alon hightower.

[...] he imagines it now, lets his mind wander. he can see it clearly, the bottom of the ocean, calling his name. sometimes, especially when he's away from home like now, it's difficult to keep his mind from doing so. he is almost about to close his eyes and leave when he remembers where he is. "ah. i think i was daydreaming again, wasn't i?" he asks. sitting straight he drinks all his liquor at once, shaking himself awake. "lord hightower, alon," alesander says. "you must not let me just... drift like this. i'd rather not waste our time together like this."

alon smiles, self-satisfied. he’s not the best haggler in oldtown by far – there are many insistent mothers raised behind market stalls that have worn him down – but he does better than most, and alesander has followed him like a shadow on some of these occasions. “did you invent children that desperately need expensive booze to survive, lest sickness take their bodies and they waste away?” joking, as always, he continues; “or did you perhaps just stare him down until he caved?”

it’s not that he doesn’t think alesander makes for a good negotiator, but he’s often so unwilling to indulge in the games alon loves to play that he likes to savour it when he does. he nudges his foot against alesander’s, shoetip to shoetip. “i’m teasing, but i do think that look of yours can be… persuasive.” in more than one way, as he knows very well.

“not much land to it when the tide wets the ground every night.” alon likes lonely light in the way of a curious tourist. someone less charitable might say he likes it because it makes him like his hometown more, but that’s not the whole truth of it; it’s delightful to be able to walk the paths that have turned alesander into the man he is. still, he’d rather not spend weeks. “well, it’s done you no harm. i appreciate your efforts.”

his look at alesander’s arms is both rather pointed and an explanation in itself, but alesander’s likely to miss it. alon knows that look on his face. there have been times when he’s gotten upset over it, feeling cheated of the company he’d sought out. now, when the night is young, he instead takes the moment of quiet to empty another glass. even a man like alesander needs his peace.

[...] "where have you been?" her expression was perturbed hands fisted in the gauzy fabric of her nightgown. it was the child inside of her that clung onto alon's presence plagued with bouts of anxiety whenever he left. she could still remember jason and rhea's letters promising they would come to see her. they had lied. she rose from her chair black hair falling around her shoulders. in this light she seemed smaller and waifish folded in on herself as if it would protect her from whatever lurked in these halls.

“i was working, roz, nothing more.” alon could always concentrate best in the hours when the world was sleeping, and the past week hadn’t changed this tendency. now, faced with rosaline’s wide-eyed stare fixed on him, he felt guilty; he’d promised to come by in the evening much earlier in the day and it had taken him a long time to make good on it. alon had never broken a single vow made to her, but not all fears were rational, and his sister was a worrier at heart.

he closed the door behind him and stepped towards her, right into the candlelight. alon was dressed down; his shirt remained, but he was rid of the jacket and his rings. “there was some correspondence with a merchant in the summer isles. and mother left me to deal with the staff when she turned in.” she had been putting more and more responsibility onto his shoulders of late and, despite himself, alon didn’t mind terribly. perhaps the adventurous spirit of his youth had been sufficiently tamed. or alon had grown more responsible despite it.

there’s been more than a few tragedies in alon’s life of late. the prolonged stay in what has to be one of the dirtiest cities on the continent; a lack of good company, over the past few hours; his missing his horse and the sunrise sea. the death of the princess, too, and he tries very hard to be genuine about his sympathies, but it’s difficult when she was just another face in a rotating cast of targaryen rulers, sitting on a throne halfway across the country. what happens in king’s landing doesn’t matter all that much in oldtown.

he doesn’t tell loren as much, but the other man must know that he’s not as grief-stricken as his mother would like him to be. they’re sat on one of the many balconies. alon’s made his way through a cup of wine, but hasn’t touched the food the servants have left them. it’s too early to get drunk, but not so early you can’t get started, especially with a friend.

[...] she  felt  herself  returning  the  smile - a  true  one,  nothing  like  the  bland,  practiced  crescents  she  had  been  offering  the  other  nobles  these  past  few  days - as  she  reciprocated  his  gesture  of  support  with a  teasing  jerk.  it  wasn't  enough  to  unseat  his  hand  entirely  (traitorously  desperate  for  warmth  as  her  body  was),  though  the  sharp  motion  was  as  uncommon  to  her  servants  as  was  her  docility  in  allowing  the  touch  in  the  first  place.  she  felt  younger  like  this,  wondered  if  the  reluctantly  permitted  immaturity  showed  in  her  face.  sufficiently  settled,  rhea  let  the  tense  line  of  her  shoulders  drop,  leaning,  almost,  into  alon's  hand.    "where  would  you  take  me  first,  to  turn  me  into  a  convert  ?  just  around  the  port  of  oldtown,  or  somewhere  really  impressive?"

“leave the eyrie and see the world. i can promise you there’s no better place for it than my home.” for all the travelling alon had done, he’d always preferred the port of oldtown. a city that smelled of flowers, songs named it, and while that truth had been somewhat exaggerated there was still a certain peace that came with the ancient cobblestones and the bustle of the markets. nothing like the quiet of the eyrie, where few strangers seemed to visit.

she moved away from his touch in the teasing way of a younger sister and alon indulgently dropped his arm to rest on the wood behind her instead, fingertips brushing her dress. his own smile spread, self-satisfied. they saw each other so rarely, but rhea was a constant in ever-shifting times, predictable not in her thoughts but in her reactions. it soothed the part of alon that felt exhausted with the scrutiny court always brought with itself.

“the hightower might not be up in the clouds the way the eyrie is, but there are people who have claimed you might see the wall if you climb the stairs all the way up. i have, many times, and i can assure you that either my eyesight is lacking or it is impossible, but in clear nights when you look across the ocean it feels like you are among the stars.” a feeling that likely wasn’t unfamiliar to rhea, who had made a home in the sky. alon, proud and thick-headed, rather thought that the sea air made the experience much more magical in nature. “of course, with the beacon at your back it’s never truly dark. the fire always burns.”

[...] So sure, in fact, that she didn’t hesitate to tease a nearby man who seemed ready to risk his coin on another lordling winning the tourney.  “I wouldn’t place that bet,” she advised him with a lively confidence that spoke both of her faith in her brother’s abilities and her own inability to resist competition. “Not unless you want to lose all that gold.” 

raised a betting man but swayed by loyalty to his friends (whom would surely ask later how much he’d put on their ability to win the tourney), there hadn’t been much decision-making involved when alon had opened his purse. it was because of this routine that he was startled when a voice to his right interrupted the process; he smiled, amused, and put down his coin.

“wouldn’t you, my lady?” she seemed familiar, but that was probably the result of the festivities and familial resemblance. everyone seemed to have cousins running around. “we should thank the gods it is me losing my money, then, and that it's going into your pocket. please spend the dividends wisely, in memory of a man beggared.”

[...] and how boring that is, alesander thinks. how much easier would it be to pay the iron price, take what you want, fight for what you want. but alas, he's trapped here, in these bothersome costumes. he raises his glass on a toast. "to our joyous reunion." he smiles at alon and it's almost genuine. joyous is not exactly the word he would use. he takes a sip, shrugging. "not bad. but i hope it is to your liking, my lord."

“my tastes aren’t that refined,” alon replies with the confidence of a man who’s always had enough coin in his pocket to buy drink that is more wine than water. he doesn’t think himself difficult, and truth be told he isn’t - long weeks on shipdeck would train most men out of it - but it is undeniable that he likes beautiful things and delicious food. handsome men, too, it seems, for the way alesander’s shirt stretches over his biceps doesn’t go unnoticed. “it’s just impossible for the swill in the hall to compare to what we have in the reach. no wonder everyone here looks so unhappy with themselves.”

he makes himself comfortable in the cushioned chair, legs stretched long in front of him so that their feet might touch if they were both careless about it. “the water of life. i take it you bought it at a price that suited you more than him?” the liquid is amber in the glass, the candle on the table seeming to light it from within. alon’s always been fond of alcohol made of fruit, much more so than the beer more common further north.

damon had come upon alon much in the way of a puppy, bright-eyed and eager to tug at his coattails. in truth, despite the smiling air of resignation alon had put on, the distraction had been a blessing; he had spent the early hours of the morning with too little sleep and too much ink on parchment burning numbers into his brain. so when the guard had knocked at his door with a child at his heels and asked alon whether he knew him, he’d opened his door wide enough for the boy to pass and told ben, knight of oldtown, to inform his mother.

young enough not to be terribly self-concious and with the sort of intelligence alon knew he’d come to admire in a grown-up, damon made for a good conversationalist and an even more promising student of cyvasse. while they were pondering over dragons and elephants on the ivory set alon had procured at the market, they talked about damon’s education, his annoyances with his little sisters, and the girls running around casterly rock, none of which, alon learnt, were as beautiful as his mother. it was only after the tea had run dry and the sun had risen over the roofs of the palace that alon got up, gave the boy a jacket to wear over his nightgown, and ushered him down the halls towards the rooms talla and loren had been given during their stay.

[...] yet now, rhea felt strange. she was not alone, her ladies of the vale beside her, but the barge upon which she was now situating herself was unmistakably of house hightower. on purpose, she had forsaken her cousin. now, she realized, that may have been a mistake. "promise you'll fish me out if i fall in ?" the nervous laughter lasted only a moment. "this is my first time on any sort of water, so ... not all of us can be as daring as you, lord alon."

it had been eleven long years since alon’s sister had died, long enough that his memory of her had gotten hazy and soft around the edges, like parchment left to the elements. and there were days he doubted even that. had the curve of her nose been real or a fantasy? the painting of her that hung in the high tower couldn’t tell him; she’d been drawn from the front, features sanded down into something so neutral they conveyed blandness. the rhea hightower that existed in the periphery of his mind, plaguing his thoughts, was nothing but a caricature of what the real version had been, like water slipping through the fingers of a man desperate to cling onto the past. she was a ghost, and a faint one at that, waking with him every morning and sleeping in his bed at night. these days, he barely acknowledged her presence.

but there was another rhea in his life, one made of flesh and blood, that had a grip so firm on his hand that he couldn’t help but be reminded. pictured from the back, hair loose, they could’ve been mistaken for sisters, back when they might’ve stood side by side. certainly, alon remembered them as such; to the delight of the family their handwriting had shared the same slant, and alon couldn’t remember his sister being as excited about letters from far away as she had been about rhea’s. then, of course, she had died: they were sisters not in blood nor in friendship after that.

[...] A familiar face. Though she was no political genius, Rhaella wanted to test the waters. "Lord Hightower. How do you find our humble offerings?" Humble was certainly not the word for any of it. "Have you come to lend your voice to my dear family?" And to which side? Her cousin, or her brother?

for all that lunch had been pronounced to be a quiet affair, the crowd made it impossible so. alon still felt somewhat weary, his body protesting the weeks on the road. they had had to push the train after an incident in the kingswood on the roseroad, his mother worried about a late arrival, and even though they had made it with a day to spare, the journey had left its claw marks. at least the calendar offered merriment instead of work; he had been looking forward to seeing old friends and indulging in imported wines for weeks, and now that the time had come he found himself content enough.

so, to steel himself for future drink, he partook in the midday meal, and did so with pleasure. the cost of the coming days must’ve been enormous to the crown. there was little reason not to enjoy it while it lasted, and it was on this account that he excused himself from the group he’d been talking to and wandered back towards the tables, slow enough to speak to those he knew.

perhaps it was coincidence that he was interrupted on his way, or perhaps rhaella had been seeking him out. alon smiled at her when she did, inclining his head in greeting.

“princess. whoever did the planning seems to have outdone themselves.” the great hall had been decked out, so different from the last time he’d seen it. even in the open air the greenery had been carefully groomed. “if you ever find reason to let go of your gardener, do send them to oldtown. we could put them to good use.”

[...] he knocks at lord hightower's door, a bottle in hand, and smiles when it's open. "tired of the festivities already, my lord?" alesander asks. then, he raises the bottle, eyes shining with malice. "fear not, i brought them to you." he pushes past to enter, knowing he will not be denied. they didn't invite each other to their lives, but by now they don't know how to leave.

they play these games each time they meet, and after a decade and more alon has yet to tire of them. the feeling of eyes on his back; a smile; eyes tracking the path from the other man to the exit. there is no defeat, or perhaps alon is too used to winning to recognise it when it creeps up on him, sweet and empty-handed. for a man who is content with his lot want is an emotion that is foreign, something heard of in songs like a battle in some unknown part of the world. it is rather in his nature to take.

it is alesander who appears at his door that night, but alon might as well have willed him into it. he steps aside to let him in. behind lord farwynd, the corridor is long and empty, dimly lit. there is no sound now that alesander’s footsteps have ceased, except for the noise of the crowd, filtering in through the window.

“i thought i would retire early,” he lies, smiling through it. “you know that i am not one for crowds, lord farwynd. it has been terribly exhausting.” this is laughable: alon is the sort of man who loathes long stretches of silence, who will seek out company whenever able. one of six siblings, the second son who had grown up badgering the traders at port for their stories. alesander knows this, and yet it is fun to tease.