Kingdom Fall : Aegon II Targaryen

Inherited Injuries.

"Get out." Annerys tells Aegon when he comes to her room the next night.

"No." Aegon says.

"Get out or I'll scream." Annerys warns.

"No, you won't." Aegon replies. And they both know he's right. What good would it do anyway? Nobody would come to help. She'd just end up with a sore throat to add to her troubles.

Annerys pushes her tongue against her cheek and says instead "I don't want to talk to you."

"I told you." Aegon says sternly. "Annie, I told you that I'd make a poor father. You can't make up unfair expectations of me and then get upset when I don't meet them. It's not my fault you want more from me than I can give." Aegon tells her.

"I feel like perhaps it's the bare minimum for me to expect my husband to not humiliate me and our child in front of a large audience." Annerys scoffs. "Don't you see? Your grandfather, Your mother and now you. You pass down and inherit parental inadequacy as though it's the family jewel and I will not have my daughter be a victim to it."

"I don't know what you want from me, Annerys." Aegon shouts, feeling frustrated with Annerys refusal to accept his apology that's hardly apologetic.

"I want you to care. That's all. I want to matter to you." Annerys shouts back.

"You do. You know you do." Aegon whispers as he moves to hold her face in his hands before Annerys angrily swats him away from her.

"No. I really don't. You've fooled yourself into thinking you care about me because you like the idea of love, of being loved. But if you truly felt anything for me there would be some proof of it. Yet there's none. Nothing. You only care about yourself. I am of no importance to you. None at all. I could be anyone to you and it wouldn't matter as long as you had a wife that you could claim as yours" Annerys says sadly.

"That's not true." Aegon argues.

"No?" Annerys says sarcastically.

"I...You told me I didn't have to be something I'm not. That you didn't need me to be your brother. You can't just change your mind now it no longer suits you." Aegon cries.

"Selfishness is not a personality trait, Aegon. It's a choice. One that you make constantly and if you cared for me at all you wouldn't make it." Annerys replies. "I forgive your many infidelities. The constant indignity of sharing you with high and lowborns alike. I easily accept that both the smug Ladies I must make nice with and the skittish maids who attend to me have lain with my husband and all around us know it. And then as a result of your seemingly never ending fornications I have to suffer your mothers pitiful apologies and pious platitudes for the actions of her wayward son. And I ask for nothing from you in return because I understand that you mean no harm by it, that it's just your way. But now I am asking you. No, I'm telling you that you will not humiliate our daughter." Annerys tells Aegon in a rather cathartic offload of emotions.

Aegon just stands there wordlessly for what seems to be dragging on for hours. The two just stand there in silence at an impasse. Annerys has laid out her conditions for their marriage. All of which Aegon feels completely incapable of meeting. He thought perhaps Annerys would hate him one day. That one day she would wake up and feel nothing but ire for him and he had dreaded it and now he knows that he'd been worrying about the wrong thing. He should have feared his lovely wife's indifference. For as she looks at him now he knows there's no choice in it. She'd pick their daughter over him in a heartbeat. The very thing that symbolises their union that proves Annie had been his. His triumph over the lovelorn looks she shares with Jacaerys.

And now the child is what stands between them.

He should promise Annerys that he'll be a good father. But he can't say the lie. He's not sure why. He has no problem with lying but he just will not make this false promise. So he stands there and does nothing as Anne brushes past him and leaves her own room.