Chapter Text
He had lead an eventful life. One filled with astonishing highs and the lowest of lows. Looking back Aegon can admit that he, probably, wasn't the best person to have become King of Westeros. He had known so from the start but he had forgotten somewhere along the line.
Sure the power was enthralling, the drink always flowed and the quality of the whores vastly improved from the ones he bought with coin when he was but just a prince to the ones who gave themselves to him, for free, when he had a crown on his head. One of his biggest regrets was not taking full advantage of them before Rook's Rest.
Don't get him wrong, he could still get it up but by the time the whores had stopped crying in disgust over the burns which littered his once pristine body, the mood was ruined.
Aegon was in a melancholy mood, thinking over all those who were lost. Yes even the ones by his own hand. Helaena...Jaehaerys...Maelor. God's even the fucking bore that was his younger brother. He could admit it this time that he missed the insufferable twat.
Not Otto though.
Otto was a cunt.
Everyone died because Otto could not just be fucking happy being the Hand of the King. A job he was appalling at. God's sake even Criston was better then him. Criston. Cole. He wasn't even a lord. No wonder Aegon's short lived reign went to shit if those were the people he had surrounding him.
'Who wants power anyway?!' Aegon wondered as he began to choke on his own blood. It's fucking boring. You can't do what you want to do, the hours are long and there is just so much responsibility and people to placate and think about. It is a thankless job with no rewards bar a shiny crown and the ability to have people executed because you tripped on a stair going into the Great Hall. People either take your word as law (like Cole) or just ignore you completely and do whatever they feel like, such as burning down the Riverlands because someone saw someone who had dark, curly hair, much like someones nephew, the same nephew who your dragon decided to made into supper (fucking Aemond).
It was all Aemond's fault. Aegon knew he was wrong from the first moment he saw the babe. He had tried to tell his mother but oh no, gods forbid she heard a bad word against her most precious son.
However the fact remains despite his half-wit of a brother - he missed his family. He missed them all. He missed the time before he became King and before death and destruction fell upon House Targaryen.
King Aegon II Targaryen's last thoughts are that life is really put into perspective when you die choking on your own blood, after tucking into a few cups of wine, in a puddle of your own urine.
It really brings you down a peg or two.
He snorted himself awake, lost in a haze of sleep and intoxication. Squinting against the sun streaming into the room, the first thing he noticed was the noise. Aegon lifted his head from the table he had fallen asleep on with a groan, drunkenly wiping away the spit which had fallen from his mouth and ran down his cheek. His brain took an extraordinarily long time to connect with his eyes. His last memory was of choking to death, knowing full well that absolute bastard Corlys had something to do with it.
Therefore he could not be blamed for the confusion in his drunken mind when he awoke in a tavern. He shrugged his shoulders to himself, putting it down to a drunken nightmare even though he cannot recall ever being able to partake in the Street of Silk's hospitality since he was crowned. Drunken Aegon must have somehow managed to get past all the guards.
He smirked to himself as he raised his cup to his mouth. Drunk Aegon was always the smartest Aegon, despite everybody he had ever met arguing the opposite, he thought to himself as he took a gulp of his cup.
And promptly spat it back out.
Visions of his death floated in his head. The final taste on his lips before blood and bile replaced it, the stone floor digging into his back as he gasped for a breath that never came.
His sister's side had done a lot to him during the war however this? This might be the biggest indignity his whore sister had inflicted upon him.
Ruining his cups.
He tried again with the same result.
Unwilling to concede defeat, he tried for a third time. Only this time he sprayed the table not because of a sudden and all together tragic aversion to anything fun in the form of a cup but because Aemond Targaryen had just walked through the tavern door.
His long dead, very, very dead brother.
At first Aegon couldn't help smiling. He had very much missed his brother and his truly hideous attempts to move about Kings Landing unnoticed. For a man who thought himself to be so smart, he had not ever considered that the one massively noticeable adorning across his face was actually very noticeable to everyone who saw him, even with his hood up.
There weren't many in the land who wore a leather eye patch after all. Not one person walked past a hooded Aemond and wondered 'Who is that?'. He fooled nobody.
They all knew it was him, they just chose to say nothing as it was equally known that Aemond, the prince with an eye patch, was also the prince who was not an emotionally stable person.
Case in point, the smile Aegon adorned was quickly wiped from his face as his brother stormed across the tavern, shoving people out of his way as he made his way towards him, ire written across his face. Aegon tired to placate his, honestly, completely irrational sibling as the taller man grabbed him by the front of his cloak and pulled him from his seat, not even giving him the change to regain his footing as he was dragged across the, frankly disgusting, tavern floor.
Aegon lowered his eyes down and away from the laughing patrons of the bar, the door finally blocking them from sight as they left the building.
With what seemed like no effort Aemond pulled Aegon up to his feet. Aegon had always wondered how someone like Aemond, who looked like a rake in a wig with a penchant for black leather, was so strong. It was unnatural and was just another reason as to why Aegon theorised that his mother had made a deal with some unscrupulous, magic people from Dorne when she was heavy with his brother.
Aegon legs begin to buckle from beneath him. At first he thought it was a return of his injuries sustained during the war. The burns and broken bones had left him bedridden in agony. Not only has his legs become weak over time, to his mortification he had very much walked like Larys Strong once he was recuperated. The day Larys offered him one of his sticks was the day Aegon nearly beat him to death with said stick.
Once he composed himself he realised it wasn't a return of an injury. His legs were weak because he was drunk. Either way it ended with him clinging onto his brother, who had THAT look on his face. The look which said Aegon was worst then dirt but he would tolerate him because Alicent would be unhappy with her golden child if he were to 'accidently' throw Aegon off of a very high cliff.
Fuck he had missed that look, Aegon thought as he gave no thought to his own personal safety and threw himself at his brother, tightly wrapping his arms around the rock still body. Aemond made no move to reciprocate the gesture. Infact he was actively trying to tear himself away from Aegon.
He didn't mind. He was too happy to care that his own brother was a hair away from beating him to death with his own boot. Tears sprang into Aegon's eyes as he clung onto the other man, the scent of dragon and leather calling him home.
"What. Are. You. Doing!?" Aemond seethed as he tried to bat Aegons hands away from him.
"Nothing." Aegon whispered, even as he tightened his arms a notch closer. With a defeated sigh Aemond gave up trying to remove his brother from his personal space, accepting Aegon was going to cling to him until he was done.
Aegon couldn't hold in his hitching breaths.
"Are you weeping!?" Aemond demanded, his already minimal patience beginning to wear thin.
"....no"
Aemond cursed under his breath. "Helaena had birthed you twins. Stop being an embarrassment and, for once in your life, be a husband and pretend that you have not ruined her life."
Aegon suddenly detached himself from Aemond, holding him at arms length.
"Twins....did you say twins!?"
Aemond did not signify him with a response, exhaling heavily from his nose as he wiped down his cloak, Aegon staggering away from him. Taking a look around Kings Landing, he settled to sit on the edge of a fountain, running his hands through his hair.
He did not believe in the God's or the Seven. It was a load of nonsense peddled to the gullible masses who were fools to believe the God's would ever care about what they did, how they acted or who they had sex with. However he could not consider this to be anything else but a sign.
A chance to make sure what came to pass before did not come to pass again.
No war. No death. No chance of Aegon dying alone, hated and isolated with a half burnt prick in a puddle of his own urine.
He would make everything better. However he could not begin to circumvent his own death while he was still drunk.
He turned towards his brother. "I need to be clear minded. Just get me some water-"
With no hesitation Aemond walked towards him and pushed him into the sparkling fountain water below. Aegon supposed that, even if it was not exactly what he had meant, it would do the trick. Even if Aemond held his head under the water a little bit longer than was comfortable. He did not look too much into it. Violence was how Aemond showed affection to the people he loved. Because he was cursed from birth and was just very, very, inept. He would have blamed the whole situation with his eye for it however Aemond was inept well before that.
Breaching the surface, Aegon gasped in air as his lungs burned, feeling both light-headed and clear-headed at the same time.
Saying nothing to his smirking brother Aegon hefted himself from the fountain, clothes dripping with water. With a quick shake of his head he took off in a sprint towards the castle with a cheer. He has not been able to run after Rook's Rest. He had forgotten how if felt to feel the wind in his hair. He had not even been able feel it anymore with Sunfyre which had broken his heart.
He fell through the door to Helaena's apartments, trying to quell the pain in his side which started not long after his impromptu sprint through the city. His vision blurred as he struggled to get air into his lungs. Hands on his knees, he gasped until he could see straight and he did not think he was about to fall face first onto the ground.
It took him an embarrassing amount of time to recover but when he did he rose his head to look towards the bed. Towards his sister. His wife.
There was no sign of the husk of a person his sister had been before she had ended her suffering. A woman destroyed by grief and guilt. His heart was beating in his chest with the gentle, amused smile she gave him as she cradled one of her newborn children to her chest.
Helaena was weird but, if he were honest, she was one of the people he had missed the most.
His mother walked around the other side of the bed, cradling the other swaddled child in her arms. Unlike Helaena, she did not look amused nor happy to see him.
"Aegon." She said with no emotion other then the eternal note of disappointment that she always held when she addressed her eldest son.
"Mother." Aegon was not ready to unpack his feelings towards his mother. She may have stepped in front of a dragon for him once upon a time however she was also the same person who loved her other son far more and made no attempt to hide it. She cursed him the day Aemond died, screaming and questioning why it was not him to have died instead.
She simply loved Aemond more then she did Aegon. A man who had not only murdered his own nephew and started a war but who had also scorched most of the Riverlands, condemning men, women and children to a painful death. Yet even after all that, Aegon was still the disappointment.
Aegon walked towards her, arms held out to relieve her of the child. When she flinched, arms tightening around the babe, Aegon's irritation flared.
"My child, mother."
Alicent hesitated but, under Aegons glare and Helaena's pleas, she gently placed the child into his arms. He gazed down at his son, cursing himself for missing all this the first time around. In hindsight that night in the brothel was not worth it, even if it was him and two women who were keen to please.
"Leave us" he whispered to his mother as he walked towards Helaena, never taking his eyes off of Jaehaerys.
Emotion welled up from within him. The last time he had seen his son was a dead body, mutilated in revenge for another taken son. Pressing a gentle kiss to his head, he turned to Helaena.
He would not let them suffer for the mistakes of others. But he could not do it alone and he knew, that, somehow, Helaena was the only person he could trust in this pit of a castle.
"Have I got a tale for you wife"