Kingdom Fall : Aegon II Targaryen

Nothing Like You.

This is a shorter chapter than i have typically been posting recently but i just wanted to finish the Dragonstone storyline up and have her return to Kingsdlanding be its own chapter. 

"Do you want to tell me what Daemon said?" Rhaenyra asks her daughter as she strokes a hand through her silken curls.

In response Annerys shakes her head against her Mother's shoulder where her head is nestled. "No." she then replies through a sob.

"I had brought you a gift, if you'd like to see it."

"Alright." Anne agrees, never one to say no to a gift and in desperate need of a distraction.

Rhaenyra smiles at her daughter before she rises to fetch the ornate box from the small table she had dropped it on when she had walked in on whatever that was between her husband and daughter.

She sits back down beside Anne, who had stopped her uncontrollable sobs and has now managed to retain her sobs to the occasional hiccup. Rhaenyra places the box in front of Anne and says "Go on, open it."

Anne's fingers skirt over the three-headed dragon mosaic made up of crushed seashells before she undos the clasp and lifts the lid up. Inside of it she finds what can only be described as her childhood. Anne lifts her head and smiles at her mother.

Annerys goes through drawings she had gifted her mother that sat at the top of the box. She'd been obsessed with trees. Although she cannot remember why now. She just knows at any and all opportunities she had chosen to draw them or embroider them, when her Septa would allow her to. Anne moves on and digs around the box for another item of nostalgia. She finds the now tiny gold bracelets she had worn as an infant and smiles at wonder at the thought that she could have once been so small that they had fit. A doll Ser Harwin had given her for her eighth nameday. A fossilised seahorse Ser Laenor had given her, that Anne thinks she should bring with her on her return to King's Landing to show to her aunt. When she sees it Anne lets out a gasp and pulls out a now raggedy teddy from the box, "fufu!" Annerys exclaims before she pets the bear affectionately as she had as a child.

"You carried that with you everywhere." Rhaenyra says fondly as she strokes a hand over the crown of Anne's head.

"He was my best friend." Annerys says both jokingly and earnestly as at seven the plush bear had been the thing she had told all of her secrets to.

"Well I won't tell Jace that lest he becomes jealous." Rhaenyra jokes.

At the thought of her twin's jealousy Anne frowns. "Jacaerys, will learn to understand, Anne." Rhaenyra tells her daughter. "He's still so very young, so he has all of these ideals of how he would like the world to be, and he's just yet to realise that in this life we get so very few choices, so we must take advantage of the ones we get and accept the ones we do not."

Anne nods at her mothers words and thinks of the choices she has gotten to make, so very few times has she ever been asked what she wants or how she feels about something, and truly been heard. Anne turns her head to look round her mother and at the pool of liquid and shattered porcelain and wonders if she actually made a choice there or just bit her nose off to spite her face. Unconsciously her hand falls to her belly and caresses the small bump there.

Rhaenyra looks at her only daughter knowingly. She thinks back to the first time she had felt her own first pregnancy quake within her, the first small flutter of life inside of her. How confusing it had been to detest something as much as you loved it. How she had feared her mothers fate. She had to do it all alone. All she had wanted was her mothers consolation. So she leans forward and cups her daughters cheeks and tells her "you'll make a wonderful mother."