#maekar thoughts

[valarrsgirl]

this is something i never knew i needed

[valarrsgirl]

╋━ HARD TIMES IN THE HOUSE OF GOD

cw: priest!maekar, atheist!fem!reader, religious themes (fictional faith/sept-inspired setting), religious imagery and symbolism, atheism vs religion ideological conflict, philosophical debates, intense psychological tension, intrusive thoughts, blurring of emotional and ideological boundaries, unhealthy attachment dynamics, internal crisis of faith,restrained physical tension, non-graphic sexual tension, gothic atmosphere, potential religious trauma themes

summary: maekar is a devout priest in blackhaven. you are a cynical apothecary who doesn’t believe in his gods. what starts as weekly arguments in his church quickly turns into a dangerous, mutual obsession that tests his vows to the absolute limit.

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a/n: this turned out way more philosophical and poetic than i planned. quick lore heads-up: i know canon uses “septon” but for this fic i’m using priest!maekar and “father maekar.” let’s be real, it just hits different and it’s incredibly hot. you will get your spicy time with our brooding targaryen priest soon, but for now, enjoy the slow burn. let me know what you think!!

wc: 2.7k

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the village of blackhaven clung to the rocky slopes beneath the shadow of the red mountains like a lichen to stone. its houses were grey and stubborn, its people hardy and taciturn, their faith as much a part of the landscape as the gnarled sentinel pines. and above it all, perched on a windswept bluff like a stern father watching his children, stood the sept.it was an old, grim building of dark stone, its leaded windows offering not warmth, but judgement.

within its cool, incense-heavy silence, father maekar moved with the solemn precision of a man performing a ritual he knew by heart, yet found no solace in. his violet eyes, a legacy of a bloodline that had traded crowns for cassocks, scanned the dim interior, missing nothing. the dust motes dancing in a single sunbeam, the uneven flicker of a candle, the faint scuff of a boot on the flagstones that was not his own.

that last sound had a pattern. it came every tuesday, just after the noon bell. it belonged to you.

you were a recent addition to blackhaven, a transplant from one of the bustling, cynical port cities to the south. you’d taken over the small, struggling apothecary shop on the square, bringing with you strange herbs, sharp scents, and a quiet, unwavering refusal to believe in his god.

he’d noticed you on your first sunday, sitting in the back row not in prayer, but in observation, your eyes sharp and curious as they swept over the stained glass, the statues, the people bowed in devotion. you did not kneel. you did not take the blessing. when he’d approached you after the service, his hands clasped behind his black robes, his tone had been one of polite, distant inquiry.

“i trust you found some peace in the service?” he’d asked, the words tasting like ash. he rarely found peace here himself

you’d looked up at him, and he was struck not by defiance, but by a calm, unshakeable certainty. “it was architecturally interesting,” you’d said. “the acoustics are remarkable. but peace? no, father. i find my peace in other things.”

that should have been the end of it. a shepherd has many sheep, one lost lamb is a tragedy, but not an uncommon one. yet, you returned. not to services, but to the sept itself. you’d come on a tuesday to examine the carvings on the weathered pews, citing an interest in local woodcraft. the next tuesday, it was to ask after the history of a particular saint in the faded mural, questioning the hagiography with a historian’s detached skepticism. you were a splinter in his orderly world, a persistent, intellectual itch he could not scratch away.

today, you were standing before the statue of the maiden, your head tilted. you wore simple, practical clothes, a wool dress the color of slate, your hands stained faintly green from some concoction you’d been brewing. you were, he thought with a pang of something he refused to name, utterly out of place. you were life, unvarnished and questioning, in a temple dedicated to frozen piety.

“she looks sad, don’t you think?” you said, without turning. you knew it was him. you always seemed to know.

maekar moved to stand beside you, his hands disappearing into the deep sleeves of his robe. he followed your gaze to the maiden’s serene, sorrowful stone face. “she embodies compassion and innocence. sorrow for the sins of the world is a part of that.”

“or,” you said softly, “the sculptor was a miserable man who thought virtue and melancholy were the same thing.” you finally turned to look at him. your eyes were the color of the forest floor after rain, clear and direct. “you don’t really believe that, do you? that innocence is inherently sorrowful?”

the question was a blade, slipped between the plates of his armor. it was not an attack on the faith, but on the feeling of it. “it is not a matter of what i feel,” he said, his voice stern, the voice he used for penitents. “it is a matter of truth.”

“ah,” you said, a small, knowing smile touching your lips. it was not mocking. it was.. pitying. “the truth you’ve inherited. the truth you wear like that robe. does it ever feel heavy, father maekar?”

no one used his given name. he was father, or prince, a relic of a dynasty that had forsaken the iron throne for the seven-pointed star. hearing it on your lips, stripped of title, was a shocking intimacy.

“duty is not meant to be light,” he replied, his jaw tight.

“duty, yes. but truth should be a liberation, not a chain.” you gestured around the shadowy sept. “all this.. the incense to mask the damp, the candles to fight the dark, the prayers to fill a silence you’re all afraid of. you surround yourself with symbols because the thing itself is absent.”

a hot spike of anger, pure and startling, shot through him. it was the anger of a man whose deepest, most secret doubt had just been given voice by a stranger. “you speak of things you do not understand. you reduce millennia of faith, of struggle, of meaning, to.. to stagecraft.”

“i reduce it to what i can observe,” you countered, unfazed by his hardening tone. “you tell people to have faith in the sunrise. i simply explain the turning of the earth. both get them to the same dawn, but my way doesn’t require them to feel guilty for wondering how.”

he stared at you. the afternoon light, weak and grey, filtered through a high window and caught the dust in the air between you, making it look like a veil. he had debates like this with the learned septon from the town over, with treatises and scripture. this was different. this was visceral. you spoke of guilt, of dawn, of the weight of truth, and it felt like you were reading the secret diary of his soul he didn’t even allow himself to keep.

“and what of morality?” he challenged, stepping closer without realizing it. the scent of you cut through the incense—dried chamomile,mint, the clean smell of rain on stone. it was profoundly distracting. “without the father to judge, without the threat of the seven hells, what keeps your hands from evil? convenience? fear of a gaoler?”

you didn’t back away. you met his gaze, and in yours he saw a fortress of conviction as strong as his own. “kindness,” you said simply. “empathy. the understanding that the other person is a person, not a soul to be saved or a sinner to be condemned. i help old nan with her rheumatism not because the mother commands it, but because she is in pain and i can ease it. that is all. it is.. cleaner.”

cleaner. the word echoed in the hollow space of his chest. his faith was not clean. it was stained with history, with blood, with the furious pride of his ancestors, with his own stifled, simmering temper. your unbelief was, in its way, purer than his devotion.

he was too close. he could see the pulse at the base of your throat. the urge rose in him, sudden and violent—not to strike, but to touch. to lay his hands on either side of that earnest, heretic face and see if your certainty would melt under his physical presence, under the weight of a different kind of truth.

his hand, of its own volition, began to rise from his sleeve.

you saw the movement. your eyes flicked to his hand, then back to his face. you didn’t flinch. you waited.

the discipline of a lifetime slammed down like a portcullis. his hand clenched into a fist and returned to his side. the moment broke, but the crack it left in his composure remained.

“you are in error,” he said, but the words were rote, devoid of their usual force. “and you are not as sure of that as you were a moment ago,” you replied, your voice barely a whisper.

you gave him one last, unreadable look, then turned and walked away, your boots making that same familiar, infuriating scuff on the stones. he stood, rigid, before the sorrowful maiden, watching you go until the great oak door sighed shut behind you, leaving him in a silence that was no longer holy, but profoundly, unbearably empty.

the tuesdays became the axis upon which his week turned. he told himself he was preparing for your visits, marshaling arguments, studying scripture to refute your clever, godless logic. he told himself it was his duty to guide this one stubborn soul back to the light, that her intellect was too sharp to be left in the darkness of disbelief.

but in the quiet of his sparse chambers in the sept’s annex, he knew the lie for what it was. he thought of your hands, stained with the earth’s remedies. he thought of your voice, calm and sure, dissecting his deepest convictions like one of your herbs. he thought of the scent of you, and the way the grey light fell on your hair.

the obsession did not announce itself with fanfare. it was a slow, cold seepage, like damp into stone. he found himself listening for your step. he noticed which herbs were selling well in your shop, a mundane detail that now felt vitally important. he took longer walks through the village, routes that happened to pass your window. he saw you laughing with the blacksmith’s daughter, a free, unburdened sound that echoed in the silent cavern of his own chest, and he felt a pang so sharp it was physical.

one tuesday, a fierce autumn storm lashed the mountains. the wind howled around the sept like a damned spirit, and rain battered the leaded glass. he was sure you wouldn’t come. the disappointment was a lead weight in his gut.

but you did. you pushed open the heavy door, soaked, your hair plastered to your head, your dress dark with water. you looked like a creature born of the storm, vibrant and wild and utterly real.

“you’re soaked,” he said, his voice sounding strange to his own ears.

“the roof over my drying shed is leaking,” you said, wiping rain from your face. “i was coming to ask if old septon willam’s records might have the name of a thatcher, but i see i’ve brought the weather with me.”

without thinking, he strode to the vestry and returned with a rough, clean linen towel. he held it out to you. you took it, your fingers brushing his, and the contact was a jolt, a spark in the dimness.

“thank you,” you said, drying your face and arms. the simple act was strangely intimate. he watched, motionless, as you rubbed the linen over your neck, as you squeezed the water from your hair.

“you should stand by the brazier,” he said, gesturing to the small iron fire-pot that provided the only heat. you moved to it, holding your hands out to the feeble glow. he followed, standing opposite you, the heat and your nearness making the air between you shimmer.

“you risk illness for the name of a thatcher?” he asked.

“i risk illness because my livelihood is in that shed,” you corrected. “the herbs will rot. it’s practical.” you looked at him over the flames. “not everything is a spiritual trial, father. sometimes a leak is just a leak.”

“and sometimes,” he said, the words coming from a place deeper than dogma, “a storm is not just a storm. it is a reminder of our smallness. a call to seek shelter beyond ourselves.”

“or,” you said, your eyes holding his, reflecting the tiny fire, “it’s just low pressure over the mountains. a call to fix your roof.”

he laughed.

it was a short, sharp, unfamiliar sound, like a stone cracking. he hadn’t laughed in years. it shocked him into silence. you smiled, a true, warm smile that reached your eyes, and in that moment, he was lost.

the obsession crystallized. it was no longer about saving you. it was about you. the way you shaped truth to your own hands. the unassailable fortress of your self-contained world. you had a peace he coveted, a purpose unmediated by ancestors or angels. you were whole, and he, maekar targaryen, father of the sept of blackhaven, was a man split in two.

the tension became a living thing between you. your tuesday debates grew quieter, more intense. the subjects shifted from theology to philosophy, from scripture to the nature of desire, of sacrifice, of love.

“you speak of divine love as an abstract force,” you said one day, as a pale winter light washed the stones. “but human love.. it’s specific. it’s about the way someone takes their tea, or the sound of their step, or the freckles on their skin. it’s tangible. it’s real.”

he was leaning against a pillar, arms crossed. you were closer than was proper. he could see the individual lashes framing your eyes. “and when that person is gone? when the step is silent, the skin cold? what then does your tangible love become? grief without hope. emptiness without end.”

“beautiful emptiness,” you whispered. “better to have felt the real thing for a season than to spend a lifetime kneeling before the idea of it.”

his control, that finely tempered steel, began to heat, to bend. it happened during a debate about the body—the faith’s wariness of it, your celebration of its senses. you were speaking of healing, of the knowledge stored in the very flesh.

“the body tells truths the mind obscures,” you said. “the quickened pulse. the caught breath. the way the skin flushes…”

his hand shot out. not to strike. to hold. his fingers, long and strong, curved around the side of your face, his thumb settling on the apple of your cheek. you froze, your words dying in your throat. his touch was not gentle. it was searching, desperate, an inquisition of its own.

“and what truth is my body telling you now?” he murmured, his voice a low, rough thing scraped from the depths of him. his violet eyes burned into yours, all pretence of spiritual guidance gone.

he could feel the warmth of your skin, the fine bone beneath. he could feel your pulse hammering against his thumb. your truth,in that moment, was the same as his: a shocking, terrifying mutual want.

“it’s telling me you’re afraid,” you breathed, not pulling away.

“i am not,” he growled, but it was a lie. he was terrified. terrified of the dam breaking. terrified of this feeling that had nothing to do with sin or salvation and everything to do with the scent of mint on your breath.

he leaned in, his forehead nearly touching yours. the world narrowed to this point of contact, his hand on your face, the shared air between your lips. the incense, the statues, the weight of his name and his title—it all receded, leaving only the shocking reality of you.

but he was maekar targaryen. discipline was his citadel. with a shudder that went through his entire frame, he released you, stepping back as if from a flame. his hand dropped to his side, trembling.

you stood there, your cheek flushed where his fingers had been, your eyes wide. you looked.. not violated, but seen. and in being seen by him, you had seen him too—the man beneath the priest, raging and wanting and wretchedly real.

“that,” you said softly, your voice unsteady for the first time he could remember, “was not a theological argument.”

he had no answer. he turned and walked away, his black robes swirling around him, fleeing the scene of his own near-surrender. but he could not flee the knowledge. the obsession was now complete. it was no longer a splinter. it was a lodestone in his soul, pulling him irrevocably towards you, towards the beautiful, empty dawn of your world.

he did not return to his chambers to pray. he stood at a high window, watching the grey clouds swallow the mountains, and for the first time in his life, maekar prayed for nothing at all. he simply stood, and felt, and burned.

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