# ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ is an independent, private, highly selective && mutuals only roleplay blog dedicated to the portrayal of ser harwin strong, drawing inspiration from fire and blood as well as the hbo television adaptation house of the dragon. this interpretation is grounded in extensive character study, thoughtfully developed personal headcanons, and a variety of alternate universe influences, all approached with deliberate care and narrative intention. themes explored may be mature in nature. 21+ only. est timezone. minors dni. written by snow.
๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ the strongest knight in the seven kingdoms, a protector who stood where others schemed, gentle but fierce, golden cloaks, devotion without demand, desire without betrayal, a man who knew his place in the world, a heart fierce enough to stand beside a queen and humble enough to never seek her throne.ย
๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐, ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐. Rhaenyra's greatest woe was the dull ache that ebbed and flowed low in her belly. They had been seated at the long, honours table, together with the others who shared the Targaryen or Strong names, as well as the most influential sponsors and business owners. Somewhere amidst the crowd, she swore she glimpsed the red hair of Alicent Hightower, the woman Daemon had once tried to set in Harwin's path. The memory rose tinged with something perilously sharp, an acrid note she had neither the strength nor the will to linger on. She was far too tired, so she did not crane her neck to confirm what she had seen. Instead her fingers found Harwinโs beneath the table, seeking the steady anchor of his warmth, while her other hand curled around the cool stem of her fork, poking listlessly at a tomato on her plate. Dinner continued, and so did the spectacle, the theatre. Naturally, people were curious about her and Harwin; she had expected as much from the moment they crossed the threshold together, when she welcomed the possessive warmth of his palm against the bare expanse of her spine, when her own fingers had tightened around his arm. Anyone with eyes and half a wit could see the well of tenderness that flowed between them. But that was all they would receive. She refused to hide, yet she would not parade him as some conquered trophy either. They owed these vultures nothing; no explanations, no morsels of their private life. Still, Rhae could feel the hunger burning behind every curious gaze, every cordial comment laced with ulterior motive. Their eyes devouring every shared glance and touch, dragging over the generous curve of her belly, snagging on the delicate chain around her neck. Thankfully, no one was brave enough to cross that final line of outright prying. And somewhere halfway through the main course the novelty at last began to fade, the weight of those gazes easing enough for her to finally begin tasting the food upon her plate.
It was not until Harwin was summoned to the stage to receive his award that Rhaenyra refused to temper the enormity of her pride, to mask or stifle the fierce swell of it in her chest โ so radiant it felt as if the sun itself had taken residence behind her sternum. Warmth washed over her as he slipped from her side, and for the first time that endless night something like ease unfurled within her, as though the universe had narrowed to the three of them alone; her, the man she loved beyond comprehension, and the son who would soon make their family whole. Rhae's applause rung loudest, her smile shone brightest. She watched him stand there with her father, and something inexplicably fond and layered swept through her, a wave so potent it nearly threatened to crack the careful armour she had donned. It was oddly, achingly sweet to see her husband and her father together as such, despite all the fractures that still existed between herself and Viserys. Harwinโs speech was so perfectly, exactly him; humble, gentle, fiercely sincere. It painted an ever more beaming smile across her lips. Adoration sparkled in her gaze as she raised her glass of water in silent salute, and the very moment he returned to her side she took his hand and pressed a lingering kiss to his knuckles.
โ I am so proud of you. So, so proud. โ She murmured, her voice riddled with a infinite well of sincerity.
The eruption of excitement gradually settled. Guests fell back into conversation, drinking, and eating, the din of chatter and laughter and the crystalline clink of cutlery weaving through the air. Rhaenyra savoured her dessert, her sweet tooth grown particularly tyrannical in these final weeks. She was engaged in pleasant conversation with the wife of one of the pharmaceutical CEOs when the tell-tale sounds of another announcement echoed from the stage, drawing her attention. Her brows furrowed, puzzled, as she saw her father ascending once more, microphone in hand. Then he began to speak. His words and compliments should perhaps have warmed her; for it was the praise she had secretly yearned for across many lonely years, approval, a display of paternal affection. But his smile remained too pleased, too bright, and it uncoiled something uneasy deep in her gut; something dark and terrible, ominous as an approaching storm she had foolishly believed cleared.
Viserys' attention turned to them both. That smile. She did not trust that smile.
She was right not to.
All at once, as sharp and abrupt like the lash of a whip across bare flesh, Rhaenyra felt as though she had been swallowed by oblivion. She was falling, falling, falling. Every fragment of warmth and every morsel of light within her was smothered beneath a devastating onslaught of ice. The frigid chill lasted for but a split second; a heartbeat in which the entire ballroom seemed to hold its breath. Her eyes pierced her fatherโs across the distance, her mouth falling open on a silent gasp, her hand in Harwinโs going completely slack as if the bones had dissolved. Every sound in the room muffled, as though her ears had been plunged beneath the surface of some arctic lake. All she could hear were drowned, hushed whispers. Whispers about her. About Harwin. About them. The very thing she had refused to give them. She had not thought her own father would be the one to forsake her so cruelly. Then came the overwhelm, the second whip lash that devoured the frost; violent, incandescent ire ignited in her veins as a savage blaze, molten blood roaring so loud in her ears it threatened to devour her whole. The pressure spiked within a fractured breath, pulses of adrenaline surging to cells and nerves until every muscle seized taut.
โ Owโuh, โ she exhaled sharply, thinly, as the contraction crashed over her in a wave of agony. It was the most vicious yet. Coaxed, to be sure, by her blind rage, her disbelief, her suffocating horror that her own father could thieve her of her own narrative, strip her autonomy bare and expose her so blatantly in front of everyone. Rhaenyra's body had gone rigid as she suffered the wave; gaze dropping to the great swell of her stomach, both palms pressed beneath it as though pleading the tightening pressure to ease. Beneath her skin, bristling ire sparked until she was set aflame. Somewhere in the periphery of her narrowing vision she sensed Harwin drop to one knee beside her chair. A scream clawed at her throat. Her eyes burned with wrathful tears she refused, absolutely refused, to let spill; not here, not now, not for them. She breathed with Harwin. Clinging to him, matching the safe rhythm he offered. In through the nose, out through parted lips. But her lungs seemed averse to air, shunning the relief of oxygen as though even her body had turned traitor yet again. Did nothing belong to her anymore? Was she nothing but a vessel? For her father to expose and barter as he wished, for this child who would not come, for these people who stared with hungry eyes. Sweat beaded at her temples, a single drop trailing down the bare line of her spine like the drag of a cold claw, shivers flecking her overheated skin. Her chest heaved with shallow, fragmented breaths as she focused on Harwin, her eyes searching his with desperate intensity. He was furious too. Blessedly, the contraction finally began to recede, a sliver of tension releasing from her muscles; her shoulders fell forward by a fraction only he would notice. Yet her skull still pulsed with anger, her gaze still burned when it snapped back to the stage, to Viserys. Her eyes narrowed to slits, nostrils flaring with each ragged inhale.
For only a split breath Viserys met her eyes across the ballroom and faltered, fractionally, near imperceptibly. As though somewhere deep in that calculating mind of his he had, for one fleeting instant, imagined this might not have been the greatest idea he had ever had. The sign of it faded as quickly as it had appeared, smoothed away beneath the polished mask of paternal pride and . . . something else.
โ Thank you, thank you. Yes, we are all very thrilled for baby Jacaerys to join our family. But that is not the only lovely addition. For you see, I have an exciting announcement of my own . . . โ He was not done. He had dared reveal the name of her child too. And still, he continued to speak. Rhaenyra felt the vile, vicious coils of nausea tighten in her stomach. He stepped away from the podium and moved to the edge of the stage, where the steps led down, and there he held his hand out to receive Alicent Hightower โ clad in a green dress with a plunging neckline that seemed almost like a deliberate offence in its boldness. Her countenance taut even as she did her best to maintain a composed smile, the expression stiff as she allowed him to guide her up onto the stage beside him.
โ Friends, colleagues, and partners, before this extraordinary evening comes to a close, I have one final piece of joyful news I wish to share with you all. Please, raise your glasses, for it is my great pleasure to announce my engagement to Alicent Hightower, who has brought light and companionship into my life once more. Alicent, my dear, come closer . . . everyoneโto my beautiful bride-to-be! โ
Rhaenyra nearly laughed out loud; her incredulity loud, manic. There was a brief, sickening pause, as though time itself had suspended its passage. The air in the vast ballroom stilling and freezing by degrees as the news settled. Then came the applause, some more hesitant than others. The atmosphere had turned strange; a disquieting, almost suffocating mix of awkward discomfort and delighted surprise. Disbelief incapacitated Rhaenyra wholly. Her heart a savage beast in her chest, beating so harsh and fierce it was dizzying, blackening the edges of her vision with each thunderous pulse. It dawned on her then, the likely reason Viserys had chosen this moment to expose her and Harwinโs marriage and child โ to soften the possible outrage that would greet his own announcement. He had chosen to throw his daughter to the wolves, to undermine her, to harm the precious cocoon that she was fiercely protective over only to save himself from scrutiny.
Time had begun to twist strangely, for only a few seconds had passed since Viserysโs announcement yet Rhaenyra felt as though she had been thrust into a time warp. She could not breathe. She was not blind nor stupid, she knew people gossiped about her and Harwin; speculated in hushed tones and glances. But the whispers had been easy to ignore because they held no fact, no confirmation โ no one had been granted even the merest window into their true life. But now Viserys had torn out every window, demolished every wall of the home she had built in secret, and given these people free view to the most precious, private thing that belonged to her. Now they would feel justified, emboldened even, to speculate louder, to spin vile slander and accusations about Harwinโs morals, to whisper that she had seduced her attending and slept her way into power. Viserys had committed an act of war upon her; had struck an assault upon her family, her image, her autonomy, all to fortify his own defences around himself and his young new bride. And he had dared to do so mere breaths after invoking the name of her mother, Aemma Arryn. Rhaenyra was going to be sick. Her gaze returned from some distant, frozen purgatory and she stared at Harwin. She felt terribly faint. She could not breathe. Her chest tightened and tightened and tightened until not even the steady, measured rhythm of Harwinโs breathing beside her could anchor her anymore. She could not breathe.
โ How couldโ โ She began in a broken whisper to Harwin and Harwin alone, furious tears clinging to her lashes. Anyone close enough would find it impossible to mistake the quiet devastation in her voice for softness; it was nothing but wrath incarnate. She was a dragon in that moment, and the dragon seethed. Her gaze shot to the high table, meeting Daemon and Laenaโs eyes โ equally stunned, Daemonโs face a mask of barely leashed fury, Laenaโs a mirror of sympathetic rage. Then she stared at Lyonel Strong, the man she had grown so fond of, and in the heart of her tempest she was convinced he must have known. She looked to her own father again; it was not only ire that burned in her eyes, but contempt. Any hope she had nurtured for them was doused. Any desire to mend the fractures โ gone. All she felt was betrayal.
โ Strongโs, yes. Her attendingโhah, I knew it. โ The whisper drifted from a few chairs down, from a man emboldened by too much wine and too little sense, but the sheer audacity made utter ruin of the last fragile threads of Rhaenyraโs composure. This was the very audacity she had wished to avoid โ the liberty these people now felt entitled to take, to spew their slander as if they had any right. Rhaenyra stood up so abruptly the entire room stilled into silence. Viserys and Alicent froze on the stage; the violence of her motion rattled the cutlery and crystal glasses on the table, her chair scraping harshly against the polished floor. Eyes snapped to her from every direction. Livid, her eyes fixed upon the drunken man who had dared to comment, and simply by the force of her stare alone he began to squirm, to cower and pale.
โ Youโyou know nothing, you fucking cunt. โย She hissed, the words laced with all consuming vitriol. With a final glare directed at the man she was meant to call father, she turned and left with decisive strides, ignoring the sharp stabs of pain in her feet, the burn at the base of her spine, and the way another agonising contraction began to claw through her.
Beyond the ballroom, the large foyer welcomed her into its eerily quiet embrace. At the far end came the low murmur of attendants in the coatroom and the soft clatter of a stray server tidying up the remnants of the mingle. Loudest of all was the door slamming shut behind her, swiftly pursued by Rhaenyra's own shallow gasps. Something infuriatingly akin to panic slithered beneath her skin, like tendrils of ivy determined to wind tighter and tighter until they suffocated her. Upon a small circular table nearby, previously laden with canapรฉs, there now sat only a tall vase of flowers โ elegant and mocking. Blinded by anger, she marched forward and knocked it to the floor. It did not nothing to relieve her. Shattered porcelain scattered like cruel destruction across the marble, water and blooms strewn amid the jagged, pieces. The workers looked up, startled, but she could not have cared less. She was so swept by the storm of her rage that she barely noticed Harwin following until she was halfway across the foyer and felt strong hands settle upon her shoulders.
โ Don't touch mโ! โ she shouted, whipping around with such force that her fists landed upon his chest with desperate strength, believing for one terrible second that it was her father or some other intruder she did not wish to see nor be touched by. But it was not. It was her only anchor, the only reason any warmth remained in her world at all. โ Harwin? Harwin. โ His name fell from her lips in a lament, a desperate, broken whine, and relief โ all at once. The very moment she realised it was him, the dam of fury and fire she had held at bay shattered completely, and the sob she had refused to release tore from her throat, her fists loosening just enough to curl into the lapels of his jacket, clinging tight to the solidity of him.
โ Whyโwhy would he do that to us? Does he not see how bad this makes me, us, look? And then he's marrying her? Howโhow could he? โ Another contraction seized her then, her breath hitching sharply as one hand flew from Harwin's chest to the curve of her stomach. A strained, pained sob tore free; her brow fell against his heart, wet cheeks growing wetter still from the combined onslaught of pain and fury. She keened a breathless command through it,
โ I can'tโI can't breathe here. Take me away. Take me home now. Now. โ
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ in a glittering forest of raised arms, and not one of those arms belonged to anyone who understood what had just been done. The moment her fists struck his chest, Harwin's hands had already been retreating . . . softening, opening, palms turning outward in surrender. His jaw clenched so tight the muscles in his neck corded, the heat of his own fury a slow, molten thing that climbed his spine and settled behind his eyes. Viserys knew what he was doing. That was the worst of it. He was a fool; he was a strategist. He had chosen to sacrifice his daughter's privacy, their privacy, to insulate himself from the inevitable whispering that would accompany his announcement. Feed the wolves the daughter first, and by the time his own news broke, the scandal had already been spent. Harwin dropped his forehead for the briefest second against the crown of her head and shut his eyes. His arms banded around her, thick and immovable, anchoring her against the storm; one hand splaying wide across her spine, while the other cradled the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her elaborate silver-blonde braids. He pressed her face to his chest, uncaring of who might see, shielding her from the prying eyes of the foyer attendants. Her contraction was cresting. He could feel the tremor in her frame as fingers spasmed in his lapels, the involuntary clench of her jaw where her forehead pressed to him. Harwin counted the seconds, feeling the peak and trough against his own body. It was vicious, tearing a breathless whine from her throat, but as the wave receded, he felt the erratic rhythm of it. Braxton Hicks, exacerbated by blind rage and terror at forty weeks pregnant. It was agonizing, undeniably real in its pain, but they were not having this baby tonight. The certainty of that provided a dark, cold comfort, freeing the rest of him to fully surrender to his own fury. Footsteps rushed through the heavy ballroom doors behind them, dragging the muffled din of the gala into the foyer. He lifted his head, his dark eyes locking onto Daemon and Laena as they hurried toward them. Daemon looked entirely lethal; his customary smirk replaced by a tight, white-hot snarl of pure Targaryen malice. Laena was already reaching out, her expression a mirror of Rhaenyraโs own devastation, soft and fiercely protective. Harwin knew, in that split second, precisely what he had to do.
โ We're going home baby, we're going, โ Harwin whispered, low, over the crown of Rhaenyra's head. โ Right now. I promise you. โ His lips pressed to her hair, and he breathed her in once before he drew back just far enough to see her face. โ Two minutes, my love. Laena and Daemon are going to stay with you. Two minutes, and then I'm taking you home. Stay with them, โ he said to Rhaenyra, already backing away a step. Then, to Daemon and Laena, he added: โ She needs water. โ
Daemonโs stare went keen as a blade drawn half from its sheath; one glance at the look upon Harwinโs face, upon the thunder darkening there, to understand at once where he was going. Laena was already there to supplant him; one slim arm sliding around Rhaenyra's shoulders, her low murmur pitched for Rhaenyra alone, something cutting about Viserys. He caught the ghost of it and was obscurely, savagely grateful for it, because Laena's contempt was a warm coat he could leave draped over his wife while he was gone.ย
The ballroom took him back into its heat and its noise, and the noise parted around him like water around a prow. Heads turned in his wake; he felt the swivel of attention, the fresh little frisson of scandal, scandal, more scandal, the vultures leaning in over their dessert plates for the second course of the evening's carrion. He found Viserys near the foot of the stage steps, still flushed and expansive with the champagne-heat of his own performance, still radiant with the theatre of his own beneficence; Alicent Hightower a rigid, green column of lace at his elbow with her smile hammered flat into place. Otto Hightower hovered at the periphery, and Harwin registered him and dismissed him in the same beat. For a moment, he thought of Sunday mornings; the light in their bedroom, how it fell through the curtains in long, warm slats and caught the curve of Rhaenyra's belly and turned the whole of her golden, luminous. He thought of her hand in his hair. Her lips against his temple. The way she had said the name again, Jacaerys, rolling it over her tongue. The look on her face when she decided, the quiet, fierce, private yes of it, that's the one. That moment belonged to them. It was theirs. And Viserys had taken it. ย The splinter pushed deeper. Harwin felt it in his teeth, in his jaw, in the taut cables of his neck where the muscles had drawn so tight they ached with it.ย
โ Harwin, โ Viserys began, low enough that the nearest table might not hear. โ I was just coming toโ โ
โ Don't. โ
Viserys blinked, and the brief movement betrayed him. He had expected his announcement to settle into obedient silence; instead, it struck stone.
โ What the hell were you thinking? โ
Viserysโ face tightened. Perhaps at the profanity. More likely at the nakedness beneath itโthe fury stripped of ceremony, the accusation without its courtly gloves. He drew himself up, and Harwin found it almost pitiful, how quickly he reached for rank when shame crept too close. He gathered himself into posture, into title, as though a straighter spine might make the cruelty smaller. ย โ I understand this was unexpected. But it was not meant as insult. Quite the opposite. I was trying to help you both . . . from how it looks. โ
Harwin stared at him. For one second, the words made no sense. They entered his ear and failed to find any reasonable place inside him, the cognitive equivalent of a blocked airway. His hands closed at his sides. The knuckles ached with the pressure; he could feel the bones grinding against each other, the tendons standing taut across the backs of his hands, the forearms contracting into hard, roped tension. His father materialized at his elbow; his hand closing around Harwin's upper arm. The grip of a father. โ Harwin, son. โ Lyonel's voice was quiet, measured, pitched for his ears alone. โ This is not the place. โ
He head turned at last, only enough to show his father the side of his face โ the hard line of his jaw, the tendon standing taut in his neck, the pulse visible in his temple where the vein ran close to the surface.
โ No, โ he agreed. โ It wasn't the place. โ
Lyonel stopped. There was a flicker in his father's eyes then. Recognition, perhaps. Agreement pressed beneath discipline; Lyonel's mouth settled into a harder line, but he said nothing more.ย
Harwin turned back to Viserys. โ You stood on that stage and announced my marriage, my wifeโs pregnancy, and my sonโs name to a room full of strangers because you thought it would make your engagement easier to swallow. โ
Viserysโs flush deepened. โ That is not what happened. โ
โ It is exactly what happened. โ
โ People were already talking. โ Viserysโs voice had lowered further, urgency gathering beneath it. โ Are you too foolish to understand how it looked? This was always going to become public, Harwin. Better from family than from gossip. Better with my support than with false speculation. โ
Harwin almost laughed at the sheer audacity of it, but the sound would have been too ugly, too ragged, too near the animal place in him that grief had cornered. He felt it rise, a hard, broken spasm of air, half laugh and half sickness, and swallowed it down until his throat ached with the effort. His stomach had clenched into a hot fist beneath his ribs.
โ Your support. โ
Viserysโs jaw moved. โ Yes. โ
โ She didnโt ask for it. โ
โ She is my daughter. โ
โ Then you should have protected her. You should have stood between her and the room. That is what fathers do. That is what men do when they love someone more than they love being spared. But you didnโt. You saw a storm coming for you, and you put her body in front of it. You made her the windbreak. Your own daughter. My wife. Our child. โ
A fresh silence spread outward. Viserysโs mouth opened, then closed. For the first time, the words did not come readily to him. Rank had failed him. Charm had failed him. Fatherhood, invoked like a holy relic, had curdled in his hand. Harwin leaned forward by the smallest degree.
โ Donโt call that support. โ His voice dropped lower still. โ Call it what it was. Cowardice. โ
Alicent's face changed. Barely. A tiny tightening around the eyes.
Otto spoke at last, smooth as oil over a blade.โ Dr. Strong, I think emotions are understandably high, but perhaps this conversation would be better held in private. โ
Harwin did not look at Otto, nor had he shifted his gaze by so much as a degree. Otto's voice was a mosquito in the room; he'd swatted it without moving. โ There is no conversation. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not in a week, or a month, or however long it takes for you to convince yourself that what you did was kindness. โ He stepped nearer, near enough that the champagne on Viserys' breath was a sour, sweet heat against his own face. โ When Jacaerys is born โ โ he began, โ and it could be tonight. It could be tomorrow, you will not hear from us. You will not receive a call. You will not receive a message. You will not be told when she goes into labor, or when he is born, or what he weighs, or what time he came into the world. You will not be invited to the hospital suite. You will not meet our son until Rhaenyra decides . . . if Rhaenyra decides, that she wants you there. And that decision, Viserys, is hers. Not yours. Not mine. Not something that can be managed or arranged. It belongs to her alone. A concept you seem wholly unfamiliar. โ
Lyonel's hand was still on his arm. Harwin had almost forgotten it was there; he had been so consumed by the confrontation, by the need to say what he came to say, that his father's presence had receded to the periphery of his awareness.ย
โ I'm taking my wife home, and you will stay here, and you will enjoy your party, and you will smile, and you will shake hands, and you will accept congratulations on your engagement . . . And you will do all of that knowing what it cost. โ
He did not wait to see whether Viserys had understood.
Harwin was three steps into his departure when a voice materialized at his elbow, quiet as a hand laid flat against a closing door. โ I'll take care of the photographs. โ
His stride faltered. In truth, he had not considered that Larys might be watching. Which was foolish, perhaps. Larys was always watching.
โ What? โ
โ The photographs, โ Larys repeated. โ There were at least three photographers in the ballroom tonight. Press, freelance, and the hospital's own media team. They were shooting continuously through the announcements; Viserys made sure of that. Which means they captured everything. The moment she heard. Her face. Your face. Her standing up. The moment she left the table. โ
A fresh pulse of rage moved through Harwin so quickly that for one moment his vision narrowed at the edges. For a moment, he imagined crossing the room, taking every camera with his bare hands, cracking plastic and glass against the marble until there was nothing left but fragments. The fantasy came and went in less than a breath, leaving behind the sick, bitter knowledge that destruction would not be enough. Memory cards could be removed. Files could already be backed up. Phones could have captured what hired cameras missed. Harm multiplied faster than fists could answer.
And Larys had seen that too.
Harwin opened his mouth. But the words, whatever sentiment he had been reaching for, some formulation of thank you or I didn't expect that or the name of his brother spoken in a tone that would communicate, without the encumbrance of elaboration, that the gesture had been received and understood and would not be forgotten, they did not come. His face must have conveyed something though. He knew it by the way Larys looked at him. He seemed to take Harwin in whole and unflinchingly; the rawness around the eyes, the unsaid thing working in the throat, the exhaustion that had begun to hollow the anger from within. Larys looked at Harwinโs face and saw the dry well and did not wait for the words.
โ Go, โ Larys said.
Harwin swallowed once. ( It hurt. ) For a moment, he was aware of everything that had sat between them for years; all the distance, all the silences, all the ways they had learned to be brothers without ever quite knowing what to do with each other. It had not vanished wholly. None of it had. ( A sobering thought. ) His eyes met Larysโs. He gave him the only thanks he had, a smile, and Larys inclined his head a fraction of an inch; the ghost of a nod in return. And as he walked away, something of that small mercy stayed with him. Somewhere in its corners, someone had been watching for the next thing that might hurt Rhaenyra, and had reached for it before Harwin even knew to look.
That mattered.
More than he could say.
Daemon and Laena were where he had left them when he returned. Daemon stood near the entrance doors, arms crossed, his posture radiating coiled, dangerous stillness. Laena sat beside Rhaenyra on the bench. Her arm was around Rhaenyra's shoulders, and she was murmuring something; low, warm, and he knew instinctively it was reassurance in the aftermath of male cruelty: I see it, I see you, you are not imagining this. Rhaenyra's head rested against Laena's, and her eyes were closed, and in the soft light of the foyer she looked stripped. The armor was gone; the defiance, the dragon's fire, the spine of steel that she carried through every corridor of every hospital and every room of every gala . . . all of it set aside, or burned through, or simply spent. Harwin knelt as he had before; the marble was cold through his trousers, hard and unyielding, and his hands found her knees, then her hands, then her face, cradling it between his palms. Her skin was warm; flushed, tacky with dried tears. Beneath his thumbs, he could feel the fine, involuntary twitch of the muscles in her jaw, the residual tension of a woman who had clenched her teeth through contractions and fury and the searing agony of being betrayed by her own father.
โ I'm here baby, โ he whispered. โ I'm right here. Come on. We're going home. โ
The biggest trick the patriarchy pulled on the HOTD fandom was turning the central conflict into an online team-sports catfight. The entire narrative of the show is a tragedy about how a patriarchal society traps, isolates, and destroys two women who actually wanted peace. But the fandom completely ignores the systemic critique, using patriarchal slurs and metrics to root for the destruction of one woman over the other, wholly missing the point of the story. People are so desperate to have a "right" and "wrong" side that the thesis of the story is lost: the patriarchy destroys women, regardless of whether they rebel against it (Rhaenyra) or rigidly conform to it to survive (Alicent).
Wellโtime to write a new Harwin survival au where heโs still commander of the city watch when Rhaenyra takes the throne because that scene was everything.
๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐, ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐. Yet today, as her body reached new heights of feeling like a foreign prison, and her heart was heavy with the weight of forty weeks and two days of waiting, she thought herself the most grateful she had ever been. Despite sleeping for longer than she had in months, despite waking in the sweet, warm swath of Harwin's arms, Rhaenyra could not free herself from the suffocating beast that sat on her chest. The day had passed in a blur of grief and fear and shame, hours bleeding one into the next. She had drifted through their home as a lamenting ghost might haunt the rooms of a life it desperately wished for but could not touch. Her hand curved beneath the heavy swell of her belly, whispering silent pleas to the son who refused to come, promising him her vast, ferocious love. He only responded with a lazy roll or a slow tightening in her abdomen, the muscles drawing taut with inexorable pressure โ like a slow tide kissing the shore before it receded again, leaving only a dull ache in its wake. Rhaenyra fought tears and exhaled through them whensoever they came; prodromal, practice, nothing more. He was getting ready. He was close. But not tonight. She longed to be free of this pregnancy, to hold Jacaerys in her arms at last, to press her lips to the soft crown of his head and tell him he was wanted more than breath. But their boy had not felt the call of the world beyond her womb, and she remained cursed to endure her bodyโs stubborn refusal to release him.
Throughout it all, Harwin, her sweet, infinitely patient Harwin, saw her in ways no one ever had. He saw the fractures in her composure, the exhaustion that hollowed her, the shame that clung to her still after the nightโs humiliation. His discernment was oddly liberating; unburdening in a way that words could never fully name. It meant so much she could have wept at the sheer relief of not having to explain herself, of being met with ineffable understanding before the need even formed on her tongue. Every moment of the day he had simply acted without her having to ask, anticipating needs she had not even realised she carried. The gentle press of his thumbs into the protesting arches of her feet as she lay curled on the sofa, the bowl of soup placed before her without comment when her appetite flickered feebly, the steady presence at her back when she lingered with ache in her chest in the nursery doorway. In doing so he had granted her the time and space of respite, to grieve the false alarm of the night before, to gather the scattered shards of her dignity before it was time to don armour for the world.
The gala was an important event for her father, for her image as the heiress who would one day lead the Targaryen Medical Group, for the vast empire that held the nationโs private healthcare in its grasp. Collaborators, investors, and companies supplying equipment and pharmaceuticals would be there. And they, the Targaryens, the Strongs, the main partners, had to stand together and display a united, impenetrable front โ no matter the personal tempests raging beneath the surface. But that meant she would have to make herself presentable. To wear a dress and makeup at forty weeks and two days pregnant; after the night they had endured, after the mortification of waking soaked and terrified only to be told her body had betrayed her. Rhaenyra did not want to, and simultaneously she did. She wanted to stay at home, curled against Harwin in bed. She wanted to be as far from that bedroom and its reminders as possible. She wanted to wear nothing but an oversized t-shirt. She wanted to wear the gown she had chosen weeks ago because it was silky and elegant and she missed feeling like an unburdened woman. It was a confusing amalgam of emotions, a tangle of longing and aversion that pulled her in opposing directions until her head spun. It lasted until she had enough.
Stubborn defiance flared as afternoon approached evening. Rhaenyra refused to wallow in the mire of self pity. She refused to sit and let the shame and fear consume her whole. She needed the distraction, the purpose, the illusion of control that stepping into the glittering gala might afford her, even if only for a few hours. So after drifting through their home for the better part of the day with embarrassment and overwhelm as her constant shadow, she eventually forced herself to snap out of it as best she could, drawing from reserves of fortitude she had not known she still possessed. The shower this time had been shorter, the water hot but not punishing, and she had not allowed herself to grieve as fiercely beneath its spray. Of course, another tightening of her stomach found her then; a slow clenching of the muscles that made her still and hitched her breath beneath the water. Jacaerys was teasing her. He was close. She breathed deeply until the dull pain faded.
Rhaenyra had not rushed the process of getting ready, but had rather allowed herself the therapy of being meticulous in her rituals. She had slipped into the black silk of the dress that kissed her ankles, its open back pooling low in a graceful drape that exposed the line of her spine, the sweetheart neckline framing the generous swell of her breasts. She could not resist the smug smile at her reflection in the mirror; Harwin would approve. The delicate chain around her neck held her wedding ring; she had slipped the band from her finger with a small, offended huff. She felt its absence immediately, felt the familiar wave of defiance against hiding. But it was not yet time. She wished to protect their beautiful, private life from judgment and speculation for as long as she could. No one was owed anything. So she allowed the precious ring to glisten against her collarbone instead. She dried her hair with unhurried strokes and gathered it loosely into a half-updo, pale strands escaping to frame her face, softening the tired lines that no amount of concealer could fully erase. Her lips she painted a dusty pink, while her eyes received a careful touch of shadow and mascara to brighten a gaze that remained veiled by exhaustion despite her efforts.
When she emerged at last with slow, waddling strides, one hand pressed to the small of her back and the other holding a purse, her cheeks burned a bright crimson beneath the weight of Harwinโs devouring stare. It stunned her, even now, how intensely he still wanted her; how he could look upon her enormously reshaped body with such unabashed awe, as though she were still the woman who had caught his eye across a crowded bar all those months ago. It made her ache with tenderness, it made her heal. Rhaenyraโs own pulse began to race in answer; a wild, entirely untamed flutter beneath her ribs. The sight of him dressed in her most favoured shade of blue, the perfectly tailored suit hugging the breadth of his shoulders and chest, the tantalising tie, the curls arranged to irresistible perfection. He was devastatingly handsome, a vision that made breath halt in her throat and her heart leap in somersaults. Gods, she loved him so fiercely. So, so fiercely.
โ Hmmโyou donโt look too bad yourself, Dr. Strong. A terribly dangerous thing . . . I might have to worry about predators tonight. โ Rhaenyra said with suggestive lilt as she slowly consumed the space between them. Her hand drifted from her spine and reached up to straighten the tie that did not need straightening at all โ she simply could not help herself, and the cheeky upturn of her mouth bespoke as much. โ I feel . . . a solid seven. Which is far better than the venue could have dared hoped for. Whether or not I burn it to the ground depends on how the night progresses. โ She confessed before pausing to breathe him in, the warmth in the intimate space between them seeping into her very bones, nourishing her with his unique brand of light. The teasing edge of her voice softened, faded into sincerity, โ Iโm alright, baby. I will tell you if I want to go home, I promise. โ Her hand slipped into his, fingers entwining with instinctive ease before she lifted his hand to her lips for a soft kiss against his knuckles. It was gratitude caressed against his skin; for his patience through her violent, fickle storms, for his understanding, for every adoring effort he had poured into her today and every day. The kiss was her love incarnate.
When she withdrew, an amused breath fled her โ the fiery spark, albeit dimmer than usual, returned to her eyes. She used her thumb to wipe the faint lipstick mark from his hand, the colour a dusty echo of her own mouth.
โ Maybe I should leave you marked, so that the men and women at this spectacle know you are taken. โ
๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐โ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐; its glass and steel facade reflecting the city lights like an infinite tapestry of captured stars. A large building with cavernous spaces often meant for weddings and celebrations of the grandest sort, it now welcomed them in lavish splendour; Viserys had spared no expense. There was ample food and drink just at the welcoming mingle, the air rich with the scent of delicacies, aged wines and champagne. The din of conversation wrapped around Harwin and Rhaenyra as they entered. The foyer was decorated elegantly with floral arrangements, chandeliers and candles, trays of crystal flutes and delicate appetisers balanced on silver platters. Servers drifted through the crowd with habitual grace โ ensuring the guests had all they needed, ensuring no clutter gathered to mar the perfection. Only a hair's breadth over the threshold, Rhaenyraโs shoulders tensed, the crowd was already overstimulating her; the rise and fall of voices, the clink of glass against glass, bodies moving through perfumed air that felt too cloying for her lungs. Her chest tightened as the sheer volume of it all pressed in on her senses. Most infuriating of all were the curious eyes that fell immediately upon them. As expected when a heavily pregnant woman arrives on the arm of a man ( her known supervisor ) believed to not yet be married, whose palm hovered suspiciously near the small of her back in an intimate gesture. She knew what it looked like. She knew the chords of the inevitable gossip. But Rhaenyra could not bring herself to dwell. She was too tired, too warm and impatient and uncomfortable in her own skin to spare energy for anything but the steady comfort that Harwinโs presence beside her provided. Let them gossip โ they know nothing. Instinctively, possessively, she leaned nearer to his side. Another wave of pressure rippled through her then, a tide cresting over her taut muscles. The pain lingered a breath longer this time. Prodromal. Prodromal.
โ Gods . . .ย โ she sighed quietly, the word escaping on a breath that carried the weight of her exhaustion. Her gaze swept the room and found her father at the farthest end, champagne glass in hand, standing with Lyonel Strong and Baelor Targaryen and a cluster of the eveningโs sponsors. Rhaenyra knew those sponsors; she had charmed them herself at a similar event a little over a year ago, playing the loving, delightful daughter of the CEO with eerily masterful artifice. The memory felt like it belonged to a stranger. Viserys laughed at something one of the sponsors said; loudly, edged with that particular tone she knew to be for appearances alone. She braced herself against the sound, swallowed the heaviness, the old aversion that gathered within her chest. Though her father and she had tried to mend their relationship in the last few months, it was still not fully healed. Viserys had approached her after the baby shower with an olive branch; she knew what that effort had cost a man like him, and she had appreciated it surprisingly โ the gesture sparking a fragile hope within her that one day they might be close again. But they were not yet there in full, no matter how much she ached for it. It would take a long time to heal from a fatherโs neglect in the wake of her motherโs passing, from the way he had left her to navigate the grief alone. She looked up to Harwin, who of course had noted the tension in her shoulders and the taut set of her jaw.
โ You worry more than my old nursemaids, โ Rhae said, the words light but laced with affection, a small attempt to ease the furrow between his brows. โ Iโm still okay, Harwin. โ She reassured him as the two moved towards the wardrobe area, where they handed over their coats to the attendants with murmured thanks. Before they returned back into the crowd, into an abundance of eyes and judgement, Rhaenyra reached for Harwinโs hand and tugged him near; close enough that her nose brushed the line of his jaw, so that she could drown in the intoxicating scent of him โย his cologne, and the richer warmth that was purely Harwin. Though there werenโt many people just there, she didnโt care who might glimpse them; this was her choice, this was for no one but them โ a stolen moment of intimacy before the performance began.
โ I love you so much, โ she whispered, ardent and soft all at once, โ We walk in together. Damn them all and their speculations. โ
๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ of gold and glass. Tables had been dressed in cream linen, each one crowned with low arrangements of white roses and deep red dahlias, the petals dark as wine at their throats. At the far end, a stage had been set beneath the vast windows, the city spread behind it in bright, glittering indifference. A string quartet played somewhere near the bar, their music made nearly decorative beneath the greater animal noise of moneyed conversation. Laughter rose and struck the ceiling. Champagne moved from hand to hand. ( Harwin hated all of it at once. ) A senior consultant from cardiology, red-faced and benign, clapped Harwin once on the arm and told him he cleaned up well enough to be mistaken for administration. He smiled because the man meant well, and because Rhaenyraโs fingers warned him not to be impossible this early. A board memberโs wife kissed the air beside Rhaenyraโs cheek and congratulated her on how stunning she looked, which would have been tolerable if her eyes had not dropped to Rhaenyraโs belly before the word had finished leaving her mouth. A representative from a device company introduced himself, and Harwin shook his hand, said something forgettable, then felt Rhaenyra shift beside him. He turned toward her by instinct, lowering his head; the contraction moved beneath her skin unseen, but he knew it from her posture: the small draw inward, the stillness that came over her as if all her attention had gone down into the hidden dark where their son lay pressed against the world. He slid his hand from hers to the low of her back, over the exposed warmth of her skin where the dress dipped. Ten seconds. Fifteen. Twenty-eight. The representative laughed at something he had said himself. Rhaenyraโs shoulders dropped the faintest measure. ( It passed. ) She lifted her eyes to Harwin and gave him a look that said, clearly, do not start, then muttered something about him worrying more than a nursemaid. He bent near her ear. โ I said nothing, my love. โ
A smile tugged at him before he could prevent it. Gods help him, he loved her. In the middle of all of itโthe gossip, the discomfort, the false labour, the absurd grandeur of her fatherโs galaโshe could still turn one look on him and make him feel, for half a second, like the world might yet be survivable. Then he caught sight of Viserys across the hall, and the feeling thinned. He stood near the stage with his own father, and a cluster of sponsors Harwin recognized only because their names appeared on plaques, hospital wings, and the sort of emails that made department heads answer politely while wanting to put their heads through drywall. Viserys had dressed in black with a deep red pocket square, a choice almost too on the nose even for him. And beside them, not quite with them, was Larys. Harwinโs attention caught there and stayed. His brother had positioned himself in the softer shadow near a column, where the light fell unevenly across his face. He leaned on his cane with both hands folded over the head of it, his posture relaxed enough to seem harmless to anyone who did not know him. The old discomfort moved beneath his skin, familiar as an old scar pulled tight in cold weather. Their eyes met, and for a heartbeat, Harwin was a boy again in his fatherโs house, watching Larys from across some polished table while adults spoke above them. He had never known what to do with his brotherโs quiet. He remembered carrying him once, when they were lads, and the mud had been too deep in their backyard. Larysโs good shoe lost somewhere behind them, his small fingers digging into Harwinโs shirt with furious dignity. He recalled promising to break the nose of any boy who laughed. He had done it too. ( More than once. ) But Larys had never asked for that protection, and that realization had made him guilty, later, when he understood that pity was its own kind of insult. Now Larys looked at Rhaenyra with an unreadable softness that might have been sympathy, calculation, or both. Harwinโs hand flexed once at his side. Larysโ gaze returned to him, and a small curve touched his mouth, almost brotherly. ( Almost. )ย
There had been no time to dwell on it before he caught sight of Viserys crossing the room with Lyonel a half-step behind him. Viserys was smiling. ( Too broadly, perhaps. ) There was a brightness in his expression that did not sit easily on him, a sheen of champagne and nerves, or triumph. Harwinโs stomach tightened.ย
โ There you are, โ Viserys said, as though they had been misplaced children recovered from a garden. His eyes moved over Rhaenyra with an open, hungry tenderness that arrived too late and too loudly. โ My darling girl. Look at you. Absolutely radiant. Isnโt she radiant, Lyonel? โ
Lyonelโs gaze flicked first to Harwin, then to Rhaenyra. He had never been one to perform delight; he had never needed embellishment to make himself understood.
โ She looks tired, โ Lyonel said, though not unkindly. โ And lovely. Those may both be true. โ
Harwin loved him fiercely for it.ย
Rhaenyra made whatever answer courtesy demanded of her. Harwin heard the words without keeping them. His attention had snagged on Viserysโ hand coming to hover near Rhaenyraโs shoulder, and he looked to Harwin then, pride swelling strangely in his face. โ Big night for you as well, Dr. Strong. โ
His brows furrowed. Harwin lowered his glass without drinking from it. โ Sir? โ
Viserys looked delighted by the question, which somehow made it worse.
โ Oh, donโt look so alarmed. You didnโt think we were going to let your work go unacknowledged forever, did you? Chief Attending of Emergency Medicine, the departmentโs best outcomes in a decade! โ
Heat rose at the back of Harwinโs neck, a blunt, boyish discomfort he had never managed to outgrow no matter how many titles people put before his name.ย
โ With a team. โ Harwin said at once, perhaps too sharply.ย
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his father's mouth twitch at the edges. It was small, there and gone, the sort of expression another man might have missed. Harwin did not. His fatherโs pride had always been a quiet thing, never wasteful, never spilling over where anyone could slip in it.ย
โ With a team, yes, yes, of course. โ Viserys waved the correction away, affectionate and careless. โ But leadership matters. Tonight, the foundation is presenting you with the Harrenhal Clinical Excellence Award. โ
For one foolish second, Harwin could only look at him.ย
People liked to praise the emergency department in abstract, Harwin had learned, from a safe distance, in ways that made it sound noble rather than loud, underfunded, fluorescent, and half-built out of human endurance. In truth, he had made his peace with that years ago. The work mattered whether anyone clapped or not. Most days, he preferred it that way. ย Still, something in him had gone strangely hollow.
โ I didnโt know, โ It was inadequate. ( Worse, it was honest. )ย
Viserys seemed pleased by that, as if surprise itself had been the gift. โ Well, that was rather the point. โ
Harwin felt Rhaenyraโs gaze flick briefly toward her father. There was no mistaking the caution in it now. Viserys, either by choice or nature, did not seem to notice. Or perhaps he noticed and enjoyed the power of having noticed first. After a moment, he inclined his head because that was safer than trying to arrange his face into gratitude before he understood the shape of it. โ Thatโsโฆ very generous. โ
โ Earned, โ Lyonel interjected.ย
Only one word. Harwin looked at his father then despite himself. Lyonelโs gaze held his, steady and unembellished. There was no indulgence in it, no attempt to make the moment larger than it was. His throat tightened, and he gave the smallest nod, the only answer he trusted himself with. Dinner began soon after, though Harwin could not have said precisely how they moved from one moment into the next. The evening gathered them forward with its usual machinery: hosts directing guests, chairs being drawn back, waitstaff moving between tables dressed in white linen and silver. The ballroom settled into a more formal hush as people found their assigned seats beneath the chandeliers. Flowers crowded the centrepieces, pale and expensive, their perfume fighting a losing battle against wine, varnished wood. Every so often, his knee nearly brushed hers beneath the table, though in spite of it, he kept his hands where they belongedโone on his lap, one near the base of his water glassโand answered when spoken to. He listened to a cardiologist describe a sailing trip. He nodded at a donor who misremembered the name of the emergency departmentโs new intake system.ย
The award came halfway through dinner.
For a moment he did not move. He had known it was coming, and still the sound placed him at a distance from himself. Dr. Harwin Strong. Chief Attending of Emergency Medicine. Harrenhal Clinical Excellence Award. He brought her fingers to his mouth before he stood, pressing a brief kiss there because he could not help it and because, suddenly, he did not care who saw. A sound moved softly through the nearby guests. ( Surprise, perhaps. ) Curiosity. Harwin let it pass over him with a smile. It could not touch the place in him where her skin had warmed his lips. The walk to the stage felt longer than it was. A large screen behind the podium displayed his name, his title, a photograph he hated from some hospital brochure taken three years ago when the communications team had cornered him near the ambulance bay. In the picture, his shoulders looked too broad for the white coat and his expression suggested he had been promised escape and betrayed at the last moment. There was laughter when he glanced back at it and visibly grimaced. Even Viserys laughed, delighted by the human interruption in the polish of the ceremony. The award itself was glass and heavy enough to be used as a weapon, which improved his opinion of it considerably.ย
Viserys handed it to him with both hands.
โ Well earned, Dr. Strong, well earned. โ
That softened him, too. ( Damn the man. )ย
Harwin accepted the award and the handshake; the microphone passed into his palm. The lights were too warm from the stage; faces blurred slightly beyond the first few tables: consultants, donors, board members, a senator whose son had once come through the emergency department with alcohol poisoning and a publicist. He looked out and found, first, his father. Lyonel sat straight-backed and unreadable, except for the depth in his eyes. Pride sat there without decoration. ย Then Rhaenyra, her pale hair loose around her face, one hand settled beneath the great curve of her belly, his wedding ring glinting on the chain at her throat. She looked tired. She looked beautiful. She looked like the only true thing in the room.
โ Thank you. Iโm not very good at this sort of thing, so Iโll spare everyone the illusion that I am. โ A ripple of laughter moved through the tables. Harwin waited for it to settle. He had learned, over years in emergency medicine, that silence made people listen if you did not rush to fill it. โ Emergency Medicine isnโt one personโs work. It canโt be. The best thing Iโve ever done as chief attending is hire people clever enough to tell me when Iโm wrong and stubborn enough to make me listen. The department runs because nurses, residents, techs, paramedics, clerks, and physicians choose, every day, to walk into other peopleโs worst moments and not look away. That is the work. Not mine. Ours. โ His thumb moved once along the edge of the glass award. Harwinโs eyes returned to Rhaenyra despite himself. โ And Iโm grateful for the people who make it possible to come home from that work and still remember there is a life beyond it. Thank you very much for this. โ
He handed back the microphone to applause that felt warmer now, and by the time he returned to the table, Rhaenyraโs eyes were bright in a way that made his chest ache with affection.ย
The dessert course had just been placed before them when Viserys rose again. There was no announcement in the programme. Harwin knew because he had read the damned thing three times looking for the fastest way out. The first time had been in the car while Rhaenyra sat beside him, one hand low beneath her belly, face turned toward the window as city light slid over her cheek. The second had been while pretending to listen to a donor explain a private wing expansion that would, apparently, change lives primarily by putting his name in larger letters above an entrance. The third had been during dinner, when Rhaenyra had gone quiet through another wave of pressure and Harwin had needed something to do with his eyes that was not staring at her. ย Viserys was not supposed to speak again. A hush moved outward from the centre table. Forks lowered. Glasses stilled. Harwin felt the first cold thread of unease draw itself through his spine.
Viserys touched a hand to his jacket pocket as though feeling for notes, but he did not take any out. โ Friends, colleagues, partners, โ he began. โ I promise I wonโt keep you long. We have celebrated extraordinary work tonightโespecially that of Dr. Harwin Strong, whose service to this hospital and to every patient who enters our emergency department has become nothing short of indispensable. โ Applause again. โ Many of you have known my daughter Rhaenyra since she was a girl running through hospital corridors with untied shoes and more opinions than sense. โ Gentle laughter rose. Viserys smiled at it, indulgent, almost tearful. โ She has grown into a physician of remarkable courage, a woman of fierce conviction, andโthough she will scold me for saying so publiclyโthe great pride of my life. โ
Applause rose again, warm and generous, rolling toward him before Harwin could ready himself for it. He inclined his head because that was what one did. Because there were cameras somewhere. Because every eye in the room had already turned once in his direction that night, and he had survived it by becoming, for a few clean seconds, the version of himself who knew how to stand still under praise. Beside him, Rhaenyra had gone very still; her hand was cold in Harwinโs, and he closed his fingers around hers, squeezing once.ย
โ This past year has brought changes to our family. Profound ones. Joyful ones. And as her father, I find I cannot let this evening pass without acknowledging them. โ
Daemon set his glass down very slowly. Laenaโs hand moved under the table, no doubt to his knee or wrist, some quiet tether before he could become exactly what the moment deserved. Lyonel, at Viserysโ side of the room, had gone utterly still, and he realized all at once it was the look of a man who had suspected a storm and hoped, through the last fragile seconds, that the sky might yet hold.ย
โ It seems that Dr. Strong, Harwin, and my daughter, who have been in one another's orbit for all of their lives, have found something deeply special together of late, a soul match, as it were. Their love is deeply inspiring, and it reminds me so much of mine own that I had once with Rhaenyra's mother, Aemma, before her untimely passing. So please join me in congratulating my daughter, Rhaenyra, and Harwin Strongโmy son-in-lawโon their marriage. โ
Harwin turned his head toward her then, fully, propriety be damned. Her eyes were fixed on her father; the color had gone from her mouth. For one second, there was no applause; there was only the strange, stunned absence before a room understood what had been given to it. Then applause came once more. A wave of it. Bright, startled, delighted in places, uncertain in others, gathering strength as people found one anotherโs faces and decided how they were meant to react.ย
โ And more than that, โ Viserys added, his voice thickening over the roar of applause. โ I am honored beyond words to share that I am to become a grandfather. Our family is expecting its first grandchild very soon. Very soon indeed, by the look of my poor darling girl . . . and as fate would have it, I will share a grandson with my chairman, Dr. Lyonel Strong, who has been with me since the very beginning. โ
His own heart gave one great, uneven thud. Then another. Too hard, too slow, each beat dropping through him like something heavy falling down a stairwell. Beneath the table, her fingers had slackened in his grip, not pulling away, only gone distant, as if the hand he held no longer quite belonged to her. Harwin felt it before she made a sound; her body drew inward, pain or pressure or both moving through her in a slow, merciless grip. She bent forward a fraction. He was out of his chair before the applause had finished. His napkin fell to the floor, and his award remained abandoned beside the dessert plate, catching chandelier light in cruel little flashes. Harwin went down on one knee beside Rhaenyraโs chair all at once, not caring that the room watched, all eyes on them. He put one hand over hers, the other braced at the back of her chair. Her gaze remained on Viserys as he stepped away from the podium to receive the roomโs congratulations. People were rising now. Not many, but enough. A ripple of movement near the front tables. A donorโs wife pressed a hand to her own chest as though overcome by the beauty of it. A man Harwin recognized from the board leaned toward his wife and said something with a smile that showed too many teeth. Champagne flutes lifted. Someone began another, smaller applause, and several others followed because people were sheep when chandeliers were involved.
โ Look at me, sweetheart, โ he said softly, and after a moment, her eyes found his own. There she was. โ Breathe with me. Slow. โ He inhaled first so she could follow it, steady through his nose, then out. His voice dropped lower, meant only for her though half the room had gone quiet trying to listen. โ Thatโs it. Good girl. Again. โ The contraction held. Longer this time. He counted without wanting to. ( Thirty. Forty. Fifty. ) Rhaenyraโs lashes fluttered, and her hand went to the underside of her belly, pressing there as though she could hold their son and her dignity in place by will alone. โ Almost gone. There. There it is. โ
He saw the moment it left her: the tiny give in her shoulders, the faint shudder she tried to swallow. Around them, the ballroom seemed to exist at an obscene distance, and the applause had begun to break apart into conversation. Harwin could hear the first soft tearing sounds of it now, the fabric being pulled into strips.ย
โ Married? When? โ
โ I knew something wasโ โ
โ Well, look at her, she must beโ โ
โ Viserys kept that quiet. โ
โ Strongโs son, then? โ
The last one came from somewhere behind him, a manโs voice softened by wine and cowardice, and all at once, Harwinโs vision darkened at the edges.ย
And there was only rage.ย
Wellโtime to write a new Harwin survival au where heโs still commander of the city watch when Rhaenyra takes the throne because that scene was everything.
๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐. Not because the stream of words within him had grown parched, but because silence had long been his first and truest instrument of understanding. He preferred to observe, to assess, to analyse before acting. Tonight, however, as his eldest son crossed the threshold of the old house with the expression of a man who was drowning, Lyonel did not need time or analysis. The very moment his eyes lifted from the paper in his lap and settled on Harwinโs face, he knew something was wrong. His son's expression was etched with uncertainty, with fear, with helplessness. Whatever weighed on him went far beyond the ordinary exhaustion of a long shift or the lingering shadow of a bad outcome in the Pit. He knew it the way he had always known when Ellynโs heart was in turmoil. While she had lived, she had scarcely ever been able to veil what emotions lived in her from Lyonelโs gaze. Whether fury lit her over something he had most certainly done wrong, or amusement softened the corners of her mouth at his nonsense, or affection made her eyes soft โ his darling wife had been so achingly easy for him to see, and so very easy to love. Their children had inherited so much of her. Especially Harwin. His boy had never fully mastered the art of concealment. Not from him. And tonight his emotions were a tempestuous storm. Lyonel said nothing at first. He folded the paper with measured calm, the rustle of the pages the only sound that came from him. He did not ask. He would not. Harwin had come here for a reason, and Lyonel had always believed that the greatest gift a father could give was the space to speak when the words were finally ready to come. He simply waited.
When the words did come, pouring in a raw and desperate rush, Lyonel felt the startle of it all settle deep in his chest. Rhaenyra Targaryen was pregnant with Harwin's child. For a split second his eyes widened, and a cold thread of disbelief stitching tight around his ribs. His blood seemed to still in his veins. Viserysโs daughter. Twelve weeks along. A child already growing in the most complicated of wombs. The absurdity of it, the cruel poetry of fateโs scheme, struck him with such force that he was nearly inspired to scoff. He did not. He steadied, because what his son needed now was anchorage, for the ground beneath his feet to remain solid when it threatened to give way completely. His posture remained relaxed against the worn leather of the chair, his gaze never leaving Harwinโs face; warm with the very paternal affection that had weathered every storm the boy had ever brought home. First and foremost, he cared about the wellbeing of the man sitting across from him โ about easing the wild tides of panic and helplessness he could see crashing behind his eyes.
โ Breathe, son, โ he said at last, the words a reminder more than command. โ You will do no one any good if you pass out on my floor. โ There was no anger in Lyonel. There should have been, perhaps. There would have been, had Harwin known who she was the night they met. But he hadnโt known. The whole thing was an improbable twist of fate, a collision of lives that should never have intersected in that way. And Lyonel could not be angry for it. He trusted his son. He knew Harwinโs moral code better than he knew his own hands. Harwin, who as a boy had never broken a rule without carrying the guilt of it like a stone in his chest. Harwin, who had followed every instruction with solemn focus during his OB rotations. Harwin, whose sense of right and wrong had always been something profoundly admirable. The terror and the guilt swimming in his eyes told Lyonel everything he needed to know. This had not been a line crossed in knowledge. It had been an honest mistake. But seven hells, what a mistake it was.
Gods. Rhaenyra of all people. Rhaenyra. Viserys and sweet Aemmaโs daughter. The fierce little girl he had known of since the day she was born; the girl he'd watched raise her chin in petulant defiance and wreak havoc in tulle. The girl who was meant to inherit the very hospital Lyonelโs own family had founded, the girl already carrying the weight of an empire on her shoulders. Viserys did not know yet. But he would. Twelve weeks along, and there would be no hiding the truth for much longer. Lyonel would have worried more for Harwinโs position at St. Harrenhal if it were not for his own standing as business partner and friend. Viserys would not be pleased, he might even direct some of that famous Targaryen temper toward Lyonel himself but he would not dare let it touch Harwinโs career. Not truly. Unfortunately, it was Rhaenyra who would likely bear the brunt of it. Lyonel could not help the sharp pang of pity that moved through him for the girl. Where she would need a fatherโs comfort, she was likely to receive only reprimand and scrutiny.
โ Viserys will do no such thing. โ He said calmly as he rose in unhurried movement, the floorboards creaking gently beneath the slippers Jeyne had gifted him at his last birthday. Lyonel crossed to the liquor cabinet, his hand finding his most favoured bottle. With steady hands he poured himself a glass, the amber liquid catching the dim light. When he turned back to Harwin, he did not step to his chair. Instead he crossed the short distance to where his son sat, and with one hand still curled around his glass, the other reached out to help peel the rain-damp coat from his sonโs broad shoulders. The fabric was heavy, cold, the scent of the nightโs storm clinging to it. Lyonel draped it carefully across the armrest. The gesture was easy and tender, the first small attempt to lift some fraction of the weight his boy was carrying. Then his hand came to rest on Harwinโs shoulder, fingers pressing in a reassuring squeeze โ and in that touch alone he poured his conviction that love and steadiness could set most things right. He withdrew after a moment and returned to his seat, sinking into the leather with a soft sigh. Lyonel's mouth settled into something almost wistful, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening with memory.
โ You were, I believe, only nine years old when you drove your bike into your motherโs bed of hyacinths. The flowers were crushed beneath the wheels, and Ellyn was discontented, though not truly angry. It had, after all, been an accident. But you, gods, boy โ you took it as the gravest crime you might ever have committed. I have never seen a child so devoted to the act of making amends as you were in those weeks that followed. You spent every spare hour on your knees in that dirt, trying to coax life back into the damn plants. And the flowers thrived for it. Your unintended mishap was rectified, and in the tending of it I would be bold enough to claim that you discovered a new fondness, a new patience. You took responsibility, and many good things came of it. The flowers bloomed brighter than before, your mother was delighted, and you learned that broken things can be made whole again if one is willing to try. โ He chuckled then, the sound low and fond as his expression softened.
โ This is not as simple as a trampled flowerbed, I admit. You have gotten yourself into quite a mess, lad, and it will require that very devotion that I know you are capable of. Regardless of how you feel for her, and vice versa, Rhaenyra will need you. She will need your patience and your steadiness. I know Viserys. I know how deeply he loves his daughter. But when he finds out, he is going to have a reaction that will leave her feeling quite lonely, I reckon. You need to be there. In whatever capacity sheโll have you. And we, I, will catch you in return. It will be alright, Harwin. โ
๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐, ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐. It would have been easier, perhaps, if he could have taken his fatherโs certainty and made a roof of it, crawling beneath the old, familiar weight of Lyonelโs voice and allowing it cover him until the worst of the storm had passed. He had done that as a boy. More times than he could count. Lyonel had never been a man who wasted comfort, never one for soft, useless noise when silence could hold more, but when he did speak, Harwin had always felt some part of the ground return beneath him. But this time, he sat very still in the chair opposite his father, rain cooling in the seams of his shirt where his coat had been peeled away. The room was warm, almost too warm. A clean glass sat in Lyonelโs hand. Harwinโs own rested on the side table, half-empty, amber caught at the bottom like something precious and useless.
โ You say that like itโs something I can fix by being decent enough, โ He rubbed his thumb once over the knuckle of his opposite hand, pressing until the skin blanched beneath it. He drew a breath and found it shallow. โ I can do that part. I can stand there and take whatever comes. Viserys can shout himself hoarse if he likes. Daemon can put me through a wall. The board can look at me like Iโve dragged scandal into their nice clean corridors with my bare hands. Fine. Iโve been called worse things by better men. โ ย His mouth tightened. โ But you know how it sounds for her. Even with the truth. Even if she tells them exactly what happened. Even if I tell them. It's all so bloody . . . unbelievable. โ His thumb dragged once along the rim of the empty glass beside him. He had not realized he had reached for it until his skin met the cool curve of it. He pulled his hand away. ( The want for another drink sat inside him with a shameful clarity. ) โ Seven hells, I know exactly how it looks. I can already hear it. Attending gets the CEO's daughter pregnant. Convenient, isnโt it? But they'll eat her alive for it. Quietly, politely, with all the right, passive aggressive phrases. โ
He swallowed. The whiskey had left a sour heat along the back of his throat. He wished suddenly that he had not drunk it. He wished he had drunk more. Both desires stood beside one another, equally useless. A thin ticking came from the cooling fireplace. Lyonelโs glass sat untouched in his hand, amber catching the light. Harwin saw, with a sudden and piercing clarity, how old his father looked in that moment. A man who had buried his wife, raised four children, given too much of himself to hospitals and boards and other peopleโs crises, and was now being asked, near midnight, to absorb one more impossible thing because his eldest boy still believed the safest place to bleed was at his fatherโs feet. His fatherโs story of the hyacinths lingered in the room after the telling, gentle and absurd and unbearable. Harwin remembered it all too well now that Lyonel had dragged it back into the light: the bicycle skidding sideways in the wet grass, the soft crunch of stems beneath the tyres, the violent bloom of horror in his chest when he saw what he had done. His motherโs flowers had been crushed flat into the soil, blue and purple petals clinging ruined to the mud. He had cried over them for hours, though his mother had tried to laugh him out of it, kissing his hair and telling him the garden would forgive him. ( It hadnโt mattered. ) He had watered half-dead plants until the bed was more puddle than earth. He had read gardening books he hardly understood. He had dug with his bare hands because the trowel felt too slow. ( And in the end, yes, they had bloomed again. )ย
The rain softened outside, thinning from a steady patter to a fine, persistent hiss. The house felt warmer now that his coat was off, but Harwin still held a chill beneath his skin. He wondered absurdly whether Rhaenyra was warm enough. Whether she had gone home. Whether she had eaten anything. Whether she was sitting alone somewhere, one hand held low over the secret between them.ย
Harwinโs eyes burned. He blinked once, slowly, refusing it, and he looked at Lyonel then, and the old helplessness had come back into his face, the one he had worn as a boy after doing wrong by accident and finding that remorse did not undo consequence, then he bowed his head as he had before, one hand coming up to cover his mouth. He stayed that way for a long moment, breath warming his palm, eyes fixed on nothing. He had thought himself familiar with unfairness. The hospital taught a man a great deal about unfairness if he let it. Children got sick. Good people arrived too late. Bad men survived things that should have killed them. Mothers begged over bodies already cooling. Fathers stood in corridors and discovered that love had no practical application when the blood had left the room.
โ I thought I understood consequence, โ he said after a while. โ You make a mistake, you own it. You say the truth plainly. You take what comes. โ His mouth pulled faintly, without humor. โ Thatโs very clean too, isnโt it? Very noble. Very easy to say when the consequence isnโt lodged inside another person. โ
He reached again, without thinking, for the glass on the side table. His fingers touched the rim, lingered there, then withdrew. He set both hands flat on his thighs instead.
โ Sheโs going to be alone in this in ways I canโt reach. Even if I do everything right. Even if I stand beside her. Even if I take every bit of blame that belongs to me and half that doesnโt. It will still be her body. Her career. Her father. Her name. โ
๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐, ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐, ๐๐๐๐๐. It bloomed beneath her ribs, fed the vanity she had never deigned to temper. It swelled her pride as though it were a hearth given the most flammable kindling in the shape of him. The smug satisfaction that rushed through her veins felt almost indecent in its brightness. Yet beneath the reckless blaze there moved something intricate, something that did not belong to the easy hunger of a bar flirtation; an invisible tether that drew tighter with each of his steps across the floor, as though the space between them had always been waiting to be crossed. As though two pieces of a sacred puzzle had suddenly aligned and fallen into place โ she felt it intensify with each step he took, each absent body in the crowd he pressed past to bring himself closer to her orbit.ย The feeling was big. Too big, too profound in meaning to earn any thought other than her dismissal; ridiculous, she didn't know this man. Whatever she felt thrum in the air was certainly nothing but desire. He was a stranger to her. A devastatingly handsome stranger who had accepted her invitation precisely as she had intended. There was tremendous power in the victory, a conquering. Gods, how Rhaenyra delighted in such power โ it made her blood sing, it tasted so very sweet. Sweeter, still, when at last he stopped before her and the amber flecks in his warm eyes caught the low light. Her smile sharpened; as though a predator who had just ensnared her prey and intended to play before descending to devour and ravage.ย She leaned forward on the barstool, the silk of her dress shifting against her thighs, and let her crimson nails tap once, twice, against the wood of the bar. The barman, wise in the ways of women who looked at men like that, drifted away without a word.
โย Hmm . . . clever man. โ Rhaenyra drawled honeyed praise with fervid gaze and dangerous smile, each syllable a purr woven with amusement and challenge. That very tone had sent other men into tremors; but he remained steady. How deliciously thrilling. โ Although, your logic is flawed. Itโs insolent to deprive a woman of satisfaction. I should walk away, but fortunately for you, I've decided to give you a chance to satisfy me. Or well . . . you may try, at least. โ Her gaze dragged over him with shameless, indulgent languor, from the loosened knot of his tie, the slightly open collar, the solid breadth of his chest and shoulders. Emboldened and with literally nothing to lose, she cared little for the blatancy; she wanted him to see, wanted the knowledge of her wanting to settle into his skin. The air between them had grown charged, it crackled and sparked with invisible electricity. Rhaenyra felt the tension twist and curl low in her abdomen; molten fire that made her breath catch. It was maddening how completely he had seized her attention, and how little she minded when normally this measure of captivation would have made her bristle. Handsome was the simplest truth about him, and therefore the least interesting. Maybe she was mad, but there was depth in the way his eyes moved over her face, in the shape of his smile โ something that held more than appetite. There was steadiness in the way he had crowded close without smothering her, a whisper of protectiveness in his posture she felt in her marrow even though they had never spoken before tonight. She felt oddly . . . safe. Rhaenyra was intrigued in a way she had not been in years. This man did not look at her like he wanted to douse her fire. He looked at her like he would strive to make it blaze higher, brighter, wilder, while also being there to catch her if she fell. It was terribly attractive.
โ Seeing as you cannot offer to buy me a drink . . . โ She continued, glancing pointedly at her untouched negroni, โ . . . your only option is to invite me to your booth. โ Boldly, unapologetically,ย she extended her hand because she had never been one to deprive herself. She found his loosened tie; the gesture flimsy pretence, a pitiful excuse to let her fingertips linger against the firm chest of him, to accidentally allow her nails to graze the sliver of skin just above his collar. A scorching spark leapt up her arm and settled someplace visceral. Bright and dangerous. He was warm. Like a furnace. The discovery lit something feral in her; she wondered, quite suddenly and without shame, what the rest of that heat would feel like against her mouth, her throat, the bare skin beneath her dress. Her eyes rose to his and held, violet meeting warmth, intention naked between them.
โ Wellโare you going to ask me? โ She said with deceptive sweetness, tilting her head ever a touch. Her hand slid slowly down the length of his tie until her fingers curled around the bottom. With unapologetic authority, she tugged. Not hard enough to move him if he did not wish to be moved, but firm enough to make her intent unmistakable. He came closer. Close enough that the scent of him intoxicated her. Close enough that his breath feathered her skin. Close enough that the low sound at the back of his throat reached her ears and set her aflame. โ Let me help you answer that, โ She murmured as she idly twisted his tie around her fingertip, โ it would be terribly rude not to. These stools are not particularly comfortable . . . and Iโd rather have you all to myself. โ
๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐, ๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐. Harwin knew this well. He looked down at where her crimson nails rested against the dark fabric of his tie, and he leaned close enough that the warmth between them gathered into something nearly visible; the fine shadow cast by her lashes, the faint shine of her mouth, the wicked little curl of her finger as though she had found a leash and anticipated that he might appreciate the poetry of it. ( God help him, perhaps he did. ) His own chest rising beneath the loosened collar of his shirt, too slow to hide the way his breath had hitched all at once; the sight of her hand there seemed almost absurdly intimate. His whiskey waited in the booth behind him, watered down and forgotten. For the first time since he had stepped out of the courthouse, he did not feel chained to what he had left behind. ( That frightened him, perhaps, more than the wanting did. )
โ All to yourself, hmm? โ he echoed, lowly, and there was humor there, laced within his tone. โ Ambitious. Weโve only just met. โ
Bold little thing. The thought returned with more warmth this time. He reached up then, slowly enough that she could stop him if she wished, and wrapped his fingers around the narrow end of his tie just above where her own. For one suspended second, their hands occupied the same strip of silk. His knuckles grazing hers; the contact brief and nothing like enough.ย
โ Careful, โ he warned. โ You keep ordering strangers about like that, one of them might enjoy it. โ
Harwin let his fingers slide once against the silk before he gently unwound his tie from her hold only to change the manner of the invitation. He did not want to be led away like a man without will, though the thought was not wholly without its appeal. He glanced back toward the booth. His jacket lay where he had abandoned it, dark and creased, a mute reminder of the man who had sat there before she looked at him. The whiskey glass remained on the table, amber gone pale and useless around melted ice. It seemed strange that he had been sitting there only minutes before . . . and stranger still that the booth looked almost private now, a small pocket of shadow set apart from the crowded room. A place where her brightness would have no choice but to come closer.ย
โ Since youโve taken such issue with these stools, โ he said, gently detaching his tie from the loop of her finger only so he could offer her his hand instead, palm open between them. โ I reckon Iโd ought save you from them. Knight in shining armor as I am. โ
Harwin stepped back from the bar, guiding rather than pulling. He made room for her to rise from the stool, his body angling between her and the worst of the crowd without making a spectacle of it. The drunk man she had dismissed had disappeared somewhere near the far wall, but Harwin still registered the surrounding bodies as they moved . . . a shoulder too close, an elbow swinging wide, a woman laughing with her glass lifted carelessly in one hand. He shifted to shield Rhaenyra from a passing spill without thinking, his hand firm around hers, his other hovering briefly near the small of her back. A few steps later, the booth recieved them, and he'd nodded toward the outer edge with a faint lift of his brow, giving her the choice of where to sit, letting the silent offer speak plainly enough: take the corner if you want it, take the outside if you prefer freedom. A server passed too close behind them, and Harwin instinctively shifted nearer to the table to give the woman room, bringing himself briefly into Rhaenyraโs space again. His sleeve brushed hers, and he exhaled through his nose and looked down, almost amused at himself. Harwin waited until she had settled, then lowered himself into the booth beside the curve of shadow. His knee came close to hers beneath the table, and instinctively, he reached for his whiskey, but after remembering its watery state, set it back down again. When the server came by again, he'd ordered another. ย
โ I should warn you though, โ he said, voice dry, โ Iโm not at my most entertaining tonight. If that was the service you were hoping for, you may wish to complain to management. โ He drank then, finally. The whiskey was better fresh. Too good for the state of him. It burned cleanly rather than dully, and he welcomed it. When he lowered the glass, her eyes were still on him. โ I'm Harwin, by the way. I'd ask your name in return, but something tells me you're going to make me work for it. โ His smile tilted, faint and knowing. โ Which is fine. Iโm very patient when properly motivated. โ His gaze softened by half a shade, though his tone stayed teasing. โ So tell me something else, then. Since youโve stolen my booth, insulted my discipline, and made me abandon a perfectly miserable drink. โ He leaned forward slightly, forearms coming to rest on the table, large hands loosely folded around his glass. โ What are you celebrating, avoiding, or trying very hard not to think about? โ
๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐. ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐. Rhaenyra could scarcely comprehend how swiftly his six months of paternity leave had slipped through their fingers. Six months had passed in a beautiful blur of extraordinary wonder and visceral fatigue. And suddenly, the morning arrived when she stood at the threshold of their home, rising onto her toes to brush her lips against his in goodbye. Navigating the hours without Harwin at hers and Jace's side was a strange thing;ย an ache that had threatened to unravel her in the immediate wake of their very first goodbye.ย In her new alone, she had begun to crumble โ until every strength he had poured into her in the last six months steadied the ground beneath her feet. He had been her unwavering anchor since Jace's first cry; he had been her beacon in the violent storm of postpartum โ the very reason she had not drowned while mourning the woman she had once been, the reason she had learnt to celebrate the woman she had become. He had done it instinctively, selflessly. His kindness an infinite well she drew from daily, his generosity a river that never ran dry, his care the very bedrock upon which her sanity and joy rested. With him, Rhaenyra had come to love motherhood with a wild, primal ferocity. With him, her sweet Harwin; steadfast, loyal, both fierce and gentle in his love. She had watched those very traits amplify in his fatherhood. And in turn her own love, awe and gratitude had grown to profound enormity. She had witnessed him be the most incandescent, brilliant father to Jacaerys, while remaining just as steady and loving to Sam. He gave and gave and gave, and asked for nothing in return. He possessed a boundless capacity for love, and it was what had ignited this fierce need in her to mark the day with a celebration worthy of him.
However . . . orchestrating a celebration while a six-almost-seven-month-old demanded constant tending to was no easy feat. Rhaenyra had been elbows deep in butter, garlic, and chopped vegetables when her aunt Jena had kindly responded to her call for aid. She had appeared like a blessing so great that Rhae had nearly wept. Jena had scooped Jace into her arms with habitual ease that bespoke her own years as a mother, had reached for a bottle of milk from the fridge without needing to be told, and with a smile that was both knowing and reassuring had shooed Rhaenyra towards the stove. Knight had woven between her legs the entire time, ever the greedy little sous chef scheming for scraps, while Jace babbled and cooed from the safety of Jena's embrace. Jena had stayed until everything was manageable. Until the table had been set, until Rhaenyra had finally slipped away to shower, letting hot water wash away the dayโs residue before she emerged with her hair done, lips stained pink, wearing an actual sundress and not a weathered t-shirt and sweatpants soiled with spit-up. They had hugged at the door, Jenaโs eyes sparkling with a secret gleam that betrayed her own evening. Then the house had fallen into a calm hush; filled only with the soft sounds of her content son, the low echo of slow music from the kitchen, and the thrum of anticipation in her own blood.
The clock had struck 7:26 pm when she stood in the dining room, Jace lost to the depths of sleep against her chest, and lit the final candle. The flame caught and danced, bathing the laden table in golden light. Steam curled from the plates of seared steak glistening with butter and herbs, the tender asparagus spears, the fluffy, indulgent mashed potatoes made from Lyonelโs recipe ( the very same Harwin had cooked for her on the night Rhaena and Baela entered the world ). A fresh, crisp salad with citrus dressing waited in a bowl, his glass held red wine, hers lemon water. Rhaenyra adjusted the gift bag by his seat; tucked safely in a velvet box was a bracelet made of black leather held together with a golden plaque. Engraved into the gold was a miniature of Jace's handprint. She had commissioned the piece weeks ago, after carefully painting their sonโs tiny palm and sending the impression to the jeweller. She had asked, deliberately and with her chest impossibly full of tenderness, for space left on that plaque โ for future handprints. Beside her gift sat Samโs, wrapped and waiting impatiently. At 7:30 she finally heard the key slide into the lock.
Harwin was home. Rhaenyra's heart leapt.
By the time she lay the finishing touches and emerged to greet him, he had finished washing his hands in the small hall bathroom, and thusly Rhaenyra did not hesitate before pressing as near as their slumbering son would allow. The sight of him there, coming home to her after a long day at work; shoulders easing as he crossed the threshold, the weary lines of his face softening when he met her eyes, it all made ruin of her in the sweetest possible way. Ineffable emotion flooded her chest, alighting her from the inside. A tender smile curved her lips, an infinity of stars sparkling in her eyes. Gods, how she loved him.
โ Welcome home, baby, โ she hummed as one hand found his, the other splayed protectively across the warm curve of Jaceโs spine where she drew slow, soothing circles as their son slept, breathing the occasional coo in his dreams. โ And happy father's day. โ She whispered softly before leaning up to press a kiss to his mouth โ slow, savouring, attempting to pour into it every fragment of her reverence but failing wholly, for there wasn't a single gesture nor language that could possibly encompass what she felt for this man. โ Come. โ Was all she said when she withdrew for breath, the smile lingering upon her lips threaded with conspiracy as she guided him gently by the hand. The dining room glowed in dim amber, candlelight flickering across every surface, the rich smell of food rising in plumes from the table. And there, propped up against the gift bag, her phone screen glowed with Samโs bright, wide smile on video call. The moment Harwin came into view, the little boyโs face lit up, beaming as though he were the sun itself.
โ Daddyyy~! Happy father's dayyy! โ A vehement, breathstealing tide crashed over Rhaenyra as she watched realisation settle behind Harwinโs gaze; the way his expression softened so sweetly, then gleamed vibrant with emotion. Her own eyes prickled with the familiar burn of tears as she gave his hand a gentle squeeze, a soft laugh escaping her tightening throat. โ I made you a gift! Rhae is gonna give it to you now. She said is really good and you're gonna like it so, so, so much! โ Sam announced proudly, earning himself another endeared laugh from Rhaenyra as she, right on cue, let go of Harwinโs hand just long enough to reach for the flat package wrapped in paper with colourful balloons and ample firetruck stickers. Mysaria had snuck it to her earlier in the week, when Rhae had conveniently decided to tuck Jace into his stroller and come to surprise Harwin at work. The gift was a framed drawing, each colourful line etched by Sam's carefully devoted hand; cartoon depictions of himself, Mysaria and Harwin, but also Kai, Rhaenyra and baby Jace โ together, happy. Gods, this little boy had no idea how powerful a gift he had created.
โ Mhmmโa beautiful drawing, Sammy. You are a very talented artist. โ She said, voice warm and fond, โ Itโs going straight on the mantelshelf, next to the photograph of you holding Jacaerys. โ Sam beamed ever brighter, if that was even possible, and Rhae instinctively turned her gaze upwards to her husband. The sight of him so taken thieved her of breath. He unspooled something overwhelming within her heart, swathing her in warmth and aching tenderness; he was visibly undone by the weight of all this love โ and it undid her in return. Her palm found his spine, tracing gentle, reverent patterns there as she leaned in close, pressing her mouth to the solid warmth of his upper arm. Her chest swelled, and swelled, and swelled until she swore the confines cracked and sunlight poured through the fissures. This was precisely what she had wanted; for him to feel appreciated, loved, held as safely and certainly as he held everyone around him.
He deserved this. He deserved every ounce of this abundance, this celebration.
๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐, ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐. His feet hurt; his back ached in the old place between his shoulder blades where tension gathered and sat, stubborn as a hand laid there all day. His shirt clinging faintly beneath the arms from the walk through the parking deck, and there was still that clean, bitter smell of antiseptic sunk into his skin no matter how thoroughly he had scrubbed before leaving. He had spent twelve hours moving from one need to the next, his name called from behind curtains and down corridors, from nurses with clipped voices, and residents with wide eyes, from patients who wanted answers and families who wanted guarantees no one had the right to give them. In truth, it had been relentless, and it had taken from him in small, unmemorable handfuls until he looked down at the end of it and found himself emptied more thoroughly than he expected. A child with a split chin who had screamed himself hoarse before Harwin ever touched the laceration. An old woman who kept patting his wrist and calling him by her sonโs name. Two discharges that should have taken minutes and took hours. One resident on the verge of tears because she had missed a lab value she should not have missed, and Harwin had stood beside her in the charting room until her shame receded enough to let teaching in. By the time heโd got to his car, he had sat for nearly a minute with both hands on the steering wheel and said nothing. He had not even turned the engine over at first. He had closed his eyes, just briefly, and in that briefness had thought of home with an ache so sudden it nearly embarrassed him. Fatherโs Day had come to him in fragments throughout the afternoon; small, scattered thoughts between one crisis and the next. His first since Jacaerys had come into the world. Not his first with Sam; he had loved him for years now with a dangerous, open-hearted ferocity. Still, this year had given it another room. Another small body. Another hand reaching for him in the dark. Harwin had meant bring something home. Flowers, perhaps, though they would have been more for Rhaenyra than for him, or something from the bakery she liked, if he could make it there before closing hours. He had pictured himself coming through the door with a white paper box in his hand, carrying some foolishly expensive little cakes she would pretend to scold him for buying before eating half of one with her fingers. He had even checked the time once. Then a call had come. Then another. Then the day had folded in on itself, and the thought had gone the way of most gentle intentions inside St. Harrenha, buried beneath the next urgent thing until there was no air left around it.
So he had come home with nothing.
There was music somewhere, low enough he could not make out the song, and there was the faintest warm thread of food in the air, butter and garlic and something green, something rich. He thought, dimly, that Rhaenyra must have ordered in. Then he opened the door and saw her. She was standing close enough that he nearly reached for her on instinct. Jace lay against her chest, asleep; his cheek was flattened softly against her, one small fist tucked near his mouth, the other caught in the fabric of her dress. Her dress. Harwin noticed that next. A sundress. Her hair was done; her lips were pink. There was a softness about her eyes before she kissed him, slow and warm and careful around the sleeping weight between them, and for a second the day thinned out. He felt the press of her mouth, the heat of Jaceโs little body, the touch of her hand finding his own, and some part of him that had been holding itself upright since dawn sagged gratefully into place.ย
Then came the smell again, and he caught sight of steam curling gently from the table. Steak, asparagus, mashed potatoes . . . and there, beneath the garlic and butter, the unmistakable smell of Lyonelโs recipe. He saw the gift bag by his seat, the wrapped package, and the phone propped against it, screen glowing. Samโs face filled the little rectangle of light, and he was grinning so hard his whole face seemed to have been overtaken by it. His hair was sticking up on one side, damp from what must have been a recent bath or wild hand-combing Mysaria called sufficient when she had lost patience. His eyes were bright; all of his joy flung outward with no thought of dignity or measure. The wrapped gift crackled softly when she handed it to him. Firetruck stickers. Balloon paper. The tape applied in uneven strips, some of them folded over on themselves. Sam had wrapped it, then. Or had insisted on helping, which likely meant Mysaria had done the actual folding while Sam placed stickers in militant clusters wherever he pleased. Harwinโs thumb paused on one of them, smoothing the raised edge back down. The paper came away, and beneath it was a frame. At first, he only saw color: bright marker strokes pressed deep into paper, thick, determined lines, as the figures arranged themselves. Sam. Mysaria. Him. Kai, severe and dark-haired with a frowning mouth and a speech bubble Harwin could not read until he tilted the frame closer. It said, in large crooked letters, NO RUNING, with the second n omitted and then squeezed in above the word by a later, more anxious hand. He had drawn what he knew. What he trusted. Mysaria and Kai. Rhaenyra and Jace. Himself and Harwin. All of them standing close enough to touch. ( Together, because that was how love looked to him. ) Harwinโs grip tightened on the frame. He felt the tears before they fell, the pressure of them, the embarrassing burn in his nose. He lowered his head a little, as if studying the drawing more closely, but that was no good either because every detail made it worse. Sam had colored Harwinโs shirt blue. He had given Jace a tiny fist. He had put a green blob near the bottom that might have been Knight, though the cat had been given a heroic tail and ears like a rabbit. Over the top of the page he had drawn a sun, taking up nearly a quarter of the sky.ย
โ I love it, โ He lifted his eyes to the phone as Sam's face changed at once, relief flashing into delight so openly Harwin nearly had to look down again. โ I love it, mate. Truly. โ His voice scraped slightly on the second sentence. He cleared his throat, but there was no use pretending. โ This is definitely going on the mantel. โ
Sam nodded solemnly, satisfied by this recognition of the mantelโs good fortune. โ I did Kaiโs hair wrong because the brown marker died. โ
A dry voice came from off-screen. โ My tragedy is immense. โ
Harwinโs chuckle came easier this time. ย โ Honestly, Kai, itโs generous. Youโve never looked better. I think Sammy's on to something here. โ
Sam laughed so hard the phone shook at the edges. He lasted another few minutes, which in Samโs measure of patience was a heroic effort. He told Harwin about the card he had made at school but was saving until he could give it to him in person. He reported that Mysaria had said no cupcakes before dinner even though Fatherโs Day was โbasically a birthday for dads.โ Eventually Mysaria came into view over Samโs shoulder, her expression composed in the way that meant she had been watching more than she let on. Her eyes flicked briefly to Harwin, then Rhaenyra, then the sleeping baby.
โ Let him have his dinner, baby . . . and you need to get ready for bed. โ she told Sam, one hand settling atop his head. Then, to Harwin, quieter, โ Happy Fatherโs Day, Moose. โ
Harwin nodded once, his mouth twitched at the edges in a smile at the old, familiar nickname. โ Thank you, Sar. โ
The call ended only after three false goodbyes, one off-screen negotiation about pyjamas, and Sam returning once more to remind Harwin that the baby had too many teeth in the drawing on purpose, and then the screen went dark. Harwin remained standing with the framed drawing in his hands. Rhaenyraโs palm rested at the base of his spine, her thumb moving in slow, absent strokes. Jace slept through everything with the tyrannical peace of a well-fed baby, cheek warm against his mother, his breath leaving him in faint, damp puffs against her skin. The candles made small sounds as they burned. A soft lick and shift of wax. The wine in Harwinโs glass caught a dark red glimmer. Her lemon water sat beside it, beaded with condensation. His gaze moved over Rhaenyra's face once more; the slight flush beneath her cheekbones from cooking or nerves, the color on her mouth, her hair smoother than usual, but one strand had already escaped near her temple, and there was a small, nearly invisible spot on the front of her dress, just below the shoulder, where their son had likely mouthed the fabric. Their son made a small, offended sound, brows drawing together exactly like Rhaenyraโs did when someone paged her during the first sip of coffee. His mouth worked once against her collarbone. Then he settled again, heavy and boneless, but Harwin bent slowly and kissed the crown of his head, and the smell of him went straight through the center of Harwinโs chest. ( Baby shampoo. Milk. Sleep-warm skin. That faint sweetness all infants seemed to have. ) He straightened slowly, afraid of disturbing him, and found Rhaenyra watching him with that look that had become, somehow, more dangerous than any seduction she had ever attempted, and it caught him beneath the ribs, where he had no defense left. Another gift bag waited by his plate. Harwin noticed it properly now, though he had already seen it. Tissue paper rose from it in careful folds, pale and soft in the candlelight, and he knew at once that she had fussed with it. He could picture her doing so while Jace fussed nearby, perhaps on her hip, one hand patting clumsily at her shoulder as she smoothed the paper and shifted the bag an inch to the left, then an inch back again. The thought of that small domestic care made his throat close before he had even touched it.ย
โ Rhae, baby, you already did too much. โ His thumb brushed once over the back of her hand where it still rested on Jace. He could feel the faint pulse beneath her skin, but he let her go only long enough to reach for the bag.
The tissue paper whispered beneath his fingers.
The table lay before him, warm and waiting. Lyonelโs mashed potatoes. A glass of wine. Steak cooked just right because she knew he loved it that way; because she had remembered what he would never have asked for. And now this little velvet box in the palm of his hand, dark and simple, heavier than it looked. The box opened with a quiet hinge. For several seconds, he did not understand what he was seeing. Black leather, clean and supple, lay coiled against the velvet. A bracelet. Simple enough, masculine enough that at first he only registered the material, the shine of the clasp, the soft gleam of gold at the center, his gaze narrowing in on the plaque. There, engraved into the gold, impossibly small and impossibly exact, was Jace's hand.ย
He swallowed hard, and his laugh came out almost pained. Harwin pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyes for a second; the heel of his hand smelled faintly of soap and hospital and the lemon from the bathroom downstairs. Beneath it all, some trace of Jace from when he had touched his head, some trace of Rhaenyra from her hand in his. When he lowered his hand, his eyes were wet.ย
โ Christ, sweetheart, โ Harwin set the open box on the table, and then reached for her, his hand finding her waist first, then sliding around to the small of her back, drawing her close enough that the space between them narrowed around Jaceโs sleeping body. His other hand came up to cup the side of her face, his thumb brushed just beneath her eye. โ Thank you, โ he said against her hair. โ For the dinner. For Sam. For this. โ
He drew back just enough to look at her again. A helpless smile, soft and unguarded, moved over his face. He reached for the bracelet and lifted it from the velvet, the leather bending over his palm. For all its delicacy of meaning, it was sturdy.. He liked that best, perhaps.
๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐, ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐'๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐. Harwin sat in the driveway for four minutes; the dashboard clock blinking from 11:47 to 11:51 while he gripped the steering wheel at ten and two, engine idling, heat cycling through the vents in a low mechanical exhale that fogged the bottom edge of the windshield in a slow creep. He didn't remember the drive to his father's house. Later, perhaps, he would remember pieces of it: the red smear of brake lights ahead of him on the rain-dark road, the low mutter of the radio he had not turned off, how his hands had sat too hard around the steering wheel, as though the whole world might veer off course if he loosened his grip for even a second. He would remember stopping at a green light until someone behind him leaned on the horn, he'd remember taking the turn too fast, remember the ridiculous, ordinary sight of Mrs. Tullys bins still out at the curb and thinking, with a strange and almost violent clarity, that the bin collection was tomorrow. The key missed the lock twice. On the third attempt, he gave up on gentleness entirely and shoved the door open hard enough that it struck the inside wall with a hollow, reprimanding crack. The house smelled exactly as it always had: old wood, cold hearth, black tea gone tannic in the pot, the faint waxy polish his fatherโs housekeeper used on Fridays. Had it beeshould have taken him back to a hundred evenings of coming home furious from rugby, bloodied from some stupid boyhood scrap, or sullen from school, or drunk from university and trying to pretend he wasnโt. Lyonel Strongโs house had always seemed made for the containment of storms. Thick walls. Heavy doors. Books in every room. Lamps that cast a modest gold over everything, forgiving nothing, concealing little. Harwin stood in the entryway, one hand still on the open door, rain stippling the shoulders of his coat, his chest rising and falling as though he had run the whole distance rather than driven. He had not thought to call; he had not thought at all, really, beyond the blind instinct of a man struck clean through and looking, stupidly, for the person who had taught him how to stand upright.
โ . . . Dad. โ From somewhere deeper in the house came the shifting creak of an armchair, the soft drag of a slipper across the floor. Harwin shut the door behind him because the cold followed him in. He moved before Lyonel could properly appear, crossing the hall in three long strides, then stopping just short of the sitting room. There was his fatherโs reading lamp; there were the old legal journals stacked in militant little towers beside the chair. There was the framed photograph of Harwin and Larys as boys on the mantel, both of them sunburnt and squinting, Harwinโs grin missing one front tooth, Larys looking solemnly betrayed by the existence of daylight. His stomach churned. He pressed the heel of his hand hard against his sternum, as if something there had come loose and he might keep it in place by force. โ I didnโt know where else to go. โ
That much was true. ( It was also not enough. ) He looked up at his father then, properly, and the sight of Lyonelโs face made the fragile scaffolding of Harwinโs control shudder. ย A sound left him, sharp and humourless, almost a laugh and almost not. Then he turned away before his father could say whatever was gathering behind his eyes. The old liquor cabinet stood where it always had, dark wood polished to a dull shine, its brass handles gone soft with age and use. Harwin pulled one open too hard. Glass chimed inside. ( Lyonel said nothing. ) He took the first bottle his hand found. Whiskey, he thought, though he hardly looked at the label. His fingers were damp enough that the stopper nearly slipped. He poured badly, too much and too fast, amber splashing against the side of the glass, and drank half of it before he had even shut the cabinet. He inhaled it, throat working around the burn, eyes closing for one hard second as the heat went through him and found nothing inside capable of warming.ย
When he turned back, the glass was still in his hand. โ I donโt . . . I donโt know how to say this. โ He swallowed. His mouth tasted faintly of rain and bile and whiskey, the three of them sitting sour on his tongue. For a moment he could hear the weather against the windows more clearly than his own thoughts; the soft, relentless tapping of it, like fingers on a closed door. โ My resident . . . Rhaenyra . . . โ His grip tightened around the glass. โ As in Viserysโ daughter, Rhaenyra. โ He pressed his tongue briefly to the back of his teeth, trying to force the rest of it out. ย โ She . . . โ He dragged a hand through his damp hair, fingers caught at the crown of his head, elbow lifted, the posture almost defensive though there was nothing in the room to shield himself from. โ Sheโs pregnant. โ
He turned away, then back again, unable to settle in his own skin; the sitting room was too warm. His coat was too heavy. His ribs felt too narrow for breath. The whiskeyy had done nothing but set fire to the hollow places, and all at once he wanted another drink with such immediacy that it frightened him. Harwin looked at Lyonel, rain tracking cold beneath his collar now, and whatever remained of his composure sat very still and very small inside him.ย
โ As bloody unbelievable as it is, we met the night before her first day of residency. I didnโt know who she was; she didn't know who I was. I didnโt know she was coming to St. Harrenhal the next morning, that she'd standing in front of me in orientation less than twelve hours later. If I'd known, I would never, you know I would have never . . . I swear to you, I didnโt know. โ His laugh was brief and miserable. โ She called herself Nyra. โ He sank finally onto the edge of the chair opposite his fatherโs; his elbows rested on his thighs. โ And now sheโs pregnant. Twelve weeks, along. Too late to terminate. โ His voice thinned at the edges. โ And Viserysโ โ There, the name struck stone, and Harwin inhaled, but the air did not go very far. โ Heโs going to kill me. โ
A starter for dr. lyonel strong | @starlitsonnets ยทฬฉฬฉ modern verse
๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ of Kings Landing ended in a bitter exile thinly dressed as peace. For the sake of the realmโs quiet, and to shield the Princessโs name from further slander, Ser Harwin โBreakbonesโ Strong departed the capital and returned to Harrenhal. For years he remained within the blackened walls of Harrenhal, keeping his counsel, drilling his levies, and tending the slow, banked wrath of a man wronged and not forgotten. When King Viserys at last passed from the realm, and Aegon was raised upon a stolen throne, Harwinโs silence came to its end. He did not wait upon a raven from Dragonstone, nor did he require command to know where his loyalty lay. The moment green banners were unfurled in the capital, House Strong declared for Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen. Thus Harrenhal, great and terrible at the heart of the Riverlands, became at once a fortress for the black cause and a warning to all who thought her claim easily broken. Ser Harwin has now ridden forth to take his place among the Queenโs council, bearing with him the strength of his house, the swords of his men, and all the fury exile had taught him to master.
โ ยท ๐ค ยท โ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ยทยทยท a collection of sworn oaths and rusted honour, the men and women who guard a city that would sooner forget them, loyalty that bleeds but never bends. genre: drama, romance, angst, medieval.
I didn't take this post for the glory. There is no glory in this.
I swore an oath before I knew what oaths cost. I have been paying ever since.
You should not be in this part of the city at this hour. I will not ask again.
My loyalty belongs to the crown.ย
Stand down. All of you. I said stand down!ย
I have kept this city's peace for fifteen years. You have undone me in fifteen days.
You come to me with this now. At this hour. With blood on your hands and no explanation.
The gate closes at sundown. You knew that. Why are you only arriving now?
There are things I have done in service of this city that I will not speak of. Not to you. Not to anyone.
Lower your voice. These walls remember everything said within them.
I have followed orders my entire life. I am looking at you and wondering, for the first time, what it would mean to refuse one.
You are not safe here.ย
My men did not see you. As far as this watch is concerned you were never here tonight.
I have held this post through three rulers. I will not compromise it. Not even for you.
The city does not sleep. Neither do I. We have that in common, at least.
Tell me what you know and tell me quickly. I have neither time nor patience for half truths.
I understand sacrifice. What I do not understand is being asked to sacrifice you.
Nobody passes through this gate without my leave.
I have drawn this sword in service of causes I did not believe in. I will not draw it against you.
You ask me to look the other way. You do not know what you are asking.
A commander does not have the luxury of doubt. I have been doubting since the moment I met you.
The fog comes in heavy off the river at this hour. Stay close.
I know every shadow in this city. I know every place a person might hide. I will find who did this.
You should fear me. Most people do. The fact that you do not is either very brave or very foolish.
I have given this city everything it has asked of me. Tonight it is asking for something I cannot give.
My second will take the watch. You and I need to speak somewhere without ears in the walls.
The law is the law. I did not write it. I do not always agree with it. I enforce it nonetheless.
You, of all people, came to the barracks. What has happened?
I have seen men break under far less. You are still standing. That means something.
Do not mistake my silence for approval, boy. Do not mistake it for indifference either.
I was told you were trouble the day you arrived in this city. I should have listened.
A knight serves. That is the whole of it. Serve, protect, endure. I have never wanted more than that until now.
I have enemies in every quarter of this city. I will not have you become a target because of your association with me.
The order came from above me. I am not certain it came from a place I still respect.
Put the blade down. I am asking you as someone who does not wish to see you hanged.
There are two kinds of people in a city like this. Those who are protected and those who do the protecting. I have always known which one I am.
You should not trust me simply because I wear this cloak. Trust must be earned. Let me earn it.
I will not pretend the law bends for sentiment. I will also not pretend I am without sentiment where you are concerned.
My duty ends at that door. What happens beyond it is between you and whatever gods you keep.
You are asking me to betray everything I have built my life upon.
The city watch answers to the crown. I answer to the city watch. Tonight I find myself answering to something else entirely.
I have buried men I called brothers. I have mourned them quietly and moved on because the realm does not pause for grief.
I am not accustomed to being seen. Only to being obeyed.
Ride out at first light. Take nothing that marks you as known to me. I will follow when I can.
You remind me of something I gave up a long time ago.
I have protected this city from every threat that has come for it. I did not anticipate that the thing I most needed protecting from would walk through my own gate.
happy hotd season three premiere day, everyone! even though my man harwin has been lingering as a ghost in the harrenhal rafters since season one, a friendly reminder that he would have fought for his queen.
๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ ๐๐๐. Yet it did little to scour the shame or ease the tremors that had claimed her frame. The heat barely touched her, barely penetrated the haze of crushed hope and suffocating helplessness that rose thicker than the steam filling the space, clinging to the swollen curve of her belly and the heavy ache in her chest. It was an ineffable type of grief โ to have believed so fiercely, so desperately, that tonight she would finally meet her son, only to be denied, to be told her body had failed in the most basic of functions. The humiliation nestled itself behind her ribs; claws sunk deep, feasting on every shred of pride she had left. Incapacitated, Rhaenyra could only stand beneath the relentless spray and allow the sobs to tear free; great waves that shook her shoulders and stole the breath from her lungs, raw and ugly and ceaseless. In her hideout, tears trailed down her florid cheeks only to be swallowed by the water, indistinguishable from it. Her forehead pressed against the cooler tile, and her palms cradled the behemoth swell of her stomach. Jacaerys shifted beneath her hands; restless, so close and yet still unreachable, and every broken cry that left her was a plea. Come, little one. Please. Give me my body back. Let me hold you. The words were fragile wisps that dissolved in the steam โ wholly unanswered. Ten minutes bled into twenty, into thirty, and still she could not stop. The disappointment was a slithering beast beneath her skin. The fear that this would never end, that she would remain trapped in this endless, swollen purgatory. The humiliation that she had woken soaked and terrified only to be told she had simply . . . peed. Her body had betrayed her right beside the man she loved more than breath. The man she knew endured the ache of his own kind of helplessness.
Thirty minutes approached forty. Rhaenyra might have stayed beneath the lashing water had her spine not begun to scream and her legs tremble with the effort of standing โ had the thought of hyperthermia not been so loud in her mind.ย She drew a tremulous breath of surrender, her chest shuddering with the final sob that drowned beneath the steady beat of the shower's noise,ย before she reached for the tap and twist it off. The sudden silence was deafening. It left far too much room for the thunder of her own heart and the cruel, whispering ghosts that circled for carrion. For a moment she pressed her eyes shut, breathing deeply, warding away the ghosts as best she could. Then slowly, carefully, she stepped out into the plumes of steam that curled and undulated through the bathroom. Water dripped from her in warm rivulets, carving paths alongside the stretchmarks across her belly, pooling beneath her feet on the soft bath mat. She reached for a towel with weary hands and dried herself as best she could without aid; slow, careful strokes over skin that had not been her own for months, over curves that had become foreign territory. She could barely reach the skin past the swell of her stomach, and she had to fight the frustrated cry that threatened to tear from her. When she was done she dropped it without care and pulled on nothing but the first thing she saw โ one of Harwin's t-shirts. Her hair she towel-dried with careless motions she would never have tolerated under any other circumstance. But nothing mattered now but getting out of this room, away from the mirror that showed a blurred silhouette of a stranger.
Barefoot, Rhae waddled back into their dimly lit bedroom, every step depleting energy she did not have. The sight that greeted her gave her pause, threatened to undo her all over again. Fresh sheets; clean, untouched by the evidence of her bodyโs betrayal. The pregnancy pillow arranged exactly as she liked it. Every trace of what had happened had been erased with meticulous tenderness. He had done this while she hid in the shower. He had stripped the bed, torn away what brought her shame, and made the space soft and safe for her return. Her chest flooded with vehement emotion; a tidal wave so fierce she felt it burn her eyes. She nestled herself against the pillows with clumsy grace, and by the time Harwin emerged from the kitchen with the smoothie โ she simply lay there in the dim hush, eyes open and staring at nothing; her mind a tempest of noise and memory. The beautiful, sacred night they had shared, the way he had loved every changed inch of her, now felt tainted by what came after. So when he crouched beside her and spoke soft and reverent, offered her his achingly kind reassurance, her eyes filled before she could stop them. The humiliation flared anew, and fleetingly she glared at the smoothie as though it had personally offended her. The words were meant to soothe, bur she only burned fiercer. She could not meet his eyes. Her cheeks flushed a furious, mortified red, her fingers twisting into the sheets. It did not matter that it was a common thing. It did not matter that he would see her in a far more vulnerable condition when labour finally came. She could accept that giving birth was a miracle. What she had done felt demeaning.
โ Baby, please stop, โ she whispered, voice frayed and small in a way that made her bristle, โ I know. I know all of that. But the knowledge does not ease how I feel. I donโtโI donโt want to talk about it. I donโt want to think about it. I just . . . I just want him to come. Why wonโt he come? โ The lamenting plea cracked on the final word, betraying the extent of her discomfort. She hated how feeble it sounded, how undignified. But she was too exhausted to armour herself. Her gaze finally rose to meet Harwin's; there was no anger in hers, only fatigue, only the vehement desire to forget. Remarkably, when he offered in jest to be her punching bag, the absurdity of it cracked something open in her. A small, tearful laugh escaped; shaky and startled. โ Oh youโseven hells, โ she exclaimed on the heel of a sniffle, her voice half-exasperation, half-amusement. She shifted slowly then, clumsily, the new normal of her body making every movement a strenuous effort, until she was sitting back against the headboard with the pregnancy pillow supporting her lower back. Her hand found the glass and she brought the straw to her lips. The flavour burst across her tongue; vibrant, sweet, tangy. Delicious and refreshing. She took another sip and prayed, wordlessly, that whatever absurd magic Jeyne had sworn would be true.
โ I would not. Not yet anyway. Though I canโt say I wonโt when your child finally decides to stop tormenting me and make his entrance. โ She replied with a valiant attempt at weaving levity through her tone. It did not last. It choked beneath the persistent weight of everything churning in her; the smile, however tiny, died on her lips, the playful sparkle in her eye smothered. She was scared. She was disappointed. She was ashamed in ways that infuriated her. Her eyes burned again and she battled it, lashes fluttering, throat working. She was too tired to pretend. Too tired to speak. Just . . . too tired. The glass found the bedside table with a soft clink. Her hand reached out until the backs of her fingers brushed his cheek; a gentle, fleeting caress that was tenderness and gratitude and desperation all at once. Her chest tightened until it ached, her throat closed in again. Her lash line failed to dam the tide of tears, and when she spoke it was a plea that would have made devastating ruin of her pride nine months ago, a plea she never would have uttered โ but now felt safe enough, loved enough to vocalise.
๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐, ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐, Harwin might have missed it, had he not been so attuned to her every breath. His heart gave a painful, helpless pull in the wake of her plea, and he rose without a word, careful not to jostle the mattress, crossing to his side of the bed. He did not strip down beyond toeing off his shoes and dragging his belt free; there was something in him that could not bear the intimacy of changing properly, as though the ordinary rituals of sleep would presume too much from a night that had already taken more than its share. He switched off the lamp. The room sank into the blue-grey dark, the city light pressing faintly through the curtains, and then he lay down behind her. The pillow braced between them; one arm sliding beneath her neck where she liked it, the other settling over the great, beloved curve of her stomach. His palm rested there, and for a little while, he did nothing else, his thumb moving in a slow, absent rhythm over the taut cotton of her nightshirt. Their son shifted beneath his hand in a languid, drowsy roll, as though annoyed by the disturbance of the evening, and Harwin shut his eyes against the obscene terror of being responsible for something so small and so wanted.
โ There he is, โ Harwin whispered against the nape of his neck, the words roughened almost beyond speech, as Rhaenyraโs hand came to rest over his own, light and tired, holding him in place. โ Iโve got you baby, โ he said, barely louder than the rain beginning to tick against the bedroom window. โ Iโve got you. Thatโs all. โ
Rhaenyra remained facing away from him, curled on her left side, the curve of her belly pulling the sheet into a pale ridge before her. Her shoulders were tense. He could see it even in the low light, that held, braced quality in the line between neck and arm, as though some part of her still expected the night to demand more of her. He curved himself around her as much as her body allowed, chest to back, thigh tucked behind hers, one foot finding the cool sheet beyond her ankles. She smelled of soap and hospital air, of wet hair and skin rubbed raw from hot water. Another contraction rose beneath his hand. Practice, likely. Irregular. Perhaps not even painful. Her abdomen became firm, a slow gathering beneath the skin, the muscle drawing itself. Rhaenyra exhaled through her nose, not quite asleep, not quite awake. Harwin counted in silence.
Twenty seconds.
Thirty.
Forty-two.
Then it eased.
Rhaenyra shifted after a while, a small, uncomfortable attempt to settle her hips. Harwin moved with her, lifting his arm so she could resituate, then returning it when she tugged faintly at his wrist. After some a while, her shoulders lowered, one inch, then another, and she slept eventually. Harwin did not, not properly. He entered and left shallow sleep as though passing through unlit rooms; each time he surfaced, he registered her first. Once, near three, she made a low sound and shifted; he came awake so instantly that his body was already moving before concious thought arrived. But she only pressed her hand over his and guided it lower, to where the weight pulled hardest, and he understood. He supported what he could. She sighedโirritated, weary, almost painedโand sank back. Every so often, she stirred, mouth softening around a sound she did not quite make, and he would smooth his thumb behind her ear until she settled again. At some point, she'd turned with great difficulty and buried her face against his chest, the pregnancy pillow abandoned to some useless tangle behind her knees. He gathered her close at once, one hand at her back, the other cupping the base of her skull, and felt her breathe him in. Harwin remained fully awake after that, counting the minutes between the half-contractions, and willing not more for their son to make his entrance into the world.ย
At some point before dawn, the dryer finished; it gave a soft mechanical buzz that sounded obscenely cheerful, and as utterly delirious as it was, he took it as a sign.ย
The alarm never went off because he'd killed it at four a.m. with his free hand, the one not trapped beneath the warm weight of her neck, reaching across the nightstand. No. She was going to sleep in, and if that meant he had to send a text to the department from an awkward angle with his left thumb while his right arm went progressively numb, then that was what it meant.
He managed it one-handed. Rhaenyra's taking a personal day, obviously. Me, too. Don't reach out.ย
Kai's reply came in eleven seconds: Wow, so selfish of both of you.ย
And then, four seconds after that: She okay?
She's exhausted. I've got her.
A pause. Then: Copy. I'll cover her cases. Tell her Dina says if she tries to come in today she will physically block the ambulance bay with her body.
A small laugh left him before he could stop it: tired, fond, barely there. ( There was comfort in being known that well. ) He put the phone face-down on the nightstand, leaned back, and stared at the ceiling for a while.ย
Morning came in increments; grey light through curtains he'd forgotten to close all the way. The hum of the apartment; the refrigerator cycling, the quiet tick of the baseboard heater she insisted on running even in mild weather because her feet, she'd said, were perpetually frozen. Rhaenyra stirred at half past eight, later than she'd slept in months. He felt the shift in her breathing, the slight tensing of her shoulders, the moment consciousness returned and brought with it all of the discomfort of forty weeks of pregnancy. He pressed his mouth to the top of her head and kept it there.
โ Morning, sweetheart, โ He reeled back as she made a sound that was not a word. โ You slept almost nine hours. That might be a record. You needed it. But now, I reckon you need something on your stomach, so I'm going to make you breakfast. โ He eased himself out from beneath her slowlyโ the extraction, Kai called it, having once watched Harwin attempt the maneuver with Rhaenyra asleep on his arm in the attending lounge, a performance Kai had narrated in a low David Attenborough voice until Harwin had thrown a pen at themโand padded barefoot to the kitchen.ย
By late morning, Rhaenyra had migrated to the living room, wrapped in the soft throw from the back of the sofa. The television was on without sound. Some old black-and-white film flickered across the screen, cigarette smoke and wounded glamour, as Harwin sat at the other end of the sofa with her feet in his lap and worked his thumbs carefully along the swollen arch of one foot. Her toenails were painted a deep red that had seemed funny three weeks ago, when she had declared that if she could not see her feet, they could at least look nice for everyone else. Now the polish had chipped at the edge of one big toe. Harwin rubbed his thumb beneath it and found himself pierced by the stupid tenderness of that little imperfection.
The day pressed onward.
At noon she ate half a bowl of soup and then glared at him when he looked too much pleased by it. At one, she stood in the nursery doorway without going in. Harwin found her there while carrying a stack of folded towels, her hand braced against the doorframe and her gaze fixed on the crib. He stopped several feet away.The nursery was finished. A chair by the window. A blanket Laena had knit herself, soft as milk and embroidered at the corner with a tiny silver dragon that made Rhaenyra cry when she'd opened it at the shower. Books on the shelf already, because Rhaenyra had said any son of hers would be indoctrinated early and Harwin had said yes, darling, of course, to Goodnight Moon and The Odyssey in the same breath. Rhaenyra shifted her weight; her hand moving lower on her belly. A tightening. He saw it in the faint change of her posture, the subtle inwardness of concentration. He set the towels down on the hall console and came no closer than the threshold allowed.ย
โ Pressure? โ She nodded once, and his attention lowered. ย โ Low? โ Another nod. He breathed in through his nose slowly, his lips twitched at the corners in relief. โ Good, โ he said carefully. โ Thatโs good. โ
She gave him a look over her shoulder, tired and regal and, perhaps, faintly murderous.ย
There was his wife.
The gala was at seven.
By four, Rhaenyra showered again, shorter this time, the door left ajar, which he took as permission to remain close without hovering. He heard her moving behind the frosted glass, and when she emerged in a towel with her hair twisted up and her chin set at an angle he recognized as armor being fitted, he understood that she had made a decision sometime between the nursery doorway and now. She was going. He had considered arguing, though it was brief and instinctual, then discarded the impulse because he knew well the suggestion she stay home would land as validation of every humiliating thing she'd felt the night before. You're too fragile. You're too pregnant. If Rhaenyra wished to walk into her father's gala at forty weeks and two days with her spine straight and her husband's ring on a chain beneath her dress, then Harwin would put on a suit and stand beside her . . . both literally and metaphorically, of course. He dressed in the dim spill of the bedroom lamp. Shirt first, white and stiff at the collar; cufflinks next, the plain silver pair Rhaenyra had once chosen for him. He fastened them slowly, fingers too large for the delicate work, hands that could set bone and close skin suddenly made clumsy by polished metal and worry. The tie gave him trouble because he kept listening past the half-open bathroom door for the small sounds of her: water shutting off, a careful breath, the shift of her weight against tile, and every pause drew his gaze back to the hall as if the evening might declare itself an emergency before theyโd even left. In the mirror, he looked composed enough: broad-shouldered, clean-shaven, dark hair still damp at the temples, the line of his jaw nicked once where the razor had caught. But beneath the suit, beneath the starched shirt, his heart remained in the other room with her; swollen with fear, devotion, and the terrible tenderness of knowing that, at any moment, Jacaerys could come.ย
When Rhaenyra emerged, he was leaning against the kitchen counter with his keys in one hand and his phone in the other, scrolling through a text from LaenaโI've laid out Daemon's cufflinks and he's still managed to lose one. If we're late it's because I've killed himโand he looked up. Whatever answer he had been forming dissolved cleanly out of his mind. For a moment, there was only the sight of her in the soft spill of the hall light, one hand resting beneath the great, low curve of her belly, the other braced lightly against the wall. The black dress fell over her like poured shadow, gathered with enough grace to honor the generous form of her without trying to tame it. Her hair had been swept back loosely, pale strands escaping at her temples and throat, and the chain with her wedding ring glimmered against her skin, small and bright as a kept vow. She looked tired; there was no hiding that from him, the strain tucked into the corners of her face, but it did not diminish her beauty. Harwinโs grip loosened around his keys; they gave a soft metallic click against his palm.ย
โ You, โ he breathed, stripped of everything except the truth, โ are the most stunning woman I have ever seen in my life, and I include every version of you I've had the privilege of seeing these last nine months. โ His hand found the curve of her jaw, tilting her face up, his thumb tracing the edge of her cheekbone where the makeup met the real, exhausted skin beneath. โ How are we feeling? Scale of one to ten, one being I will tolerate this evening and ten being I want to burn the venue to the ground. โ
