porcelain, ivory, steel

a/n: I mostly wrote this in 2024, because I found the idea of Hightowers being tortured with targcest they think they're too good for wayyy too interesting to pass up, then rewrote post s3 when this relationship turned out to be as significant as it did. so the characterisation is probably a strange frankenstein midpoint between gwayne's s2 character development, both in s3, and f&b. the rewrite definitely led to a more sombre tone, and highkey this is my first time writing something with this difficult & dubious of a subject matter, so would really appreciate any and all feedback whether it's positive, negative, constructive :)

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Targaryens had queer customs, Gwayne knew.

His entire life, he’d watched his father bend and scrape for them. Always a clever plan in Ser Otto’s head, always a gently spoken word to steady the course he’d set for whichever inbred malcontent sat the throne at a given time. Gwayne didn’t know how he had the patience for it. Ser Otto was endlessly patient, like a snake in tall grass. He had never ceased scolding Gwayne for the rashness of youth, the heat in his blood. Too much like your mother, he would say.

But you loved mother, Gwayne would point out, red-eyed and red-knuckled as he often was in his youth. There was always someone who deserved it - some arrogant son-of-someone on the training yard who was too slow to get his guard up, or one of Daemon Targaryen’s monstrous Gold Cloaks needing put back in the dirt where he belonged.

His father’s expression would soften at that. Of course, I did. Of course, I do, he’d say. But I cannot protect you as I did her. You will wear a sword and mail, Gwayne, and you will have to stand as your own man. 

We do not start something until we are sure we can win.

Those words of his father’s had always stayed with Gwayne. He repeated them to himself when he was sent back to Oldtown for good, so he could enmesh himself with his cousins instead of drawing the ire of his father’s enemies in the capital. He repeated it to himself when he heard the news of his sister being betrothed to the King. What business his father had marrying his sweet little sister off to a man grown enough to have a daughter Alicent’s own age, Gwayne did not know. But he assuaged the fury he felt with the knowledge that, somehow, this was for them. Ser Otto Hightower did not start something until he was sure he could win - which meant that he could already see a son of House Hightower on the Iron Throne in his mind’s eye.

It never stopped Gwayne worrying about his sister, though. Where his rage had always gone outwards, Alicent’s went inwards. Gwayne bloodied his hands on noses, jaws, chainmail, and fastenings. Alicent bloodied hers on her own teeth. 

They traded letters constantly. He visited when his lord uncle could spare him. He sent all the candied fruits and soft furs his coin would allow every time she grew great with child.

He tried not to think of that old letch rutting into her. 

Ruined more than one sword when he failed.

When the former commander grew old, Lord Hobert gave Gwayne command of Oldtown’s City Watch. A high honour for so young a knight, but in the shadow of the Hightower, Ser Otto’s son had made himself quietly invaluable. 

It would have rankled at his cousin Ormund to see Gwayne awarded so, if Ormund could bear the thought of lowering himself to such dirty work. Thankfully, though, there were just enough potshops and whorehouses involved in Gwayne’s work that the heir to the Hightower found his appointment amusing rather than threatening. Gwayne did not care for his cousin’s nose-wrinkling and guffaws - he was the son of a younger son, and nothing was given. He was also Ser Otto’s son. He knew when to win, but more importantly, he knew when to lose, and it was always clever to lose when Ormund was around. 

Gwayne kept his men on a short leash and trained them rigorously, but those who did well and who could lead were raised high, irrespective of birth. He was open-handed with his men and the smallfolk under his watch alike, but came down hard on any abuse of that kindness. He was the son of a younger son, and nothing was given, so he worked diligently and earned the respect of his liege lord. And as a result, House Hightower was always stalwart in its support of the Queen and the Hand, and Highgarden would follow suit more often than not.

He went on like that, establishing himself, staying focused on keeping Hightower peace and breaking Hightower bread, until one day, his father came home.

I am proud of you, he told Gwayne as he took in the man his son had become with a sword at his hip and his mother’s copper hair. I am trusting you with him.

The him in question was a tiny child with his sister’s looks and eyes like the light that preceded dawn. The heir and the spare were to stay in King’s Landing, ready to contest the Princess of Dragonstone and her bastards at a moment’s notice. The spare for the spare, however… Ser Otto was too clever to keep all his eggs in one basket.

Gwayne knew nothing of Daeron when the boy came to Oldtown to be fostered by Lord Hobert. Even at such tender ages, he knew Aegon to be sour and idle, Helaena kind but distant, and Aemond as solemn as he was severe. But Daeron? Gwayne did not know him, and he did not go out of his way to know him. He did not like children overmuch - there was no reasoning with squawling children and, as a rule, Gwayne preferred people who could be reasoned with. He made sure his sister’s son was tended to as befitted his station and that his dragon was cared for, but there was little else for him to do, little else for him to even look up from his work for. Daeron learned and supped with the sons of lesser lords and knights sworn to House Hightower - fine boys, if understandably skittish around the princeling’s hunting dog-sized dragon - and truthfully, there was little input for Gwayne to make.

Until Ormund - Lord Hightower, now, after his father’s death - took Daeron for his squire.

Gwayne had, for some reason, foolishly thought the boy would be his to take to squire one day, truth be told. But he was a son of a younger son who spent his days routing rapers and murderers, and his cousin would likely one day raise armies in Aegon’s name. So, the Prince of the Realm would squire for Lord Ormund instead.

The boy, now a young man, was a little old to have just begun squiring. He’d always been more interested in his dragon, as much as Lord Ormund tried to discourage it, but now his shoulders were broadening, his legs lengthening rapidly, his face losing its roundness - it was time he learned. Do not let him fail, Ser Otto had required of Gwayne in his letters. Take care of my boy, came Alicent’s plea. There was fear there, laid bare by the interceding years since Alicent had beheld her youngest son. Gwayne knew why, had heard the whispers that Aemond was too hard to be loved by the court, Aegon too horrid to be anything but reviled. Daeron was their last chance at a charming Dragon Prince with smiles that came easily and were given freely, their Baelon the Brave. And it was Gwayne’s job to make it happen.

“Daeron,” he said one evening, watching his nephew struggle to assemble Lord Ormund’s full plate on its stand from across the deserted household armoury. He’d been late back from assigning the watch, and found the boy practising with a nervous tremor in his hands. It was the first time in a long time he’d said Daeron’s name aloud, and the boy startled, already on edge. “Has anyone shown you how to do that?”

Daeron winced. “Uncle… not truly. Everyone assumes someone else has taught me. I feel a fool to ask now; I’m too old not to know.”

“It’s not foolish to not know something you have never been taught,” Gwayne said as he divested himself of leathers that stunk of rowdy winesinks and open firepits. “I do not know how to command a dragon, and I am so very old - does that make me foolish?”

Daeron had a curious habit of trying to hide his smiles in the collar of his doublet - green velvet stitched with the silver that the Hightower gleamed on a summer’s day. “I suppose not, Uncle.”

Gwayne lifted the corner of his mouth. “Exactly. I am in desperate need of washing the city’s squalor off of me, but come to my rooms after supper. You can learn your greaves from your gorgets then.”

He found Daeron to be a good student. He was clever, like Aemond, but more inclined to listen. His fingers were nimble as he tackled fastenings, and his eyes darted like he was watching the suit assemble itself in his mind’s eye. Gwayne allowed himself to be dressed and undressed like a girl’s doll, offering prompts when Daeron asked for them, holding his silence when Daeron knew and just needed to be confident.

“Feeling ready, now?” Gwayne asked when they’d put his armour back on its stand, and Daeron struggled to retain his learning like an oversoaked sponge.

“Moreso,” he said, but there was still a crease in his brows. “I am only… afraid. Lord Ormund is shrewd. If I waver or doubt, he will know.”

“My cousin is shrewd, yes, but nothing flatters his ego so much as being able to share his abundant learning with an eager pupil. He did not take you to squire for your experience but so that he could provide your education,” Gwayne said, holding Daeron’s gaze. His sister had married into House Targaryen more than twenty years ago now, and he still was not used to the way the eyes of these strange creatures pierced a man. “Besides, Ormund got his pauldrons the wrong way round until we were your age. Remember that when Lord Hightower is bearing down upon you.”

Daeron was still frowning. “I wish he had made me your squire, Uncle.”

Gwayne sighed. The boy was not dim-witted, then - he could sense what Ormund was under that thin veneer of erudition and lordly good grace. “I am the son of a younger son. It will serve you better to squire for Lord Hightower.”

“You are Commander of the City Watch.”

“And you are a Prince of the Realm. We could play this game all night; we have a great deal of titles between us.” Gwayne turned his gaze back to the budgets and rotations that needed his attention on his desk. “You are welcome here anytime you need to practice, Daeron. Or if there are other aspects of knighthood we have assumed you already know.”

He looked back just in time to see Daeron’s eyes narrow. “Why are you being kind?”

That stopped his mind from already wondering to what next. “Sorry?”

Silence hung in the air for a moment, as the boy seemed to choose his next words carefully. “Everyone here is very attentive to me, because I am a Prince. I practice swordsplay with sons of House Costayne, and I take my meals with sons of House Beesbury. For my lessons, a specially selected maester comes from the Citadel itself each morning.” Daeron came to stand on the opposite side of Gwayne’s desk, tracing the grain of the wood for something to occupy his hands and gaze. “Sometimes I think Lord Ormund has the servants follow me, such is his ability to find me wherever I am in the keep. I never run out of new silks to wear or new blades to try, for the entire court is always lavishing gifts upon me. Everyone here is very attentive… except you. You are always cold.”

The statement was a shock to Gwayne. An unusually cutting assertion from someone so young. “I never much liked children,” he said, because it was true.

“Is that why you never married?”

He resisted the urge to swallow hard on his own spit. The boy was young, but he was clearly sharp of eye - he would notice if Gwayne faltered, even if it was only for a moment. “I never married because I have no reason to,” he said. “I need no heirs - I will pass on no titles - and I find nobleborn women tiring at best, the way they twitter like birds.” It was a well-practised line, carefully constructed by his father to both build upon and conveniently skirt the truth when Ser Otto had begun to suspect the true reason his son showed no inclination to marry.

Either Gwayne was getting very good at skirting the truth, or Daeron was gracious enough to make a good show of accepting his words at face value. “Why are you being kind now, then? What has changed?”

“Your mother asked me to,” Gwayne said. Daeron frowned. It was a small thing, a minute show of disappointment, but it pulled at a dangerous thread in Gwayne. “She was just a girl when she married your father, my sweet little sister. Maybe that is why I did not wish to know you. Her fourth child, thirdson - how could you draw breath and she still be the little sister I remember?”

Some eyes were made by the Seven above for sorrowful looks, and Gwayne discovered in that moment that Daeron had such a pair. “You must have really cared for her.”

It seemed a ridiculous thing to say - Alicent was his sister, his little sister, of course he cared for her - but from watching the shadows that oft passed over their faces, Gwayne had often gotten the notion that this was not a given amongst the dragonlords. They tore their brothers apart with claw and flame and mounted their sisters as though they were brood mares - not fertile ground for a pure and stable love between siblings to grow. “I did. I still do,” he said. “She looks like our mother, but… when she was a girl, she was too gentle for her own good. I get the impression that she has outgrown that, though.”

Daeron considered it, solemn in a way only a child so thoroughly alone can be. “I cannot tell, in truth. Not from here.”

Gwayne cast his gaze down and nodded, as that was an answer in itself. “Well, I care for your mother, and I see her in you. More and more now.” It was true. Daeron had kind eyes. Like Alicent used to have.“So, my door is open to you.”

Later, when Daeron left, he left Gwayne feeling the most off-balance he’d felt since the first months after his mother died.

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