inbox;

[onlycake]

● ○ ○ ○

○ ● ○ ○

○ ○ ● ○

○ ○ ○ ●

Rhaenyra Targaryen, 18

This is Rhaenyra. State your purpose.

CODE BY

Comments

[sunmon]

We're talking about political assassination. Of course it could be a trap.

[seaboard]

[ She goes quiet for awhile, and bearing all of herself to a stranger is not her preference, but in the way she has learned to come to terms with it - that going to help others, makes it much easier. ]

I had a brother, who meant the world to me.

[ She swallows. ]

When the doors were closed, he hurt me, and often. He said it would make me strong. But I felt so alone, so often. [ It's quiet, the conviction. The determination in that one idea. ] I never want anyone else to feel so alone.

[onlycake]

Alicent?

[ She trips on herself a little to ask and the way her voice climbs higher gives her away before she can collect herself. ]

I fear she's as powerless to sway them as you are.

[onlycake]

But... what if they hurt someone else while looking for me?

[ She still hasn't moved, hasn't started back towards the sound. It's killing her to think of something bad happening to her hosts because of her but the taste of the blade has not left her mind. ]

[onlycake]

[ Rhaenyra feels a hand close around her heart, holding it so its beating feels harder and louder in her ears. It isn't nothing, this gift of honestly. Rhaenyra believes her. ]

I am sorry.

[ She sounds it. And then, as if in answer, as if she owes her own truth in return: ]

He's... never done anything like this before. [ Cautious, like she's sharing state secrets. ] I did not know him before this realm. Not as he is now.

[nepotist]

Let us find out.

[seaboard]

I know... I know time can change from place to place?

[ She pauses trying to explain. ] My knight, from my homeland, comes from I think some months after when I was taken.

And that is to say nothing that... I am informed that I am ah... 'Medieval', according to some from other lands, which refers to those that come from 'the past' to them. In broad strokes, so to speak.

[Stops - do not blither, Gilia. ]

I mean to say, has much time perhaps passed between you? Has that been the cause of the... ire, perhaps, the difference?

[onlycake]

[ She isn't exactly the patient sort. But the use of the word 'us' pacifies her again. ]

I await your report.

[onlycake]

He had seen only two name days when I last knew him. His brother I knew not at all.

Whatever the cause of this ire is, he will not share it with me. Only curse and punish me for it.

[ She says it with curt finality. She has tried to stop wondering what churns Aegon's poisoned mind but it raises the heat in her to speak of it again. It's done her no good to dwell on it. ]

I am glad, at least, that you have your knight. [ But there's jealousy in her tone, perhaps. ]

[seaboard]

[ This sounds like typical noble families, ready to rip themselves to pieces, and the wounds are always more horrific.

No one could hurt, like family could - and when family had control over life and death... ]

I am too, especially that I may offer this. I know the Lady Mavis, and the Sirs Aristaeus and Murphy will never let anything happen to you.

But if you ever need it, you may call on my Knight. She is Sir Galamiła of Clan Racisława. Tell her that Second-Child, Queen of the Isle St Loe, She Who Sings the Ocean to Prosperity, has spoken for your safety. She will defend you with her life, by my honour.

You cannot miss her, nor mistake her for another trying to trick you. She is seven foot tall, a scar over one eye, and has a pair of great antlers from her brow. If she does not have them out and you are unsure, ask to see them, then she really will know you have spoken to me.

voice (backdated to early july);

[ligature]

Hey.

Um. Am I interrupting anything?

[his touch on her mind is hesitant and cautious, as he has been ever since the duchess's party.]

[onlycake]

Oh, Will. It's you.

[ There's a noticeable stumble in her voice, but she steadies it quickly. She doesn't want to give away the way her heartbeat skips. ]

No, not at all. Is aught amiss?

[ligature]

Is--no, no. Everything's fine.

[the rush of heat to his face makes him feel boyishly clumsy; god, he has no call to be feeling like this. acting like this.

time to get it together.] I just wanted to tell you I've found a place outside the boarding house, down by the river.

[onlycake]

[ Rhaenyra cannot help the selfish little stumble in her mind - what about me? - when she realizes his intent to move to his own quarters like so many others have. Still staying in the room beside his, she feels suddenly lonely.

It takes her a lingering second to collect herself. ]

That... sounds perfect for you. I've always imagined you at home in just such a place.

[ Because it's true, and the affection that image has always sparked in her kindles a real happiness for him now. ]

Have the arrangements already been made?

[onlycake]

[ Never let anything happen to her... Only it had happened, hadn't it? The smallest window, the confluence of all the wrong coincidences. It hadn't been their fault they had lives to live that did not involve her. They are not swore to her. She has no one here who is.

But it is a surprising offer. Enough that Rhaenyra accepts it in silence, respectfully. She does not know if she trusts this woman and her offer of aid. But trusting strangers here has been good for her, perhaps.

It was not strangers who have wounded her here. ]

That is... generous of you. [ And a woman that is a knight, well. Rhaenyra cannot say she isn't curious. Supremely. ] She sounds formidable. And as you say, unmistakable.

Another promised to come at my greatest need. He... did not succeed.

[seaboard]

... Do you forgive them for it?

[ She remember how Gala would want to apologize, when Gilia was covering from what her brother had done - as if she could have stopped what she was not privy too.

That she knew, Gala was glad to break her brother's legs, when the time came.

To Gilia's mind, it was never her knight's fault. No, it was the world that let her brother think that cruelty was ever allowed, that her family were oblivious to it. ]

[ligature]

Yeah, more or less, [he answers her distractedly, but he can hear the hitch in her voice, and it makes him feel like he's already abandoned her, even while knowing why he reached out to her in the first place.

a fraught moment of hesitation; then, he clears his throat and says,]

Look, um. It's nothing compared to what you're used to, but it does have a loft. Wouldn't take much work at all to put in a second bed up there, a wardrobe--whatever you want, really, [said with some sheepish chagrin,] as long as I can haul it up the stairs.

[another beat, before he adds,] You don't have to. I mean, I'd like for you to, but--christ, let me start again.

[don't let him start again, Rhaenyra.]

[onlycake]

[ The heaviness in her heart flies away like a bird when she realizes what it is he's actually attempting to say. He's begun badly, it seems, but she understands his intent and she feels like she's soaring.

He'd considered her. Planned for her. Alicent had been the only one here to do the same for her when she'd invited Rhaenyra to stay in the house the rest of her family had found for themselves. But that had been short-lived, had left her in the situation she's in now.

That Will had rescued her from. And he's offering to do so again. ]

You mean to give me a place to stay? A... home? With you?

[ It's as though she needs to hear him say it, properly. Yet her curiosity cannot help her from asking: ]

But what is a 'loft'?

[ligature]

Yeah. Yeah, if you want it, it's yours. [something twists in his heart at what hope does to her voice. it's so easy for her pain and despair to become his pain and despair, even without seeing her in front of him. the telepathic connection between their minds does so much of the heavy lifting for his weird empathy condition; all he has left to do is endure the onslaught of feeling that follows.

it's a sensory overload, of a sort, but it's not all bad. her relief and joy warm him from the inside out, like a woodstove in winter. he's begun to smile without realizing he's doing it.]

Uh. It's, [a dry laugh of realization, because this is what started them down this path months ago, wasn't it,] it's sort of like an attic, actually. But it's not entirely closed off from the main body of the house.

...Honestly, you can have the bedroom on the ground floor if you want it instead, I just thought you might, I don't know, [a beat, where he scratches his day-old stubble, awkward,] want some privacy, maybe.

[onlycake]

[ Even though she's been smiling to herself in the privacy of the boarding house room she's been staying in, her face falls comically at the mention of an attic. The place she's imagining for Will (with limited references, surely) doesn't have nearly the space for what Aegon had shut her up in and for a terrible moment she pictures a closet at the top of a flight of rickety stairs.

Yet as soon as he walks the offer back, changes it in the slightest, Rhaenyra doesn't have the heart to force that on him, the rearranging of his space. She doesn't want to reject such a gift. ]

No, no. I... would feel safer up above. Though I'm not sure I'm imagining it all correctly.

Are you... will we be leaving soon?

[ligature]

We could go now, if you want. I've already moved in my things and talked to Nancy. [Nancy Wheeler, his roommate; whatever reservations he has about leaving her alone in the boarding house, he feels confident enough in her ability to protect herself. he has no such confidence about Rhaenyra--not through any fault of her own, but after what Aegon and Aemond did to her--

he takes a breath, a little hesitant.] You're sure about this? [pause.] Alicent won't give you trouble about it?

[about moving in with a strange man. with him.]

idk where in the timeline, maybe backdated?? just bear with me.

[rezni]

Rhaenyra, are you much of a hunter?