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“Hello, Alicent.”
It was a familiar place, a place that Alicent remembered from when she was five and ten years of age, before it all went wrong. Where she and Rhaenyra would sit in the fields together, their personal space so removed that at times they seemed like a single entity.
In Alicent’s dream, Rhaenyra was here, not the older, embittered Queen that she had at least heard of, but the girl she had been, free-spirited, happy, impetuous but fundamentally good-natured.
"Rhaenyra,” Alicent finally said. “You’re here.”
”Of course I’m here. I’ve always been here,” Rhaenyra said. “In your heart and in your head.”
That much was true. For all things had gone wrong, Alicent had never truly forgotten the bond that she and Rhaenyra had once shared. It was hard to break it, to forget it. Rhaenyra had loved her once, and she had once loved Rhaenyra in turn, before it had been poisoned.
And before Rhaenyra had died.
”Did it hurt?” It was such a foolish question; Rhaenyra hadn’t even had the luxury of a peaceful death surrounded by family and friends. Instead, she’d been set on fire and devoured by Sunfyre (Sunfyre, of all dragons!) in front of her innocent son. In front of a child. Aegon’s cruelty had only been heightened in that moment, honed into a sharp dagger. And yet Alicent had wept over his body because she was his mother, and mothers had no choice but to love their children no matter how unrecognizable and cruel they became.
"It did,” Rhaenyra said. “And I am sorry that my son had to see it. He shouldn’t have had to. He was an innocent in all of this.”
”Do you blame me?”
Rhaenyra shook her head. “You didn’t give the order. Aegon did.”
Perhaps it was just a dream, Alicent thought. A dream where her mind constructed the closure that she sought. A dream where she could speak to Rhaenyra one last time. A dream where something unfinished could form into something finished. Where she could apologize for everything that had happened. For misunderstanding Viserys’ dying wish. For everything that followed.
Perhaps Rhaenyra’s forgiveness was just a dream too. The closest thing to an ending after their ending got cut short.
Rhaenyra smiled. "I don’t hate you, Alicent. I never did.”
It was in that moment that Alicent realized —
Fire. Rhaenyra was on fire. She was burning away, piece by piece, still smiling that disconcertingly calm smile.
”Rhaenyra!”
Alicent looked around frantically for anything that could put out the fire, but she couldn’t stop the inevitable then and she couldn’t stop the inevitable now.
***
And behind walls of regret and what-could-have-been, Alicent Hightower gasped and shot awake with damp eyes.