I have an idea for a fic... yes.
Should I even complete the rest I have on my long waiting list? Of course I should.
I'm going to leave that list to do a one-shot of this magnificent idea..... I don't hesitate.
Alys knows that all the losses in her husband's life have marked him in a distant way. She knew it, respected it and came to terms with the idea that every time her husband rode Vaghar in the morning he didn't come home the same as the night before.
She understood that. For that very aspect she loved her husband.
Now that she was expecting a baby... she wondered if she would have to explain to him the same procedure she had to go through. War was uncharted territory, no one knew, not even she with her great gifts of magical energy, what might happen with certainty on the battlefield.
She prayed, prayed and made sure that every time Aemond went out on the battlefield, he would come back with her and her future baby. And thank all the gods, the 7, the new and the old, the forgotten and the unborn, that her husband would return victorious at every crossroads where it was necessary for him to be present.
And so it was, through all the moons with which he began to grow heavier, Aemond always returned to his bed so that he could wake up and live another day. Then, when the news reached him that Aemond had almost died in the battle against his uncle, Prince Daemon... her baby kicked so hard it made her think of all that would happen if she was left alone.
But, the kicking and twisting inside her belly doesn't stop. They don't stop and that's when one of the maids warns her that she is about to give birth. The baby is about to be born while no one knows if its father is debating between life and death.
The labour drags on, as does the news of her husband's possible death on the battlefield. The contractions hurt, as does the wait for new messengers and the departure of old ones who try to give her new news. And just when she thought things couldn't get any more complicated, her baby comes into the world with a cry to the heavens, when a messenger enters with the news that her husband has survived the fighting.
Only her husband's arm had to be stitched up, she had to be watched over, and her beautiful child, who for all the turmoil could only have been caused by two Targaryen males, cried as the midwives cleaned him and tried to give him some warm milk.
For as long as she and Aemond lay in bed, making the most of those rare nights with her newborn, she could tell that Aemond kept looking at their son.
His one eye shone brightly, as if near death had given him a new ability to appreciate life, and he would not let anyone, unless it was her, take him from her arms.
He would carry the baby, rocking him with his one sound arm, sing verse after verse of old Valyrian songs; he would tuck him in carefully and not allow the wet nurses to come closer than a few paces if strictly necessary.
So great was her husband's enthusiasm for his new son, that from the first he spoke to him only in High Valyrian, and so on... until the time of uncertainty as to his baby's immediate survival in this world had passed.
"Lucerys" was all her husband repeated, as the scribes prepared the documentation to make the birth and existence of the new Targaryen offspring official "So shall his name be. Second in name, and the only son and heir to my sword and dragon."
"Only son, my lord?" asked one of the scribes, even she wondered, "Isn't it a bit soon for -"
"Only son, heir to my name and family" and after that statement, he accompanied it with a stern blow of the fist of his newly recovered arm to the table full of papers and pens "Not one more, not one less".
Alys would not deny thinking that her husband might have continued to shout about his immediate refusal to have any more children, had it not been for Lucerys, newly named as such, beginning to cry with fright in the cot near her. She couldn't even get near her own baby, because Aemond had automatically dropped everything he was about to do to run and hold her child in his arms.
Alys would sometimes wonder if her husband had suffered such trauma that he was unable to stop overprotecting his son. She knew that not all Targaryen lords were like that, but even the maester said it was not at all uncommon.
"Aemond was always a rather peculiar Targaryen, my lady," commented one of the older maesters there. "After his near-death he may be afraid that his son must soon enter the war. Give him time and he will see how he will regulate himself.
But that was not the case. Sadly not.
Lucerys, unlike any other Targaryen, was denied a dragon's egg of his own. When she wanted to ask her husband's sister, he was so enraged that the soldiers in his charge remarked through the cavalry that the enemy soldiers were wiped out in an instant.
After another attempt on his part to give his son his due, Aemond forbade any dragon breeder to go near his son or his wife.
Aemond would not allow Lucerys to take a toy sword. He would turn insane and throw it into the fire immediately. He would not let it out of his sight and would always try to distract his son with books and soft toys. But clearly Lucerys felt overwhelmed by all the attention.
Her son would try to hide as quickly as possible under her skirt as he heard Vaghar's roar approaching the palace. For, these were the moments after the war when Aemond would search almost obsessively for his son; Lucerys would weep at the sight of his father covered in blood and dirt, and try to pull away as he noticed her husband running to him and carrying him so as not to let go for hours.
"If you want our son to greet you with a smile, you should at least wipe off all the dirt," she told him when Aemond tearfully asked her one night why his son always fled her presence after arriving from the battlefield.
After that his son would be calmer in his father's presence. But he kept noticing how Aemond almost wanted to control everything Lucerys did when they were together.
The more distracted maids and knights would say he was only a first father or that he was a fool in front of his only progeny. The more observant, like her, would notice a kind of obsessive mark when Aemond looked at Lucerys in his arms.
And whether it was that kind of suffocating love, the overprotectiveness or the terror that her husband could be at times, she doesn't know, but it gave her a door to a close relationship with her son.
While other mothers complained that their children wanted nothing to do with them, Alys smiled and said that Lucerys was the most loving child and always wanted to be close to her to see the world.
Though the mischief, as she would mask to her husband, would be nothing more than secret sword training and the way she would learn all she could about dealing with dragons. If Aemond ever found out about all that, it would be all the more reason for a battle within the palace, but thanks to the war her husband had not noticed how his young son was learning all these new things.
But she herself supposes, despite all her inner prayers and deepest desires, that her husband would never be a normal father. Not after the incident.
Because one day, after a terrible storm, she, like Lucerys and every other servant and palace servant, gasped when she noticed how Aemond arrived on the grounds with his own older brother's head in one of his hands.
Aemond just grinned as if it were a puppy or a new toy for his son, and gently laid his brother's severed head on his lap (where Lucerys had stepped in terror at what he was seeing). And, as if he were not covered in blood and burns, he bent to carry Lucerys in his arms.... her husband would rip her son from her skirts, if she was more specific.Â
"Don't worry my son," she would manage to understand a little, for everything he said was in High Valyrian, "There are no more threats to you or your life. Not if I can help it. I'm sorry I didn't take enough care of you before, but it won't be that way any more. I will protect you even if I must shed more of our family's blood to keep you safe and sound."
And that was the only thing Alys remembers happening. Before she fainted from shock. She would watch as her husband, all covered in blood and dirt, would gently kiss his son's forehead, while Lucerys would writhe in his father's arms trying to get away from the bloody scene.
