Gwayne Hightower x Targ!reader
Summary: You are Alysanne Targaryen, Rhaenyra's younger sister. Your husband, Jason Lannister, died at the Red Fork. You have a fully grown dragon, Darkwing. Though House Lannister has pledged its loyalty to King Aegon II, which side will you choose?
And, ironically, you have just run into Gwayne Hightower accidentally — the boy you fell in love with 20 years ago.
Warning: slow burn, angst, some fluff, multi-chapters, spoilers of new episode.
CH.1
The rain had been falling since dawn.
Alysanne now crouched behind an overturned supply cart with her hood pulled forward and her heart loud in her ears.
The fighting had erupted without warning,a distant shout, the sudden stillness of the outriders, and then steel. She had scrambled from her saddle before anyone thought to tell her to, some animal instinct pulling her low and away from the horses as the first men fell.
She pressed her back against the wet wood of the cart. Her hood was up, covering her gilver hair, which she hated since she was a child. Too gold for a true Targaryen. The sounds around her were awful, the grunt of men working hard at killing each other, the screaming of horses, the rain swallowing everything else into grey noise.
A hand closed around her arm.
She had just enough time to think of course before she was hauled upright, her hood catching on a splinter and tearing back from her face, revealing her long and curly hair. The cold rain hit her full across the cheeks. The man who had her was wearing green and gold. Aegon's men.
“A woman! Lord Commander!”
She did not fight. Not yet. She let him march her forward through the mud, her boots sinking with each step, and she kept her face very still and her breathing careful.
The fighting was already thinning. Daemon's escort, what remained of it, was being driven back or cut down. She did not let herself look too long.
They brought her to the centre of the road.
The man was standing there as though the rain did not touch him. She had met Criston Cole at King’s Landing, years ago, before she wed to Casterly Rock. He was her sister’s guard once. He didn’t change much, all these years.
He looked at her for a long moment.
She watched him clock her hair, even soaked and darkened by rain. She watched him place her.
"Princess Alysanne." His voice was exactly as she remembered it. "You are a long way from Casterly Rock." A pause, deliberate. "You should be waiting for your husband."
The words landed strangely. She thought of Jason — of the letter she had received just a few days ago, the handwriting not even his. Lord Jason fell honourably.
Criston's eyes moved to the man holding her arm, then back to her face.
"Wait." She pulled against the grip on her arm, planting her feet in the mud. The soldier yanked back. She yanked harder, not because she thought she would win but because she was not going to be bundled away like luggage without making it cost something.
Then hoofbeats. Fast, cutting through the rain from the eastern side of the road where the fighting had been thickest.
The rider came in hard, pulling up short enough that his horse threw mud in a wide arc. He was still in his saddle, one hand on the reins, scanning the scene with the quick efficient look of a man who catalogued threat before anything else.
"Whose woman is this?" he called out. Not unkind. Just loud enough to carry over the rain.
Alysanne turned her face toward him.
Criston looked at the rider.
"Princess Alysanne," he said. "The traitor."
The rider went very still in his saddle.
"What." Not a question. Something had changed in the voice, gone quieter and careful. "Alysanne?"
He swung down from his horse.
The mud took his first step and he didn't seem to notice. He was moving toward her already, closing the distance with the focused purpose of a man who needed to see something with his own eyes before he would believe it, and as he came close enough that she could see his face clearly through the rain, Alysanne felt something shift in her chest that she had not expected.
He looked older. So did she.
He stopped an arm's length away.
He had seen her hair first.
Even through the rain, even at distance, even matted and darkened with water — there was no other colour like it in the world. He had thought, absurdly, that he was wrong. That 20 years and a hard morning had made him see things. He had swung off his horse anyway.
And then he was close enough to see her face.
Mud on her cheek. Blood that was not hers, he was fairly certain, drying at her temple. Her jaw set with the particular stillness of someone who had decided not to show anything to anyone, which he recognised because he had seen it on her face before
Princess Alysanne. The traitor.
He did not look at her for long.
"Give the princess a spot to rest," he said, turning to his own Hightower men, men who answered to him first. "Fetch her food and water. Stay with her."
He watched them move to her. Watched the soldier release her arm. Watched her pull the blanket someone offered around her shoulders without a word, without looking back at him, and follow his men through the mud.
He turned back to find Criston already watching him.
"She is a traitor.We should lock her up. Or else she will escape to the Blacks and expose our position."
"She won't." He kept his voice even. "I give you my word."
"She was with Daemon's men." Criston moved to stand beside him — not facing him, both of them looking out at the halting column. "His city watch. I recognised some of them."
Gwayne said nothing immediately. He was still running the numbers, eight men at least, possibly more before the fighting pulled him east. Would Daemon send city watch to escort the princess but not some noble knights he has.
"We will find out about that," he said. "I will question her myself."
"You will question her." Criston repeated it in something more precise than mockery. He turned to look at Gwayne directly now. "She is the sister of that bitch. She rides a grown dragon. She was found on the road to the Riverlands in the company of Daemon Targaryen's men, moving away from Casterly Rock." A pause. "Ser Gwayne. What exactly are you expecting her to tell you?"
"And if the truth is that she has chosen that bitch?"
"Then I will know it." He met Cole's eyes. " We do not treat the princess of the realm as prisoners on the basis of suspicion alone. Not while I have anything to say about it."
"You knew her," Criston said. Not a question.
Gwayne looked across the clearing, through the gaps between men and horses and the small fires being coaxed to life in the drizzle, he could just make out the oak tree where his men had settled her. A grey shape under a rough blanket. Still.
Criston looked at him for a moment longer than was comfortable.
"Question her tonight," he said finally. "I want answers before we move at dawn." He turned and walked away without waiting for a response
Gwayne stood in the drizzle and watched him go.
Then he turned back toward the oak tree.
The army was halting. She registered that distantly as they walked, the column losing its shape, men peeling off to sit or tend to horses or simply stop moving. Evening was coming in fast, the sky darkening from grey to something deeper, the rain finally beginning to ease into a thin cold drizzle that was somehow worse than the downpour had been.
They settled her under an oak tree. The roots were massive and the canopy, even bare-branched, broke the worst of the drizzle. Someone had already spread a bedroll over the root to sit on.
"Are you wounded, princess?" The young soldier again. Square-jawed, earnest. He was looking at the blood on her temple with barely concealed concern.
She reached up and touched it. Her fingers came away clean, dried, then. Not fresh.
"It is not mine," she said.
He nodded, visibly relieved, then seemed to realise he was visibly relieved and straightened his face into something more soldierly. Behind him, two more Hightower men stood at a respectful distance, one watching the camp with professional attentiveness, one studying the middle distance with the focused intensity of someone pretending very hard not to listen.
A fourth man appeared from somewhere with a blanket, wool, rough, smelling of horse and woodsmoke, and held it out to her with the slightly awkward formality.
"My thanks," she said. "Truly. All of you."
The young soldier nodded again. The man with the blanket looked quietly pleased. The one pretending not to listen continued pretending.
She pulled the blanket around her shoulders and sat down on the root.
And then, with nothing left to do and no performance left to maintain, her hands began to shake.
She pressed them flat against her thighs. It helped marginally. The trembling moved up into her arms instead, and she recognised it for what it was — not cold, or not only cold — the delayed arrival of everything her body had been too occupied to feel. Princess Alysanne. The traitor.
She breathed carefully. In. Out.
The voice was older and lower than she remembered.
He had said her name like he wasn't sure it was real.
She looked down at her hands and willed them to stop trembling. The young soldier appeared at her elbow with a piece of bread and some dried meat and a skin of water, presented with the gravity of someone delivering a feast.
"It is not much, my lady."
The argument across the clearing had stopped.
Gwayne watched her from a distance.
A missing husband and her dragon probably somewhere above the clouds and Daemon Targaryen's city watch dead in the mud of a Riverlands road.
What are you doing here, Alysanne.
He started walking toward the oak tree.
He nodded once to his men as he approached. They melted away quietly, finding reasons to be elsewhere, leaving only the fire and the oak tree and the woman sitting beneath it.
The fire was small and stubborn. The drizzle had softened to almost nothing. Around them the camp settled into its evening rhythms , low voices, the occasional clank of armour, the smell of woodsmoke and wet earth.
"What are you doing here, Alysanne!" He kept his voice low. It came out less like a question than he had intended.
She looked at the fire, and she told him.
Daemon's men coming in the dark, not a knock, not a message, not even the pretense of a request. The scrape of her chamber door and the candlelight catching the edge of a blade before she was fully awake. The particular cold of understanding in the dark that she had no good options and very little time. She said it all quietly, without drama, the way you recount something that happened to your body while your mind was somewhere separate watching.
When she finished, the fire crackled. Somewhere in the camp a horse shifted and stamped.
Gwayne was very still beside her.
She glanced at him. His jaw was set. His eyes were on the fire but he was not seeing the fire.
"So..Daemon sent his city watch," he said finally. Low. Almost to himself.
"He wanted me and my dragon," she said. "Jason is dead. My son is fifteen. The Lannister armies were defeated by Daemon and his riverland armies. It seems like the news hasn’t reached here yet. I was the only thing worth taking."
Another silence. She waited. She had said what she had to say and now it was his.
Gwayne turned to look at her.
She met his eyes and held them, because she was not fourteen anymore and she was not going to look away first.
Something moved in his expression. Something she did not try to name.
"I hope to trust you," he said quietly. The word hope landed carefully, deliberately, not a promise, not a doubt, something precise in between. "But nevertheless." A pause. "I am afraid you still need to stay with us. A couple of days at least."
She looked at him for a moment.
"Alright," she said. She was not free. She was not a prisoner. She was somewhere in the narrow uncomfortable space between, which was honestly a more familiar place than she cared to admit.
"Where are you heading to?" she asked.
Gwayne was quiet for a moment.
"North," he said. "There is a chance we will encounter Daemon's forces."
She looked at him. He was looking at the fire.
North. Not which road. Not which lord's land. Not how many days. Just north — They are heading to Harrenhal, she is not stupid.
She looked back at the fire and kept her face still and felt the bitterness of it settle somewhere quietly in her chest. She had told him everything. She supposed she had not expected that to be enough.
"Where is your dragon?" Gwayne asked.
"Still in Casterly Rock, I suppose. But I freed him a few days ago." She said.
"Daemon," she didn’t give him the chance to interrupt. "Daemon will crown himself King eventually. You know that. His ambition will not stop at King Consort. It never would have." She paused. "My sister could never see it. After all these years I still do not understand what she saw in him."
It was a short sound, genuine, surprised out of him. It changed his face entirely. Made him look, just for a moment, younger.
"Yes," he said. "He is horrible."
Said with such simple, wholehearted agreement that she felt a small laugh escape her before she could stop it.
They sat with that for a moment. The mutual, uncomplicated truth of it. Daemon Targaryen was horrible and they both knew it and there was something almost restful about saying so plainly to another person without consequence.
The fire burned. The drizzle continued its patient work.
"My sister wrote to me," Alysanne said, quieter now. "Before all of this. She asked me to help her." She paused.
She was not sure why she told him that. It was not strategic. It did not help her case particularly. It was simply true, and she was very tired, and the laugh had loosened something she had not meant to loosen.
She felt Gwayne look at her.
She did not look back. "I did not answer her call."
He did not know how to answer that. She could feel it.
She glanced up. He was looking at her hands.
She opened her mouth to say I am fine.
"They are making fire further up," he said, before she could. "I will fetch you some hot water later."
Not a question. Not an offer exactly. Just a statement of what was going to happen, in the same tone he had used to tell his men to give her a blanket.
"Thank you," she said instead.
He nodded once. Then he stood, and she thought the conversation was over, and she looked back at the fire.
She heard his boots in the mud. One step, two, three,
He had his back half to her, his face turned just enough over his shoulder that she could see the edge of his jaw, the line of it set with the particular tension of someone who has just said something before fully deciding to say it.
"I have a tent," he said. "If you want to come."
No glance back. No elaboration. Just the words left hanging in the cold air behind him like he needed to be at a safe distance before they landed, and then he was moving through the camp and his men were stepping quietly back into place around her, their eyes carefully averted.
Alysanne looked at the place where he had been standing.
Then she looked down at her hands, still trembling faintly against her thighs.
·̩͙།† ͝ ︶ ͝ ⏝ ͝ ︶ ͝ †། ·̩͙
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