Summary: You find a missing cat that belongs to a certain Targaryen. During the time which takes you to find the owner, Vhagar becomes attached to you, so now Aemond must deal with sharing her with you.
a/n: I had this in my drafts waiting for Aemond to come back in the show and him down and his dragon flying away was perfect for this!
The first time you saw Vhagar, she was a lump of storm clouds curled against the concrete base of your building, so still you almost mistook her for a discarded sweater. It was late autumn, that particular gray hour when the sun gives up and the streetlights haven’t quite decided to take over, and you were fumbling for your keys with cold-stiff fingers when the lump moved.
Not a sweater. A cat. A massive, ancient-looking cat the color of woodsmoke and iron, with a face like a disappointed dowager countess who had seen empires rise and fall. Her fur was thick and slightly ruffled, the way old velvet gets when it’s been stored wrong, and she was watching you with enormous yellow-green eyes that seemed to hold entire centuries in their depths.
“Hello,” you said, because you were the kind of person who talked to animals automatically, even when they looked at you like that.
The cat opened her mouth and yowled.
It wasn’t a meow. It wasn’t even a proper cat sound. It was a declaration, a demand, a rusty hinge of a noise that seemed to ask where you had been and why you hadn’t brought tribute. She stood up, stretched with the deliberate slowness of a creature that had never needed to hurry for anyone, and padded directly toward you.
“Do you belong to someone here?” you asked, looking at the entrance to your apartment building. The cat wound herself around your ankles with surprising force for something so elderly, nearly knocking you off balance. Her fur was cold from the outside air, and when you bent down to touch her, you felt the frail architecture of age beneath the thick coat, shoulder blades too prominent, a spine like a string of beads.
She had a collar. Good leather, emerald green, with what looked like real gold hardware. But there was no tag. No phone number. No name.
“Someone’s looking for you,” you murmured, scratching behind one ragged ear. The cat closed her eyes and leaned into your hand with the air of someone accepting their due. “Come on, then. Let’s get you inside.”
You opened the door and she walked in ahead of you like she owned the place, which was probably how she walked into every room she’d ever entered. The lobby was empty. You expected her to head for one of the apartment doors on the ground floor, to indicate somehow where she lived, but instead she sat down in the exact center of the lobby and began grooming her flank with the meticulous disdain of someone who had been terribly inconvenienced.
“Right,” you said. “Not helpful.”
You waited. The cat groomed. The elevator went up and came back down empty. Someone’s mail was sticking out of box 3B. The radiators clanked.
“Okay,” you said finally. “I have to go up. If you’re still here tomorrow, we’ll figure something out.”
She paused mid-lick to give you a look that said she had never been dismissed in her life and wasn’t about to start now.
She was still there when you got back from work the next day. Not in the lobby, outside again, on the same patch of concrete, curled into the exact same shape as if she’d never moved. The November dark had settled in thick and cold, her fur was beaded with the beginnings of frost, it made your chest clench.
“Absolutely not,” you told her, scooping her up before you could think better of it. She was heavier than she looked, a dense warm weight in your arms, and she made a sound like a creaking door as you carried her inside. “You’re coming upstairs. You’re eating something. We’re figuring out who you belong to.”
She didn’t struggle. She settled against your shoulder like she’d been doing this for a thousand years, her purr starting up low and rough like a motor that hadn’t been run in a while. Her claws kneaded gently into your coat, catching on the wool.
Your apartment was small. One bedroom, a galley kitchen, a living room that doubled as a dining room that doubled as an office. The cat surveyed it from the threshold with an expression you could only describe as politely appalled.
“It’s not much,” you said defensively, setting her down. “But it’s warm.”
She sniffed the baseboard. She investigated the corner where the radiator met the wall. She walked into the kitchen and sat down in front of the refrigerator with the clear expectation that it would open for her.
“What do you even eat?” you muttered, opening the fridge and scanning your meager contents. You didn’t have cat food. You didn’t have anything that seemed cat-appropriate. But you did have milk, and you did have a package of those cheap hot dogs from a supermarket.
“This is probably terrible for you,” you said, boiling one anyway and cutting it into small pieces, pouring a bowl of milk. “But you look like you’ve survived worse.”
She ate like she’d never seen food before. She drank the milk in laps. She looked up at you with a milk-white mustache on her gray muzzle and made a sound that resembled approval.
“You’re welcome,” you said, and sat down on the floor beside her.
You put up posters in the neighborhood: FOUND CAT, with a photo that didn’t do her justice and your phone number at the bottom. You posted in the local lost pet groups. You took her to a vet to check for a microchip, but there was nothing, which the vet found strange given the obvious quality of her collar.
“This is full-grain Italian leather,” the vet said, turning the collar over in her hands. “And the hardware is eighteen-karat gold plated. Someone spent a lot of money on this cat.”
“But no tag,” you said.
“But no tag,” the vet agreed. “Some people just assume their animals will never get out. Especially indoor cats. How’s she been eating?”
“Everything,” you said. “Anything. I gave her the crusts from my grilled cheese yesterday and she acted like it was a five-star meal.”
The vet laughed. “At her age, that’s a good sign. She’s healthy, just old. Very old. Probably fifteen, maybe older. Keep doing what you’re doing.”
So you did. You bought proper cat food eventually, the decent mid-range kind from the grocery store, and she ate it with the same enthusiasm she’d shown for the hot dogs and the milk and the leftover tuna salad. She slept on your bed every night. She sat in the window and watched the street below. You started calling her Lady, for lack of anything better, she ignored it with the same regal indifference she showed to everything else.
“You’re someone’s, aren’t you?” you said one evening, scratching under her chin while she purred like a broken generator. “Someone filthy rich.”
She closed her eyes and leaned into your hand, offering no answers.
You found the flyer on a Tuesday morning in early December, taped to a lamppost two blocks from your work office. The paper was thick and slightly glossy, the kind of paper that cost money, and the photo printed on it was clearly professional, the same gray cat, the same yellow-green eyes, but photographed against a dark background with studio lighting that made her look like a painting.
MISSING: VHAGAR, the flyer read. $7,000 REWARD FOR SAFE RETURN.
There was a phone number. That was all. No name. Just the cat’s name, the reward, and a number.
Vhagar. You tested the name in your mouth as you walked home, the flyer clutched in your cold hand. It sounded ancient. Mythological. Exactly the kind of name someone would give a cat who wore eighteen-karat gold on her collar and had professional photographs taken of her.
“Your name is Vhagar,” you told the cat when you got home. She was sprawled across your pillow in a pose of magnificent indolence, one paw draped over her eyes. At the sound of the name, her tail twitched. “That’s you, isn’t it? Vhagar.”
She lifted her head and looked at you, and for the first time since you’d found her, she let out a proper meow, short and declarative, as if to say finally, you’ve figured it out.
You sat down on the edge of your bed. Seven thousand dollars. That was two months of rent. That was the dental work you’d been putting off. That was breathing room, actual breathing room, the kind you hadn’t had since you’d moved to this city with its brutal rents and its casual cruelties and its complete indifference to whether you sank or swam.
But it wasn’t the money that made you pull out your phone. It was the way she’d been shivering on the concrete. The way someone had loved her enough to buy her that collar and take those photos and offer seven thousand dollars no questions asked, but not enough to put a tag on her. Not enough to think she might ever leave.
You typed the number into your phone before you could talk yourself out of it.
He answered on the second ring.
“Yes.”
Not hello. Not who is this. Just yes, flat and dry as old paper, a voice that expected the world to get to the point and not waste his time.
“Hi,” you said, suddenly aware that you hadn’t planned what to say. “I’m calling about the cat. The flyer. Vhagar. I think I have her.”
A pause. Just long enough to make you check if the call had dropped.
“Proof,” the voice said. “Send me proof.”
“What kind of...“
“A video that shows she’s alive and unharmed and actually in your possession.”
The demand was clipped, almost cold, and you felt a spike of irritation. You were doing him a favor. You could have kept the cat. You could have ignored the flyer entirely. But you swallowed your pride because seven thousand dollars was seven thousand dollars, and you’d already decided.
“Do you have Whatsapp or something with this number?” you asked, “I’ll send a video.”
He said yes and hung up without saying goodbye.
“Charming,” you muttered to the cat. Vhagar yawned, showing a pink mouth.
You recorded a thirty-second video of Vhagar on your bed, demonstrating that she was indeed alive and unharmed and being gently scratched behind the ears by someone who was not a cat thief. You sent it to the number. Thirty seconds later, your phone buzzed.
That’s her. Where can we meet?
You looked up the name attached to the number, of course. You weren’t stupid. You were about to meet a stranger from the internet to return a cat worth seven thousand dollars, and you wanted to know what you were walking into.
His name was Aemond Targaryen. The social media profile that came up was locked down tight: private, no profile picture, just the name and a cover photo of what looked like a dragon from some fantasy series. You scrolled anyway, finding nothing, until you thought to try LinkedIn.
His LinkedIn profile was not private.
The photo hit you first: a man in his twenties, maybe, with sharp cheekbones and jawlines like cut glass and hair so pale it was almost silver, pulled back from his face. He was wearing a dark suit and looking slightly to the left of the camera with an expression of controlled impatience, like he’d been forced to sit for the photograph and was counting the seconds until he could leave.
Below the photo was a wall of text. Degrees. Certifications. Projects. Internships at companies you’d seen on the news. A master’s degree. A bachelor’s from some private university in Oldtown. Fluent in four languages. Currently serving as Vice President of Strategic Operations at Targaryen Industries, which a quick search revealed to be a multinational conglomerate dealing in everything from real estate to renewable energy to defense contracting.
Old money. Very, very old money. The kind of money that had its own Wikipedia page and several unflattering investigative journalism pieces.
“You belong to him?” you asked Vhagar, who had climbed onto your laptop keyboard and was slowly erasing several paragraphs of an email you’d been drafting. “You belong to a billionaire’s son with a dragon fixation and cheekbones that could cut glass?”
Vhagar purred smugly and stepped on the delete key.
The meeting place was outside a high-rise in city center that looked like it had been designed by someone who hated poor people. All black glass and angular steel, a lobby visible through the ground-floor windows that contained more marble than the average museum. A doorman in a uniform stood at attention by the revolving doors.
Aemond Targaryen was waiting on the sidewalk.
He looked exactly like his LinkedIn photo and nothing like it at all. The photo had captured his bone structure but missed everything else: the way he held himself like a blade, the way his one visible eye tracked movement with unsettling precision, the way the left side of his face bore a long, pale scar that cut through his eyebrow and disappeared into his hairline. He was wearing a long black coat that probably cost as much as the cat’s reward, and he was looking at the cat carrier in your hands with an expression you couldn’t quite read.
“Vhagar,” he said, and his voice was different now, still dry, still clipped, but with something underneath it that you recognized. You’d made that sound yourself, sometimes, when you came home to find Lady waiting for you on the pillow. Relief, maybe. Or something close to it.
“She’s fine,” you said, setting the carrier down. “She’s been eating well. Sleeping a lot. She’s very…opinionated.”
He crouched down, actually crouched, in his thousand-dollar coat on the sidewalk, and opened the carrier door. Vhagar emerged with the slow dignity of a dowager queen descending from her carriage, and when she saw him, she made a sound that was almost a chirp. She headbutted his hand. She allowed him to pick her up, tucking her massive gray body against his chest like she’d been doing it all her life. Which, you supposed, she had.
“Where did you find her?” he asked, not looking at you. His attention was entirely on the cat, his long fingers stroking through her fur with a gentleness that seemed at odds with everything else about him.
“Outside my building. She was sleeping on the concrete.”
His jaw tightened. “How long?”
“About three weeks ago.”
He didn’t say anything. His hand stilled on Vhagar’s back. Then he pulled out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, and your own phone buzzed in your pocket.
“The reward,” he said. “Thank you for returning her.”
You checked your banking app. Seven thousand dollars, transferred and pending.
“Right,” you said. “Well. Take care of her. And maybe…put a tag on her collar next time.”
He looked at you then. Actually looked at you, his single visible eye, the other was covered by a swoop of hair but seemed to be a glass prosthetic, you weren’t sure, fixing on your face with an intensity that made you want to step backward. His eye was violet. A pale, impossible shade of purple that you had assumed was contacts until you were standing three feet away from him and could see the way the light hit it.
“She has never run away before,” he said, and it sounded almost like an accusation. As if you had somehow lured his ancient cat away from her penthouse and convinced her to live on hot dogs and milk.
“Well,” you said again, because his stare was unnerving, “she’s home now.”
He didn’t thank you again. He turned and walked into the building, Vhagar draped over his shoulder like a fur stole, the doorman holding the door for him with a murmured “Mr. Targaryen” that you caught on the wind.
You stood on the sidewalk for a moment longer, the December cold seeping through your coat, and then you went home.
You assumed that was the end of it. You had your money, he had his cat, and your worlds had brushed against each other for exactly long enough to complete a transaction. You unfollowed the lost pet groups. You washed Vhagar’s fur off your pillowcases. You tried to ignore the way your apartment felt quieter now, emptier, the absence of her rumbling purr leaving a gap in the dark that you hadn’t expected to miss.
Four days later, your phone buzzed with a message from an unsaved number.
What did you do to my cat?
You stared at the screen. You had not saved his number but you had not deleted the chat.
Sorry?, you typed back.
The response came immediately. Vhagar. She won’t eat. She refuses her food. What were you feeding her?
You tried to remember. Milk? Boiled sausages? Some tuna. The vet said she was healthy.
The typing indicator appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Then your phone started ringing.
“Milk,” Aemond Targaryen said when you answered, his voice flat with barely contained outrage. “You fed a fifteen-year-old purebred Persian cat milk and boiled sausages?”
“She liked them,” you said defensively. “She ate them right up. What’s the problem?”
“The problem,” he said, “is that Vhagar’s normal diet consists of sustainably sourced Beluga caviar, free-range quail eggs, and a fish broth reduction that my family’s private chef prepares fresh every three days. She has never eaten processed meat in her life. She has certainly never consumed grocery store milk. And now she is sitting in front of her bowl looking at me as if I have personally betrayed her by serving her the same food she has happily eaten for fifteen years.”
You sat down on your bed. “She ate Beluga caviar? Like, the stuff that costs hundreds of dollars an ounce?”
“That’s not the point.”
“It kind of feels like the point.”
He made a sound of pure frustration, not quite a growl, not quite a sigh. “The point is that she’s refusing to eat. She’s refusing to eat and she’s refusing to come when I call her and she spent the entire morning glaring at me from the top of her custom-built cat tower, which, I might add, has three separate levels and a water feature.”
You tried to picture Vhagar, your Lady, who had slept on a spare pillow and eaten crusts off your plate, in a climate-controlled cat tower with a water feature. The image wouldn’t resolve.
“Have you tried…playing with her?” you asked.
“She doesn’t play,” Aemond said, as if you’d suggested she do her own taxes. “I throw her the toy mouse from Hermès and she demolishes it. That’s not playing. That’s destruction.”
“What about cardboard boxes?”
Silence. Long, profound silence, broken only by the faint sound of Vhagar yowling in the background.
“Cardboard boxes,” he repeated, his voice dangerously quiet.
“Yeah. You know. The things stuff gets shipped in? Cats love them. She went absolutely feral for the box my Amazon order came in. I put an old towel in it and she slept there for three days.”
“You want me,” Aemond Targaryen said, each word precise and clipped, “to give a member of my family, a cat who has been passed down through three generations, who has her own room in our estate, who has been photographed for Architectural Digest, a cardboard box?”
“I mean, it can’t hurt?”
Another long pause. The background yowling grew louder.
“This is absurd,” he said, and hung up.
The cardboard box apparently worked, because two days later he messaged you again. Not a call this time, a text, long and oddly formal, like a business proposal that had been written through gritted teeth.
Vhagar has been eating again. The box was…effective. However, she seems to have developed an attachment to your presence during her time away. She has been restless. The veterinarian suggested she may benefit from continued exposure to you as a source of environmental enrichment, which is a phrase I cannot believe I am typing. I am prepared to offer you a weekly retainer to visit and spend time with her. The compensation would be commensurate with your trouble.
Attached was a number that made your eyes water.
You read the message three times. You thought about the seven thousand dollars already sitting in your savings account. You thought about the way Vhagar had looked at you when you handed her over, that yellow-green stare that had seemed to say this isn’t over. You thought about Aemond Targaryen’s voice on the phone, dry and furious and somehow, despite everything, deeply concerned about a fifteen-year-old cat who missed you.
“This is insane,” you said to your empty apartment.
But you typed back: When do I start?
The first visit was awkward. Aemond’s apartment, if you could call a space that occupied nearly an entire floor of a high-rise an apartment, was a cathedral of minimalist wealth, all pale wood and pale stone and pale furniture that looked like it had never been sat on. Vhagar greeted you at the door with a yowl that seemed to say finally, you’ve arrived, and immediately led you to her custom cat tower, which was indeed three stories tall and featured a tiny chandelier.
“She’s been waiting by the door since this morning,” Aemond said. He was standing in the doorway of what appeared to be a library, dressed in a dark sweater that did nothing to soften the angles of his face. “I don’t understand why.”
“She’s a cat,” you said, sitting cross-legged on the heated marble floor while Vhagar climbed into your lap. “They’re mysterious.”
“She’s never sat in anyone’s lap but mine. And my mother’s. And occasionally my sister’s, though that ended badly.”
“What happened?”
“My sister is allergic. She found out when Vhagar sat on her face.”
You laughed. You couldn’t help it. Aemond was watching you with an expression that wasn’t quite a smile but wasn’t not one either, a slight softening around his mouth, a tilt to his head that made him look more like a person.
“Tea?” he asked, and it sounded almost reluctant, like the offer had escaped without his permission.
“Sure,” you said. “Tea would be great.”
Every Saturday, you took the train and spent the afternoon in Aemond Targaryen’s penthouse, ostensibly to entertain a cat who spent most of her time ignoring you in favor of her cardboard box. But Aemond was always there, hovering, appearing with cups of tea that grew progressively more elaborate, then plates of food that started as simple snacks and evolved into full meals.
“You said you’ve been eating bread and cheese for dinner,” he said one evening, setting a plate of something that looked like it belonged in a Michelin-starred restaurant on the coffee table in front of you. “That’s not nutritious.”
“I’m aware,” you said, but you ate it anyway, and it was the best thing you’d ever tasted.
He started finding reasons to extend your visits. A new toy for Vhagar to try. A documentary about Chartreux cats he thought you should watch. An outing to a cat café that he claimed was for research purposes but that mostly involved him standing in the corner looking deeply uncomfortable while cats climbed all over you.
“You’re not a cat person,” you observed, as a calico tried to scale his leg.
“I’m a Vhagar person,” he corrected, gently removing the calico and placing it on the floor. “There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“I’m beginning to think there might be,” he said, and then he turned away before you could ask what he meant.
Winter turned into spring. Your Saturday visits turned into Saturday visits plus occasional Wednesday dinners plus a standing invitation to a Sunday morning walk in a park, which Aemond claimed was for Vhagar’s benefit even though Vhagar never actually walked. He texted you articles about cat behavior and screenshots of Vhagar doing mundane things with captions like She sat in the box again. I don’t understand and The chef wants to know if she can have the sausage recipe.
“There’s no recipe,” you told him. “You boil them.”
“I told him that. He didn’t believe me.”
He started asking about your life. Your job. Your family. The things you cared about and the things you were afraid of and the things you wanted but had never let yourself reach for. He listened carefully, his pale eye fixed on your face, his sharp features softening in increments so small you almost didn’t notice them until one day you looked at him and realized you couldn’t remember why you’d ever found him cold.
Vhagar, for her part, seemed entirely unimpressed with the whole arrangement. She spent most of your visits asleep in her cardboard box, a new one now, because Aemond had his assistant procure them weekly, and only occasionally deigned to acknowledge your presence with a slow blink or a rumbling purr.
“She likes you,” Aemond said one evening, watching the cat knead her claws into an old towel.
“She tolerates me.”
“No.” He shook his head, his gaze still fixed on Vhagar. “She likes you. She’s particular. She doesn’t tolerate anyone she doesn’t like. She bit my brother once. Drew blood.”
“What did your brother do?”
“Breathed too loudly, I think.”
You laughed, Aemond glanced at you, and the expression on his face was something you’d never seen before, open, almost unguarded, his mouth curved into the ghost of a smile that transformed his severe features into startlingly beautiful.
“I’m glad you found her,” he said quietly. “The cat. I’m glad you found her.”
“Me too,” you said, and you weren’t entirely sure you were talking about the cat anymore.
Vhagar yawned, stretched, and went back to sleep, indifferent to everything but the warmth of the room and the comfort of her box.
You learned the layout of his penthouse the way you'd once learned the streets of your neighborhood, by heart, by instinct, by the slow accretion of familiarity that turns the unfamiliar into home.
You learned other things, too. That Aemond took his coffee black but would drink tea if you made it. That he read three books a month and annotated them in a spidery, elegant script. That he had a brother he never mentioned and a sister he mentioned only in passing and a mother who called him every Sunday at precisely eleven in the morning, which he answered without fail even if he was in the middle of a sentence. That his left eye, the one always covered, the one the scar bisected, was a wound he carried with him everywhere, a quiet grief he never spoke about directly but that shaped the way he moved through rooms, always keeping his right side to the door.
You learned about Alys by accident.
It was a Saturday in late March, the kind of day that pretends to be spring but still bites with winter's teeth, and you had arrived at the penthouse to find Aemond already pulling on his coat.
"Something's come up," he said, and his voice had that clipped quality it got when he was trying not to show frustration. "I have to go out of town. I'll be back Monday."
"Okay," you said, hanging your own coat on the hook he'd cleared for you weeks ago. "Do you want me to come back then, or..."
"No." He paused, his hands stilling on his scarf. "I was hoping you could stay with Vhagar. She gets…unsettled when I'm gone too long."
The last time he'd gone out of town, a business trip to Westerlands, three days, he'd called you twice a day with updates on Vhagar's mood and appetite. You hadn't minded. The money was good, and honestly, you'd grown fond of the old cat's cranky companionship.
"Sure," you said. "Where are you going?"
"Riverlands."
You waited for elaboration. None came.
"That's…specific."
He didn't meet your eyes. "Alys lives there. She doesn't like the city."
The name landed in your chest like a stone hurled. Alys. A woman's name, spoken with a familiarity that suggested it had been in his mouth many times before. You realized, with a strange hollow feeling, that he'd never mentioned her. Not once. In all those afternoons and evenings and Sunday walks, he'd never said a word about a girlfriend waiting for him in some small town hours away.
"I didn't know you were seeing someone," you said, and you were proud of how neutral your voice came out.
"It's complicated." He adjusted his scarf, still not looking at you. "We've been together for a while. She prefers her independence. I prefer…" He trailed off, a muscle jumping in his jaw. "It works."
"Right," you said. "Well. Go. Vhagar and I will be fine."
He finally looked at you then, something unreadable flickering across his features. "Thank you," he said, and left.
The penthouse felt different without him. Larger, certainly, all those minimalist rooms spreading out around you like a museum after hours. But also quieter in a way that felt less peaceful and more hollow. Vhagar seemed to sense it too; she followed you from room to room with more persistence than usual, her ragged meow punctuating the silence.
You did what you always did when you were catsitting: you sat on the heated floor with Vhagar in your lap, you watched your shows that Aemond pretended to disdain but always ended up commenting on, you ate from the refrigerator that his private chef kept stocked with things you couldn't pronounce. But your mind kept circling back to the name. Alys. The way he'd said it: flat, contained, like a fact he'd long since stopped examining.
On Sunday morning, the house phone rang at half past eleven. You let it ring. The answering machine beeped. A woman's voice which you assumed belonged to his mother, given the time, came through:
Aemond, I've spoken with the surgeon. He has an opening in April. Answer your phone.
Surgeon. April. Cold settled in your stomach.
When Aemond returned on Monday evening, he looked tired in a way that went beyond travel fatigue. His coat was rumpled, his hair escaping its usual careful restraint, his mouth set in a thin line that softened only slightly when Vhagar waddled over to greet him.
"Good trip?" you asked, gathering your things.
"Fine."
"How's Alys?"
The pause was a beat too long. "Fine."
"She must be something," you said carefully, "to keep you driving hours every time you have a free weekend."
He didn't take the bait. He just bent down to scratch Vhagar's chin, his expression shuttered. "She's very busy. Her practice takes up most of her time."
"Practice?"
"Traditional medicine. Herbalism. Holistic healing." He said it without irony, without skepticism, as if a woman who made her living selling tinctures and salves was the most natural thing in the world for a man with multiple advanced degrees and a vice presidency at a multinational corporation. "She's very skilled."
"I'm sure she is," you said, and left before you could say something you'd regret.
After that, you started noticing things.
The way Aemond's phone would buzz and he'd check it immediately, his expression flickering. The way he'd disappear into his study for hours, his voice a low murmur behind the closed door, emerging with that same tired look he'd worn coming back from Riverlands. The way he never texted Alys, or if he did, she never texted back, because every communication seemed to require a phone call, a ritual, a set-aside block of time he guarded fiercely.
"She doesn't like texting," he explained once, when you'd commented on the absurdity of him scheduling a two-hour call in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon. "She finds it impersonal."
You thought about the string of unanswered texts on your own phone: friends from college, coworkers, the guy you'd gone on two dates with last month before he'd ghosted you, and wondered what it would be like to have someone so devoted to you that they'd carve out hours of their day just to hear your voice, while you couldn't be bothered to send a single line of text back.
"She must be very special," you said.
"She is." But he said it the way someone might recite a fact they'd memorized rather than a truth they felt in their bones.
The pieces assembled themselves slowly over weeks. Alys was older than him. Alys had a practice in a small town hours from the city. Alys refused to move, refused to visit, refused to integrate herself into his life in any way that required effort on her part. Alys gave him just enough to keep him coming back: a phone call, a weekend, a jar of something homemade that he'd place on his kitchen counter and stare at with an expression that made your chest ache.
He was too smart for this. That was the thing that got you, the thing that lodged under your ribs like a splinter. Aemond Targaryen, with his degrees and his four languages and his portfolio of accomplishments that would have been impressive for a man twice his age, was being strung along by someone who couldn't even be bothered to answer a text message. And he accepted it. He accepted it like it was all he deserved, like affection was a currency that could only be earned through suffering, like love was something you had to bleed for. You suspected he was taught to fish out flirts and gold diggers easily, but he hadn't been taught to examine his emotinal needs.
You saw it in the way he was with Vhagar, too. The cat tolerated him at best: she allowed his attention, accepted his offerings of caviar and quail eggs, but rarely sought him out the way she sought you. And yet he adored her. He planned his schedule around her meals. He commissioned custom furniture for her comfort. He spoke about her like she was a revered ancestor, which, in his family, she practically was.
And you. You, who had been hired as a catsitter and somehow become something more: a fixture in his home, a recipient of his cooking, his concern and his increasingly frequent glances that lingered just a moment too long. You, who he'd started looking at like you were precious, unexpected, something he hadn't known he was allowed to want.
The pattern was right there, written in the architecture of his life: Aemond Targaryen attached himself to people who barely tolerated him, and he called it love because he didn't know what else to call it.
The call came on a Thursday in late April.
"I need you to take Vhagar," Aemond said, his voice strained in a way you'd never heard before. "For several days. A week, maybe. Can you do that?"
You were at work, hunched over your desk with a spreadsheet blurring in front of your eyes. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. I just...I have a procedure tomorrow, and I won't be able to care for her."
"Procedure?" Your stomach dropped. "What kind of procedure?"
A pause. You could hear him breathing, slow and controlled, the way he breathed when he was trying to keep himself together. "My eye. My mother found a surgeon. Another one. He thinks there's a chance."
The word another hit you like a punch. How many surgeries had there been? How many times had he gone under the knife, hoping for something that never came?
"I'll come to pick her up," you asnwered.
When you arrived at the penthouse, the doorman let you up without question, you were on the permanent access list now, a fact that still felt surreal every time you thought about it, and Aemond was waiting at the door.
He looked terrible.
His face was pale. His left eye, the one that was always covered, was visible now, hair finally brushed back. He was holding himself very still, very straight, the posture of someone who had learned long ago to carry pain without showing it.
"Before you say anything," he said, "I'm fine."
"You're having surgery."
"Another surgery. They're all the same." He stepped aside to let you in. "My mother is optimistic. She's always optimistic. The surgeon says there's a thirty percent chance of partial vision restoration, which means there's a seventy percent chance of nothing at all. I've made my peace with it. She hasn't."
You followed him into the living room, where Vhagar was sprawled in her cardboard box, a new one, large and rectangular, with a towel that had been arranged just so. She blinked at you slowly and didn't get up.
"When is it?" you asked.
"Tomorrow morning. Early. I have a car picking me up at five."
"You're going alone?"
The question seemed to confuse him. "Yes. Who else would go with me?"
You thought about Alys, somewhere in Riverlands, mixing her herbs and ignoring her phone. You thought about his mother, who had arranged the surgery but apparently not her schedule to be there for it. You thought about his siblings, who he never spoke about.
"I could go with you," you said, before you could stop yourself.
Surprise flickered across his face. "That's not necessary. You're here for Vhagar."
"Vhagar can come. She's a cat. She'll sleep through the whole thing."
"Vhagar in a hospital waiting room?"
"Fine, not in the waiting room. But I can still go. You shouldn't be alone."
He looked at you for a long moment, his good eye searching your face. "Why?" he asked finally. The question sounded genuine, as if he truly couldn't fathom why anyone would offer him comfort without being asked.
"Because that's what people do," you said. "They show up for each other."
"Ah." He turned away, busying himself with a stack of papers on the kitchen counter. "I appreciate the offer. Truly. But I've been doing this alone for a long time. I know how to handle my own treatment. Take Vhagar. I'll call you when I'm home."
You took Vhagar. You packed her into her carrier, which was, of course, custom-made leather with a monogrammed cushion, and you carried her down to the lobby and out to the street, and you stood there on the sidewalk for a full minute before you turned around and went back inside.
Aemond was still in the kitchen when you walked back in, Vhagar's carrier swinging from your hand. He looked up, his expression shifting from surprise to confusion to what that looked almost like relief before he shut it down.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm staying," you set the carrier down and opened it. Vhagar emerged with an indignant yowl and immediately headed for her cardboard box. "You shouldn't be alone, and I'm not letting you send me home just because you're too stubborn to admit you need help."
"The guest room is made up," he said, his voice was very quiet.
"Good. I'm ordering takeout. What do you want?"
"I have a list of approved restaurants in the drawer."
"Of course you do."
The surgery happened. You didn't go with him, he insisted, and you could tell it was important to him, this one last bastion of self-sufficiency, but you were there when he came back, pale and shaking and trying very hard to pretend he wasn't. The bandage was fresh, the swelling worse, and he walked through the door like a soldier returning from a battle he'd already known he would lose.
"Thirty percent," he said, lowering himself onto the couch carefully. "We'll know in a few weeks."
"The guest room is very nice," you said. "Also I made breakfast."
"You made breakfast?"
"Don't sound so surprised. I can cook some things. Eggs. Toast. Coffee. The basics."
He ate the eggs and the toast. He drank the coffee. Then he fell asleep on the couch, his head tilted back against the cushions, his bandaged eye turned toward the ceiling, and you covered him with a blanket and sat in the armchair across from him and watched the afternoon light move across his face.
Vhagar jumped onto his lap and settled there, a warm gray weight, he didn't wake up.
You stayed longer. Aemond was supposed to be resting, but resting turned out to mean pacing the penthouse at odd hours, staring out the windows, picking at the meals you ordered from his list of approved restaurants because apparently your culinary skills didn't extend past breakfast.
"I can make pasta," you offered on the third day, when he was eyeing a container of takeout Thai with the expression of someone who had eaten too much takeout Thai. "It won't be good pasta, but it'll be pasta."
"I don't trust your definition of pasta."
"It comes from a box. You boil it. You put sauce on it."
"Sauce from a jar?"
"Sauce from a jar," you confirmed.
He looked genuinely pained. "Order from the place on 57th. The one with the green awning. They know my order."
"Of course they do."
That evening, as you were eating pasta that had definitely never seen the inside of a jar, you decided to ask the question that had been sitting in your throat for days.
"Does Alys know you had surgery?"
Aemond's fork paused halfway to his mouth. "I mentioned it."
"You mentioned it."
"We talked last night. She's sending a jar of her salve. For the inflammation." He said it matter-of-factly, as if this were a perfectly normal response to your partner undergoing eye surgery. "She says it's very effective. Arnica, mostly, with some other herbs. She grows them herself."
"She's not coming to visit?"
He set his fork down. "She doesn't like the city. I told you."
"She doesn't like the city enough to visit her boyfriend after surgery?"
"It's not that simple."
"It seems pretty simple from where I'm sitting."
His jaw tightened, the familiar muscle jumping beneath his skin. "Alys is…she's not like other people. She has her own life, her own practice, her own way of doing things. I knew that when we started this. I accepted it."
"What does she accept about you?"
The question landed harder than you'd intended. His good eye fixed on your face, sharp and suddenly very violet, and for a moment you thought he was going to snap at you, tell you to leave, remind you that you were just the catsitter and this was none of your business.
Instead, he muttered, "I don't know."
You ate in silence after that. Vhagar, sensing the shift in the atmosphere, climbed onto the table and tried to stick her face in Aemond's pasta, and he let her.
At three in the morning, you found him in the living room, sitting in the dark with Vhagar in his lap and the lights of the city spread out below him like a carpet of stars. His bandage glowed white in the dimness, he didn't turn when you came in, just kept staring out the window with an expression that made something twist painfully in your chest.
"Can't sleep?" you asked, settling into the armchair beside him.
"The pain medication wears off around two. I'm used to it."
"That's not what I asked."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "I keep thinking about what you said. At dinner."
"I said a lot of things at dinner."
"About what she accepts." He turned to look at you, even in the darkness, even with half his face covered in gauze, the intensity of his gaze made it hard to breathe. "I don't think she accepts anything about me. I think she tolerates me. And I've spent so long thinking that was the same thing."
"It's not," you said.
"No. It's not." He looked back out the window. "Vhagar tolerates me. But she chose you. When she ran away, she found you, and she stayed. She doesn't do that for anyone."
"She stayed for the hot dogs."
"She stayed for you." His voice was barely above a whisper. "I think I understand why now."
Vhagar purred in his lap. The distance between your chair and the couch felt impossibly vast and impossibly small all at once, a gap that could be crossed in two steps or two years depending on whether either of you had the courage to move.
"She's not coming," Aemond said. "Alys. She's not coming, and I don't think I mind as much as I should."
"How do you feel about it?"
He was silent for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough, scraped raw, the voice of someone admitting the truth against his will.
"Relieved," he said. "I feel relieved."
You sat in silence, keeping him company in the small hours of the morning until the sky began to pale and Vhagar yawned and stretched and demanded her breakfast.
Part 2: coming soon...
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Summary: You’ve always struggled with your stutter, speaking only when you must, trusting only your husband with your voice.
The table stretched long through the hall, glittering with silver and candlelight.
The meat was passed, wine spilt freely, and laughter echoed off stone walls, too loud, too sharp.
You felt small in it all. Always had.
You sat beside Aemond, his hand lightly resting atop yours under the tablecloth.
Your thumb moved slowly across his knuckles, grounding yourself in his calm presence, his heat.
His voice beside you was low and steady, “You look lovely tonight.”
Your lips curled shyly. You whispered back, “Th-thank you.” The words were soft, hesitant.
But he heard you. He always heard you.
Aemond turned his head slightly, a rare softness in his pale eye. “Only I get to hear your voice like that,” he murmured. “I think I’m the luckiest man in all of Westeros.”
You blushed, squeezing his hand beneath the table.
You never spoke much, the stutter made it hard, made you ashamed. You had grown used to silence, to ducking your head.
But with him… you tried. He never looked at you with pity. Only devotion.
Then came Aegon’s voice.
Slurred. Loud. Drunk.
“You know, brother,” he called across the table, “I often wonder if your wife is mute or just terribly slow. The poor girl can barely choke out a sentence without sounding like she’s drowning in her own words.”
Your blood turned to ice.
The table fell quiet. The silence stretched long.
You looked down instantly, cheeks burning, eyes stinging. Your throat ached with humiliation, with all the words you couldn’t say to defend yourself.
Aemond stood up, abruptly. His chair scraped the floor.
“Aegon,” he said, voice low and dangerous, “if you ever speak of her that way again, I will remove your tongue and feed it to Vhagar.”
Aegon scoffed, raising his goblet. “Oh come now, I mean-”
“She is worth a thousand of you,” Aemond snapped. “You are unfit to speak her name.”
You were already moving, tears falling fast as you rushed out of the hall, heart thudding in your ears.
You didn’t want to be seen. Not like this. You hated how weak it made you feel. How small.
You made it to your chambers and closed the door behind you, chest rising and falling in quick, uneven breaths. You pressed your back against the wood and covered your mouth to muffle your sobs.
Why did it always hurt like this? Why couldn't you just speak normally?
Minutes passed.
Then the door creaked open.
“Aemond,” you gasped, quickly wiping your face. “Y-you shouldn’t-”
“Stop,” he said gently, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. “Don’t hide from me.”
You turned your back to him anyway. “I d-don’t… w-want you to see m-me like this.”
His arms wrapped around you from behind, firm and warm. He pressed his lips to your shoulder, his voice low against your skin. “You never have to hide from me.”
You shook your head. “I’m… I’m b-broken.”
“No,” he whispered. “You’re brave. Do you know how much strength it takes to speak when the world gives you reason not to?”
Your voice trembled. “You d-deserve someone b-b-better-”
“I deserve you,” he said, turning you in his arms. His eye searched your face with a mix of fury and reverence. “You, who give me your voice when no one else hears it. You, who I would kill for without hesitation. You are mine. And I am yours.”
Your lip quivered. “You r-really mean that?”
“I swear it on Vhagar’s fire, on my blood, on my love for you,” he whispered, cupping your face. “Speak only to me, if that is what makes you feel safe. I’ll carry your silence for the world, and treasure every word you give me.”
Tears slipped down your cheeks again, not from shame this time, but from relief.
You nodded and leaned into him.
“I l-l-love you,” you whispered, voice fragile as lace.
His breath caught. Then he kissed you, deeply, as if that was the only answer he could ever give.
He pulled you to bed that night and held you until you stopped shaking. You fell asleep in his arms, his hand tangled in yours.
And for the first time in a long time, you dreamed without fear.
~Masterlist~
ˇAO3ˇ
Wattpad
/DO NOT TRANSLATE, STEAL OR REPOST ANY OF MY WORKS TO THIS OR OTHER PLATFORMS/
Summary: Y/n’s upset after the dinner her husband to be calling her siblings ‘Strong’.
Authors Note: I know this has been done many times but it is a good scene for us writers to take from. Look forward to writing more House Of The Dragon, especially with what's to come. . .
Needless to say the family dinner after Virsey's left had completely turned upside down. Words exchanged and fists were thrown. Y/n had stood up and left before her brothers were told to, she couldn’t stay and look at her betrothed. Not after he stood up and made the toast he did. Not after the words that left his mouth.
Y/n had now headed to her room. She had been in there for a bit now, she had undone her braids and taken off her jewelry. That was when Aemond entered her chambers after a quick knock.
“You're upset.” He stated the obvious.
“Yeah. What gave it away?” Y/n rolled her eyes and scoffed. It was kinda obvious she was upset. Especially with him.
“I didn’t mean anything by it.” At least to her he didn’t.
“Yes. You did.” Y/n glared at him. He insulted her brothers on purpose. He meant it with malice intent.
Aemonds jaw ticked. “It wasn’t toward you.”
“But you know it does go towards me! They are my brothers, same parents, same blood. You say it about them, it includes me to.” Y/n rushed over to him and poked him in the chest, her anger seeping out in waves. He was smart, he had to see it. “How do you not see that?”
Aemond took a deep breath calming himself so he didn’t add his own anger to the situation. “It wasn’t my intention to involve you in it.”
“But it does involve me. Every time it involves me.” She sighed, shaking her head. Y/n looked at him and she couldn’t tell if he truly understood or not why it upset her so.
“You really don’t get it do you? Do you not see how it affects everyone? How everyone views us? That its an excuse for everyone out there to say the same. Do you not see how it hurts me? How it makes me look?. . You know for someone who hates bastards you sure love to point out your future wife is one.” Y/n could see the realization of her words come across his face.
Aemond shook his head racing up to cup her cheek. “I don’t hate you.”
Y/n backed up away from him, Aemond’s hand fell from her cheek as she did so. “Could’ve fooled me.”
Aemond narrowed his eyes. “I prove I love you in many ways.”
“And I wonder in times like this, when you say things like what you did- what you love to point out about my brothers and me if you’ve ever meant any of it.” Y/n’s voice cracked and she looked away not wanting him to see her break. “I’m gonna go for a ride on my dragon. Cool down. Don’t follow me.”
Y/n walked past him avoiding his hand as he reached out to try and stop her. Y/n grabbed her riding jacket and left her room and betrothed there. Luckily she almost always wore pants under her dresses in case she wanted to go for a ride. As she headed to the dragon pit Y/n braided her hair to keep it back once she was up in the sky. She needed to clear her head and riding her dragon was the best way. Once she got to the dragon pit Y/n headed straight to the back where her dragon liked to be and immediately walked over to greet him before climbing up to her saddle and taking off.
All the while Aemond stood there in her room contemplating what she had said and she was right. He hadn’t thought about how it would affect her and that he wasn’t just insulting Jacerys and Lucerys. Aemond sighed, when he heard her dragon cry out happily at being free to fly he walked over to the balcony and watched. Aemond came to the realization that he needed to change some of his behaviors if he didn’t want to hurt her anymore. Aemond stayed there watching and thinking for a while before he decided to head to the dragon pit and wait for her.
It wasn’t long after Aemond arrived at the dragon pit that he could hear Y/n getting closer, and soon enough she landed. Y/n noticed him right away, his hair didn’t exactly blend into the dark. “I thought I told you not to follow me.”
Aemond uncrossed his arms kicking off the wall as he walked towards her. “I didn’t go up on Vaghar and follow you. I waited down here for you.”
Y/n sat on the saddle looking down at him, she was still annoyed with him but less angry. “You shouldn’t have.”
Y/n unclipped herself from the front of the saddle and swung her lef over. Aemond caught her waist as she slid down. Once she was on her feet Y/n turned to face him, having a feeling that he had something to say.
“No, I shouldn’t have let you leave to begin with.” He stated, looking at her pleadingly with his eye for her to forgive him. Aemond took in a breath to gain some confidence before saying what he was gonna say. He felt guilt for how he made her feel. “I won’t do it again. . . It obviously hurts you, I can’t forgive what was done to me but I’ll stop with the name calling. And provoking. For your sake.”
Y/n was taken back, she knew he couldn’t forgive or forget what had happened to him when they were all kids. But he was willing to be more civil for her sake.
“Why the sudden change of heart?” Y/n wondered, looking up at him in curiosity.
Aemond reached up to cup her cheek, his eye held adoration. Only for her. “Because I do love you. I’m sorry.”
She was the only person he had ever apologized to and it would remain that way. Y/n looked at him and she could tell Aemond meant his words. Y/n reached up cupping his cheek like he was hers. “I love you too.”
It wouldn’t be easy, they both knew that, and they both knew it wouldn’t be the last thing they’d have to deal with either. But they’d figure it out together.
when the fic has 10k+ words, fluff, angst, smut right at the end, friends to lovers, character who’s down bad for reader, AND Y/N DOESNT ACT LIKE A CHILD
Just an idea that came into my head and I just wanted to share it!
Vampire meta!Reader [villain to vigilante] being adopted by Batfam.
Vampire meta humans is just a person with vampire abilies like speed, strength, stealth and the ability to turn into a bat creature instead of of a small bat and other abilities vampires might have. Downside would be that reader will still age and dont really have immortality and if reader over uses their powers would get a thirst for blood.
Just an idea ^^
Batfam x “vampire” meta male reader
Headcanons
(how Bruce sees reader after he causes major property damage)
Reader is kinda based on Dracula and Sonar from Dispatch. Just a funky guy.
I like to think you would be a Gotham local, because of the whole, anti-meta thing and all that. You'd be from a poor family, maybe even from crime alley, meaning you slide under the radar for a long time.
It's only when you start working for different rogues that you start gathering attention. At first they’d assume you were man-bat who somehow got out of Arkham, or wherever he’s kept.
Except for the fact that your ‘bat’ form is different. It looks better put together, more solid and sleek. Where Man-bat looks like a vampire bat, you look more like a giant golden-crowned flying fox.
There's still a vague human shape to you, as well as you having arms and legs alongside wings. And of course, the obvious intelligence in your eyes and actions.
They also discover you have abilities aside from the usual flight, like Bane level strength, and speed that outpaces any normal rogue.
In the beginning you try to avoid hurting them too much, since chances are, you’re a young teen yourself. Hurting someone is just wrong, but you have your reasons to do what you do.
As you get older, and more bats appear, you start to do your own thing as a criminal. At this point Red Hood would have rocked up to crime alley and started taking over.
Your family would be dead, or have disowned you because of your ‘disability’, so you slink into the shadows and keep doing what you’ve always done. The only thing you feel you’re good at.
As time passes you also get more violent. As the world gets crueler to you, even when you aren’t in your bat form, the crueler you get in return.
You’ve always looked a little off-putting, with red rims around your irises, and sharper than average fangs and nails that naturally grow sharp and hooked.
Sometimes you don’t even know why you keep hunting and stealing. It's all you have left, and feels like your only purpose. Chances are you just hang out your stolen goods to those who need them, because you don’t. The less fortunate will jokingly call you their batman.
The bats have obviously kept track of you all these years, they may even have figured out who you were but left you be because your crimes were mostly theft. So, it becomes clear when you get more wreckless and careless.
Maybe the last good family member you have died, maybe they even died during a rogue attack, and the only thing you can do is blame the bats for not stopping this rogue, for letting them live long enough to kill that one person.
It would be your first true rampage. People of Gotham have gotten used to the shape of your wings compared to man-bat, and have stopped worrying quite as much, but this night they’ll regret not running.
Your eyes are glowing red as you shriek, the pitch high enough to blow out ear-drums and shatter glass, as you tear through the night. You don’t know if it’s to kill the rogue, the bats, or yourself, all you have is grief and pain.
Your powers are pushed past limits never pushed before, as you almost decapitate Batman, had he not been fast enough. The only reason their ears survive is thanks to working alongside people with shriek-based abilities before, but that doesn’t save the innocents nearby.
Out of them all, it’s Damian who tracks down why you’ve snapped. And sadly, he understands. Damian can only imagine what it would be like to lose the only person you have left, something he too fears on the regular.
Bruce can only regret not reaching out to you sooner, because maybe if you’d had them, this wouldn’t be what broke you.
At some point they have to use the bat-jet to keep up with you, as you slice through the sky, crashing through skyscrapers and ripping apart infrastructure, searching for the rogue that killed your family member.
I like to think it’s Jason who finally talks you down when they get so far, because he gets it. He wants the rogues dead too, but look around you. So many people have gotten hurt and for what?
Being a fellow crime alley brat means Jason has a different way into your grief-stricken mind. It's not enough to get you back to your full self, but it does calm you enough for them to use Killer croc level tranqs on you.
Normally, the bats would take you to Arkham, but some parts of them don’t want to. In the end you’re brought to the cells in the batcave, so they can keep an eye on you, and help you if possible.
For a while you stay in your giant bat form, curled up in a corner and looking mean and miserable. You'll cry when you think nobody is watching, because it’s all you can do.
Damian brings you papaya and banyan tree fruits, because he read that the bat you look like eats those, and what can I say, Dami has a soft spot for creatures looked down on by others.
You don’t really need the diet of a bat, you actually prefer a bloody diet or just meat in general, but you do eat the fruit, letting the sweet taste help you forget for a bit.
Each bat comes by and just sits with you. Some talk, some don’t, some play on their phones or read books. But they spend time with you, never seeing you as lesser for being a ‘monster’.
When you finally transform back into yourself, you look worse to wear. No matter your body type, you’ll still look starved, dirty and hollowed out. You are also completely naked.
Like this you can talk better, though you say little. After some more time and testing, the bats just kinda, accept you into their fold. It's kinda like being pulled into a bat colony, which maybe it is, in a way.
Having so little hope means you don’t really fight it, even as Bruce helps you bathe, or Alfred cooks you a meal that makes you feel full for the first time in your life, or when Steph files and paints your nails, or when Damian reads bat facts to you from a well-loved book.
It's... nice. To be part of something, even though you like to hang upside down from the rafters in the room you were given, and you have a habit of hoarding food under your unused bed, which then rots.
Being with the bats slowly warms you from the inside. And yeah, you get a lot of lectures about your actions, and why you shouldn’t do them again, and it’s fine.
They never make you feel wrong or gross for being what you are, or when you feel more comfortable as a massive human-ish shaped bat. It feels almost like being part of a family.
You never really thought about returning to crime, as long as the batfam wanted you around. That is until multiple rogues have gotten out of Arkham, and most of your new family are hurt and in danger.
It's not even a question if you’ll go. Alfred knows this too, and is at least smart enough to help you kit up, as well as your bat form can.
It’s mainly belts with supplies, and of course, a bat shaped domino mask, to go with theme.
Your body is pushed to the same extreme limits as your last appearance, but this time it’s to help, not destroy. Rogues like The Joker and Penguin are easier to take out with brute force, and your shrieks and extreme speed. It's mainly surprise that does them in, having not expected you.
Killer Croc and Mr freeze are harder, but you get it done. Even if you’re left covered in freezer burns and claw marks, your family is safe.
Out of all the rogues who escaped, Man-bat is one of them, and the two of you tear into each other in the night sky. It's a very bloody and intense sight, and the few people still out and about during the night can only stand and stare.
You barely get to land, more so crash, when Man-bat is finally defeated, before you collapse.
Luckily the bats have been tracking and following the fight, so they get to work securing man-bat, and making sure you’re okay, as well as covering you with Bruce’s cape when you swap back to your human form. They really have to work on that if you want to start doing vigilante work.
You end up getting a scolding from Bruce when you make up back at the batcave, because that was such a bad idea. You have no real training and could have gotten hurt a lot worse or even died.
You can visibly see him melt a little when you argue back that it was to help your family, as it’s the first time you’ve called them all that.
After that night, you healing, and a lot of training from the bats, but also other league friends, you can finally take a step into professional hero-work. Or well, as professional as illegal vigilante work can be.
You do end up getting a suit, kinda. On your bat form it looks more like a wing cover and a scarf, but it warps into a suit in your human form. Don't ask how it works, but it does.
Somehow you end up getting on really well with heroes like Martian Manhunter and Red Tornado. A strange friendship is kicked up between you and King Shark too.
Old habits are still present, and you find yourself leaning towards violence when things get too complicated, but your new family loves you anyways. And hey, you and Jason can bond over thinking lethal force is great sometimes.
You're also get a bit too excited when you see shitty plastic toys of you in a kids meal at Bat-burger. That's what makes it feel like you really made it.
Along with the family celebrating your birthday, and giving you more gifts than you know what to do with. They'll claim it’s to make up for all the years of missed gifts.
summary . . . your work bestie is a 49 year old man who tries to stay “hip and cool” with “the youngsters”, and that’s just you dealing with his memes. part one, part three.
notes. nurse 🗣️‼️ he’s out again !! a lot wanted a part two so i went ahead and made one 🫶😝 y’all are gonna be able to tell which one is my favorite 💀
tags ──────── platonic, crack fic tbh, texts. leon is your annoying peepaw in this 😼. nana mentioned, shout out to everyone who said leon should watch nana. glorious king chris redfield mentioned (my foreshadowing that i’m writing for him).
summary . . . your work bestie is a 49 year old man who tries to stay “hip and cool” with “the youngsters”, and that’s just you dealing with his memes. part two, part three.
notes. literally just what the summary says 🫡 i did a banner because i was not gonna use a gif set for this but it looked clustered so i changed it. i’ll figure it out as i go what i do with smaus/texts n stuff 🤨
tags ──────── platonic, crack fic tbh, texts. leon is your annoying peepaw in this 😼
summary . . . your work bestie is a 49 year old man who tries to stay “hip and cool” with “the youngsters”, and that’s just you dealing with his memes. part one, part two.
notes. yurr 🗣️‼️ okay this is the last part to this series bc an anon requested it and i’m not tryna milk this concept. did a little more this time 🙂↕️
tags ──────── platonic, crack fic tbh, texts. leon is your annoying peepaw in this 😼 back in my the boys era, shoulda used soldier boy instead </3
summary . . . chief leon kennedy has a crush on the temporary receptionist of rpd. the receptionist in question is his wife, and he has made it everyone’s problem.
notes. 🎤 this just in… shikiyomizu writes another fic where leon kennedy is obsessed with his wife !! got this idea while i was driving to work today, also :( thank you guys we hit 400 followers the other day 🫶 y’all are the best
tags ──────── fluff, re9 leon kennedy x wife!reader. au, no zombie break out. takes place in raccoon city. leon’s doing everything but working. word count: 1.2k words
The receptionist of RPD was six months pregnant with her first child. Getting closer to her due date, she put in her time off. Once she got to eight months, she would be gone to prepare herself and stay out on maternity leave. That gave the station at most a month to find a temporary receptionist.
Chief Kennedy quickly found a solution. After you heard he told you about their receptionist during dinner, you offered to fill in the position while she was away. You didn’t work, the officers knew you since you’d come and visit Leon at the station on occasions.
The more experienced officers were more familiar with you and still remembered the day you both met.
Leon was late on his first day of work. Not a good look for an optimistic rookie. Then, he got thrown into traffic duty with Lieutenant Marvin Branagh, and had to write up a ticket to a girl they pulled over who was his type. He swore that someone didn’t want him to succeed as a police officer.
That’s right, you were the first person Leon ever gave a ticket to. But it made for a cute story, and the outcome was a marriage of 24 years.
When he proposed the idea, everyone quickly agreed. No officer would have to fill the position, they wouldn’t have to wait for an applicant, and they could trust you would get the job done correctly. Now what they didn’t imagine happening is the Chief of police suddenly not knowing how to behave.
The first few weeks, Leon checked up on you to make sure everything was going smoothly while you were being trained. You adjusted rather quickly. He’d stay by the desk, flirt with you for a couple minutes, and return to his office.
Then the following months, the visits became more frequent. He’d start dropping by multiple times throughout the day, and stayed longer than he was supposed to. He loved having you working at the station. He could see you and talk to you any time he wanted.
And although it was sweet, it threw off the function of the second floor where the officers really needed him to be. They took matters into their own hands and limited him to one daily visit.
That ended up backfiring as soon as the rule was implemented. They saw him heading downstairs, and made a note he was taking his daily visit. So, they minded their business and went back to working.
Hours passed, someone was on the phone to speak with him. The officer tried to ring him, but he wasn’t picking up. Unusual for him. She stood up from her desk and quickly rushed to his office, just to not see Leon there at all.
The man had the entire floor looking for him because the call was important. The bathroom, the library, the archive room, the weapons room. They were practically seething when they found him sitting behind the receptionist desk with you.
All he said was, “You said one visit, not that I had to come back.”
They didn’t blame you since you were actually getting your work done.
They were honestly debating whether or not they should enforce the whole no dating in the workplace rule again. But it didn’t make sense considering you two were married and so were Captains Chris and Jill Redfield of S.T.A.R.S.
So they found the only other solution.
The following work week, Leon got banned from the first floor.
He took it to the heart. He watched you from the second floor like some Victorian yearner until he got sent back to his office by one of his lieutenants.
He tried to sneak past them on several occasions. Sometimes it worked. Other times?
“Chief! Don’t you go down those stairs!”
Leon huffed. He was so close this time. He’d made it halfway down. He glared at the officer standing at the top of stairs. You were at the reception desk, going through mail the station received. He wanted to use the excuse that he was going to pick something up, but they’d just say they would bring it to him. He reluctantly turned around and went right back up.
He passed the sign holder by the stairs made for him that said, “Lunch is at 1PM. Shift ends at 6PM.”
It got bad enough that they assigned someone to keep an eye on him.
The new rookie that joined was so confused why they told him not to allow Chief Kennedy on the first floor under any circumstances besides lunchtime and when it was time to go. Plus, they didn’t even go into detail as to why the Chief was banned from the first floor. They said it so ominously, as if the world would end if he made it down there.
Technically, it was an easy task. His office door was always shut, no matter what. If it ever opened, the loud creaking would alert the rookie and he’d tell his superior the first floor was off limits.
Today, Leon opened his office door cautiously. His officers were overwhelmed at their desks, especially the rookie who was stuck babysitting him. Paperwork was due at the end of the week. Everyone was trying to get it done so they wouldn’t have to stay late on a Friday night.
Perfect. He slipped out unnoticed. He left the door at a crack. If he closed it now, it might catch their attention and he refused to lose this golden opportunity. He kept his body against the wall, heading in the direction of the stairs.
You were making copies of forms. While the printer did the task for you, you swiveled your chair to the computer again to check on an email. Just as you were doing that, there came your husband rushing down the stairs. Leon made it to the bottom step and walked across the lobby towards the reception desk.
Oh great. What was he planning now? Your hand hovered over the phone, ready to call one of the lieutenants. But you didn’t since your husband wasn’t staring directly at you, rather the staircase on your right. He dug his hand in the pocket of his pants and pulled out a slip of paper.
Leon carefully slid it across the counter, and continued walking without looking at you.
The paper was folded in half. You raised a brow. He was probably asking you to meet him in the filing room again. You grabbed the paper and opened it.
“What the…” You muttered.
Do you like me?
Two options. One box said yes, and the other box said yes. You furrowed your brows.
You looked to your right. Leon was leaning against the stair railing. He drew a heart in the air with his pointer fingers and then winked at you. Your eyes followed as he went up to the second floor.
Reminder: File a complaint.
You clicked your pen. Underneath the two boxes, you drew a third one. Right beside it you wrote, “No”, and checked it.
“Is he here?” You glanced up. The rookie was out of air after running down a flight of stairs. Poor boy was carrying the fate of the world on his shoulders and he refused to let it end. That or he thought he might get fired for not keeping Chief Kennedy in check.
“Honey, don’t worry. He’s upstairs. Besides, the only place he’s getting in trouble is at home.” You said. That helped ease his worries a bit. You folded the slip of paper again and held it out to the rookie, “Do me a favor. Can you give this to him when you see him?”
I think a lot about the fact that Astarion biting you would eventually leave a mark and what HE might think about that.
With a Lesser Restoration spell it would take repeatedly injuring the area for it to start leaving obvious scars, which would take a decent amount of time. Unless you're offering it up nightly(which is fine), but I see it being more common HC, mine included, that not only is it better for him (autonomy wise) to feed off baddies more regularly but also you since, you know, that's bound to tally up against your health if he's feeding on you daily, spells or no.
So how would Astarion feel the first time he catches a look at your neck and sees faint traces of his mark?
Those scars becoming more obvious over time.
The other companions noticing.
Your varied possible reactions changing but not lessening the wide range of thoughts and emotions he could have on the matter.
You could flaunt it, playing up the "hot" Vampire stigma in his mind and making those marks remind him of that everytime..
You could hide it.. making him feel sort of ashamed but also resentful. Why help him if you're ashamed to do so? Maybe you are simply helping to keep someone you need healthy in a fight fit.
Or maybe it just doesn't bother you.
It's part of the help you give. You aren't proud, not embarrassed. It's just not worth worrying about considering all the other scars you're probably accumulating.
Does he feel a sense of claim when he sees it? Possessive in a way he isn't accustomed to feeling towards... anything.
A sense of fondness at the reminder that you were his first tatse of happiness? The first to help him simply because he needed it and you could.
The first aching pulls of affection when he leans into you, the scars catching his eye as he dips his head, lining his fangs up to the mark. HIS mark.
The ways you could handle the scars appearing and he could then respond are endless.
But then..
What would happen if say, Shadowheart happens to want to practice the Heal spell she's just learned? So she takes healing up your bite and bloodless as an opportunity.
But Heal is more powerful then lesser restoration and is known to remove scars, so that mark is erased entirely.
You go about your morning, but the first thing he notices the moment he's joined you is that there isn't a trace of the scars.
Astarion murmuring, his blood coated lips barely brushing against your ear lobe, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that you’re aroused by this. I can practically taste it.”
Astarion whimpering in his sleep, soft cries tumbling from his lips.
Astarion stiffening when he feels your fingertips grace over his scars, growling, “Don’t touch me.”
Astarion rolling his eyes and waving off anyone who isn’t you at camp, sighing “Sorry, darling, I haven't got time for underlings.”
Astarion drawing in shakily breaths, whispering, “I…I don’t know how to be with someone.”
Astarion relaxing into your touch when you wrap your arms around and leaning back against your chest, saying “I love you, darling but you reek of Gale. Did you have to carry him out of battle again today?”
Astarion chuckling, a warm and radiant sound, as he bops you on the nose.
Astarion curling around you at night and entangling all of your limbs, groaning when you attempt to move away.
Astarion sobbing into your chest after Cazador dies, weakly saying, “it’s over. It’s over. He’s gone. It’s finally over.”
Astarion smiling when you come home, handing you a glass of wine and leading you to the stunning meal he prepared, “welcome home, darling.”
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