thing on his own. The right-hand side of the bed was for sleeping, she knew. The left-hand side was only for her, for Aemma, for the little girls who tipped back their heads and gripped the sheets and bit their lips bloody as a man unmade them night after night after—

Another wheeze, this time louder than all the rest. Even from here, she could see the pallor to his face, could hear the rattling within his lungs.

She knew that sound.

It was one that she knew as surely as she knew the sound of her own breath.

When Alicent had been a very young girl, her father had sent her to read to the old King Jaehaerys upon his deathbed. He had terrified her when she’d first seen him. In all the tales her father had always told her, Kings were larger than life. They were the father of the Realm, after all; above them were only the Gods.

Jaehaerys had not died a God.

He had died a withered old man, with spittle flecking his lips and urine staining his sheets.

Alicent had been there when he’d passed. She’d been sat by his bedside, as had become habit as of late, clutching a book in her hands that had quickly become forgotten as an eerie noise had begun to emanate from within Jaehaerys’s trembling chest. She’d paused in her reading, transfixed by the noise, all of the sights and sounds within the room narrowing down to that one death-rattle.

The Stranger had come, then, looming over the room. But Alicent had not been afraid, for she’d known he had not been there for her. She had leaned in, utterly entranced, and between one moment and the next Jaehaerys had been no longer.

“Please,” gasped the dying man on the bed before her, and Alicent felt a quickening within her heart.

Before the next sun rose, the Stranger would once more taint the walls of this room.

Viserys groaned once more, his hands spasming by his sides. Her eyes roved over him disinterestedly, taking in the sores about his face and the wreckage of his eye with a marked sense of detachment. He must be in terrible pain, she knew; those who clung to life the Gods were no longer willing to give paid a steep price for their cowardice.

“Please,” he begged again, his voice cracking.

One of his hands lifted itself off the bed by just a few inches, his remaining fingers stretching themselves towards his bedside table. She followed his gaze to the goblet that rested there, to the milk of the poppy that rested within.

It would ease his pain, she knew. Ease his passing.

Her face twisted with practiced sympathy.

“Oh, dear husband,” came her voice, saccharine sweet. The words clung to each other like slices of candied lemons. “Does it hurt terribly?”

The fingers stretched further, searching desperately. She supposed she should have expected as much. After all, he had refused the poppy all day long, had likely been counting down the minutes until he was alone once more and could reach for its warm embrace.

Alicent shushed him gently, stepping over to the table and lifting the goblet delicately in one hand. She carefully lowered herself to sit beside her husband and ever-so-gently batted away his hands. Viserys stretched his head eagerly forward, his lips parting as if he’d been trapped in the deserts of Dorne for a thousand days without water.

“There, there,” she soothed, and then took immense pleasure in pouring every last drop of the medicine out onto the sheets beside him.

He let out a little cry of alarm, his fingers twitching plaintively—impotently—towards the cup, as if hoping some of the medicine might remain. One of them brushed against her hand, and her lip curled in disgust. She dropped the cup to the floor, where it bounced with a loud clatter.

Instead of turning towards her, Viserys’s eyes followed the cup, almost frantically. A surge of something—sudden and heavy and searing—bubbled over within her and she darted one hand forward, snatching ahold of his chin to tilt his face towards her.

She kept her face smooth, kept the curl of her lips pleasant and her eyes softened. He’d always loved her smile, had remarked upon how comely it was ever since she’d been a little girl of two and ten. So Alicent smiled for him as prettily as she knew how. But her fingers dug in until the tips bled white, and until pinpricks of red blossomed against the papery skin beneath her nails.

Viserys was in too much pain, she knew, for the grip to even register, that it was but one drop within a sea of agony.

But she knew she was hurting him. She knew that, for once, she was adding to his pain instead of taking it all away, and it sent a little thrill curling up along her spine.

Never in all of their years together had she ever once touched him with the intent to harm. She had wanted to. By the Gods, she had wanted to. Every time he bedded her, a once-dormant beast would wake up from within her and would seize ahold of her limbs, and she could never remember which was worse, the urge to claw open her own skin so that nothing could touch it ever again, or the urge to claw Viserys’s flesh to ribbons, to get him off of her to get him out of her—

But little girls who scratched at Kings lost their fingers, just as little girls who cursed at Kings lost their tongues.

And so Alicent had fisted her hands by her sides until her fingernails had broken the skin of her palms and had forced that great beast back within the recesses of her ribcage so that her King could allow himself the pretense that he was not hurting her. She’d forced herself to relax and to lie there and to smile back at him when he looked up at her because Gods forbid he suffer the knowledge of what he was doing.

Things had shifted eventually, after the farce had fallen away and they both knew that the other recognized their marriage-bed for exactly what it was. Oh, Viserys had still called her to his bed—had still wrung two more children out of her yielding womb. But when he would whisper sweet nothings into her skin, praises for her hair or her skin or her cunt, she would say nothing. When he would look up at her expectantly, she would gaze right back at him with no expression at all. She could not claw at him or at herself, lest reality crash in around him entirely, but she would dig her nails into the silk sheets below her and relish in the tatters that would remain behind once he was done.

Viserys would not leave her be, but he would not confront her about the destruction wrought of his sheets, either. She had fancied them to be at a sort of stalemate—had fancied her private little destruction to be some sort of rebellion, had sought a modicum of comfort within it.

But now she was clawing at him and not the sheets and his skin was a thousand times more delicate than the silk and a thousand times more satisfying to tear.

“Look at me,” she told him sweetly, leaning over his face so that her hair fell in a curtain around him both. She wanted the sight of her smile to be the only thing he could see. The scent of her hair to be the only thing he could smell. The sound of her words to be the only thing he could hear.

For a moment—for just one moment—there would be nothing but her.

His eyes focused on her agonizingly slowly, his pain rendering even the slightest of movements laborious.

“Do you remember the vows I made you, upon our wedding day?” she asked him. “I should like to make you another.”

And she leaned in even closer, until the heat of his lips warmed her own. The lines and sores that twisted at his skin repulsed her. The humid, bitter beath that ghosted across her lips repulsed her. But repulsion was an old friend to her; she welcomed it and then sent it merrily on its way.

Alicent looked down upon her husband. Her skirts remained firmly settled about her ankles, and not hiked up around her waist. Her thighs were pressed together, and the space inside of her was blissfully empty, and the only points of contact between them were her fingertips bruising his face.

“You will die tonight, my King,” she breathed. “And when the day breaks, there will be a new King.”

The withered face below her blanched of all color, and she shushed him softly, digging her nails further into his papery skin.

“It is all decided,” she soothed. “The Conqueror’s crown will be placed upon your son’s head, and the Conqueror’s sword will be placed in his hand. And when the Septon has blessed him and he has mounted his dragon the smallfolk will look upon Aegon, Second of His Name, and they will worship him as they worship their Gods.”

Viserys was wheezing once more, his fingers scrabbling for purchase, threatening to press at her own. She swatted him away once more, and this time her palm cracked cruelly against his skin. Still, when she spoke, her voice was unbearably gentle.

“Our ravens are waiting to send word to every corner of the Seven Kingdoms,” she promised him. “They shall remind the Lords of Westeros of the promise they or their forefathers made when they made you a King, my darling. It is in your name, and yours alone, that they will swear fealty to my son as their King.”

There was a pounding within her ears, a throbbing between her ribs where her heart resided. The beast reared its head inside of her, only it did not show itself within her voice or upon her face but in the savage press of her nails and in the venom spilling out from between the lips Viserys always swore were softer than the finest of Myrish silks.

“I will call Rhaenyra back to King’s Landing, of course,” she continued, her words coming faster now, spurred on by the fire within her. “A grieving daughter would think of nothing else but to rush to her father’s side. Of course, she cannot be allowed to live. Not her, and not her spawn, and not your dear brother.”

A tear trickled across one, wizened cheek. Her smile widened, and she leaned in yet closer still as the fire swirled inside of her.

How dare he weep in her presence, when he never once allowed her the same?

“Oh, do not cry, my darling,” she whispered. “They will have an honorable death. A dragon rider’s death. The princes shall bathe in the flames of the mighty Vhagar, and the princess shall slate dear Sunfyre’s hunger. Though he is not quite large enough to swallow her whole; she will have to hope he takes his meals quickly.”

“Alicent,” Viserys gasped, his face gray with horror. “You—you cannot do this. You will not—”

“I will do exactly as I wish,” she snapped at him, and then inhaled, plastering her smile back about her face. She wiggled his chin back and forth, as one might a child, or an unruly dog. “While you lie cold in your grave, Aemma’s line will die, and House Targaryen will continue through me. Aegon will rule with Helaena beside him—your subjects adore her, Viserys, a thousand times more than they ever adored Rhaenyra. And Aegon will rule with my darling Aemond as his Hand—he was always so fond of history, of philosophy, of all the poets and novelists you so loved, and yet you would barely look at him. And with sweet Daeron by their side—I had to send him away to keep you from him, he was always so clever with his tongue and I had to make sure he kept it because you vowed to—”

The beast rose up further, fire tugging at the back of her throat, threatening to choke her. She drew in a shuddering breath, and forced it back down. Perhaps this time she was not entirely successful; her smile now felt as sharp as her nails, and her eyes held themselves open a smidge too widely.

“Aemma,” Viserys wept, his eyes clouded with terror.

An infant, begging pathetically for its mother.

“Aemma is dead, remember?” Alicent told him, very slowly and patiently, as if talking to a confused child. She brought up her other hand, dug a finger deep within his belly, and dragged it up to his sternum as he moaned and writhed. “Pigs are butchered more humanely than you butchered the mother of your child. Did she beg you to stop? Did she cry for you? Did she scream for you?”

A garbled wail tore itself free from Viserys’s lips; it was an ugly, wet thing, flecking his mouth with drops of crimson. He screwed his eye shut, feebly trying to turn his face away from her.

“Look at me!” she screamed, and his eye forced itself open again.

He looked upon her with terror and a sick, dawning sort of realization. Her smile widened further, and she leaned in close to him once more.

This is the thing you married, the voice in the back of her head whispered gleefully. You saw its pretty smile and its dainty hands and so you dragged it into your bed and upon your cock and trusted that it could never hurt you. You bred it like a bitch and you promised to cut out its tongue and all this time you should have been worried about its teeth. But you did not and now it will leech your throne and your legacy and its pretty mouth will swallow the House of the dragon whole.

“You will never see your dear Aemma again,” the thing that was Alicent Hightower vowed, baring its pretty teeth as its pretty lips curled further. “She is in the Seven Heavens with her infant son, where you can never touch either of them again. But you will see me again, Viserys, I swear this to you. When my time is ended I will search the Seven Hells for your wretched soul and then your torment will begin anew.”

She lowered her lips to press one last, caricature of a kiss against his withered brow.

“Farewell, dear husband,” she told Viserys. “Until we meet again.”

And she turned her back upon her King as he flailed and sobbed and gasped upon his deathbed. Her pace quickened, and her heart beat in anticipation.

It was not Aemma’s name that he cried, then.

Nor was it Rhaenyra’s.

“Alicent,” Viserys begged, grasping desperately after her, the acrid scent of blood and urine and rot seeping into the air around his bed. “Alicent, please.”

Her hands flexed by her sides, one set of fingernails stained with the blood of a King. She did not look back towards her husband, nor did she acknowledge his wails. But she very carefully engraved the sight of his terror-stricken face upon the insides of her eyelids, carved the sounds of his agonized betrayal into the crevices of her ears.

This, too, she would never forget.

The Queen left the royal chambers with a beatific smile upon her face.

Behind her, the Stranger entered.

#hotd #house of the dragon #lord of the tides #house of the dragon episode 8 #hotd episode 8 #alicent hightower #alicent #viserys targaryen #viserys #viserys i targaryen

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