[ even having seen his video, alicent still startles at his name on the screen. the words that are so unmistakably embry in their flippancy — and in their careful acknowledgment. recognition of her care, her grief, all tucked inside a silly little message. she missed him terribly. ]
I suppose that’s preferable to rotted.
[ just a little werewolf joke for you.
alicent finds him shortly thereafter. she raps her knuckles on the door only once before easing it open, eager to see him, whole and hale. heart stuttering, breath caught, a look somewhere between awed and pained carving open her features. not at all the controlled queen he left behind, all her poise sanded down to nothing by weeks of sorrow.
in her mourning blacks, she still clings to an air of regality, flowers and vines of fine lace winding down her arms and up her neck. hair pinned into a tidy bun, so as not to tell of her worrying fingers, carding through it. tells persist: the prominent shadows under her eyes can’t be entirely obscured with concealer, and though her hands have begun to heal, a few fingers remain covered by bandages while others rim red from her picking.
she blinks once, twice. her hands twist. she should — say something, anything, if she could find the words to recognise the miracle of him, returned to her. instead, she moves quicker than one might expect in her little heels and slips her arms around him. ]
[ the absurd bout of nerves he's built up in the minutes between asking her to come and her appearance at his door dissipates the second she crosses the room and has him in her arms, his heart beating harder for the relief he feels, his hands shaky in a way very unbecoming of embry moore standards. the longer he keeps his eyes shut, the more he can pretend he never left at all, that everything danny did to him was a hazy nightmare borne of his own obsessive dreams. he held alicent just like this, after all, what felt like a mere blink ago. ]
Hey, sunshine.
[ there's a smile in his voice despite himself, despite how ash told him the house is blanketed with death now, despite how he hadn't even wanted to leave ash's room to come and fetch his own clothes because parisa's clothes are still strewn all over and she's dead and his heart aches with every beat. he gives himself a swift kick to the brain and then he's bear-walking alicent backwards in his tight grip, knocking them both onto his bed atop messy piles of his luxury clothes, plus a few pairs of parisa's lacy underthings. ]
Did you have fun at my funeral? [ he rolls to sit up on his elbows, a flop of dark hair in his eyes, the fully healed gash across his throat on display through his open collar. ] I heard it was lame. No strippers. You might know them as whores. Hawk really tried to keep it classy.
[ embry alone can be gifted this closeness, flouting decorum and propriety. alicent allows herself to be led, laugh helpless. she hitches up on her elbow in turn, shaking loose strands of hair from her eyes. a flicker of irritation, at the mention of hawk, for all he kept from them even as danny tormented alina. there and gone. this isn’t about hawk, however much he shares the hard line of embry’s jaw or tousle of his hair. for alicent, it’s been about embry from the start, even as the other deaths began and multiplied. she drew the parallel between alina’s attack and embry’s death swiftly, even when no-one listened to her. (why would they? a woman’s word is worth little and less, compared to that of the men who keeping secrets from her.)
an assessing glance, then, for embry will not show the pain of his lot; he’ll simply stomach it, bile corroding his insides.
she would do the same. ]
I told the Lady Greer you would have hated it.
[ a knowing arch of her brows. embry hadn’t mentioned her, but the girl’s love for him had been obvious from her endless tears and familiar words. her hand flattens again his covered chest, feeling the heartbeat surging into her palm. even viserys hadn’t felt so alive, the last few years of his life. her composure falters, lashes fluttering. ]
And I assured her she looked beautiful, on your behalf. [ she lifts her hand higher, fingers featherlight as they trace the mark at his throat. the same wound alina suffered, though embry’s feels scarred where hers had ached in its freshness, tender to her touch. absentmindedly — ] Perhaps with less vulgarity than you’d like.
[ lady greer. his poise holds from years of practice standing steady at ash's side like he hadn't just been on his knees in some polished bathroom and spent the last thirty seconds frantically checking his clothes so he wouldn't walk into some important diplomat covered in semen. it hurts bad enough to think of ash when he knows exactly what grief does to him, has seen him broken and dragging, a hollow shell on the campaign trail after jenny's death. that greer would mourn him at all after ghosting her in chicago all those years ago fills him with shards of guilt.
his throat bobs in a swallow beneath her touch, almost a little shamed that he hadn't mentioned her to alicent. she knows nearly everything else — more than most, now, because not even ash or greer know about abilene, and he plans to keep it that way. how could he possibly tell her greer her cousin is a psychopath and he dreams blissfully of her death? ]
If you didn't ask about her underwear, then yeah, you didn't do it right. [ he pries her hand from his throat and instead twines their fingers together, careful of her bandaged hands. ] She's Ash's girl. But we have a lot in common.
[ including being fucking obsessed with the same person, and each other, but the details feel too complicated for his recently resurrected brain to even attempt to explain. it feels good to just sit in his room with alicent, who's seen his ridiculous and ugly parts, and still somehow finds it in her to be grateful that he's alive. ]
Did someone hurt you? [ his thumb skids her knuckles, his eyes sharpening with reckless confrontation, an old habit from his younger days that he's yet to outgrow. ] Looks painful.
[ she’s ash’s girl, another piece of embry slotting into place. the one he would have ash choose, so he might tighten his grip on the throne. now that she’s seen the way they both grieved embry, she wonders if they would not rather have him, too. a thought unlikely to be well-received by one so freshly returned (and grieving himself). she squeezes his hand, as if to pretend hers isn’t hurt all that bad actually, and gives the slightest wince. ridiculous.
at the question, her eyes fix on their linked hands. a telling flutter of her lashes and tug at her mouth. it’s a shameful thing, always has been. her father has scolded for it since she was a girl and now aemond has taken up the miserable work in his absence. you’re the most comely girl at court. why do you destroy yourself? ]
No. It is — an ugly habit. [ unbecoming of a queen. ] I thought I had overcome it. Before the game.
[ an admission of how deeply the last month has affected her, if her thinner form and shadowed eyes did not convey as much already. ]
[ attempting a dry tone, ] Though I’ve now hurt people most dear to me, so perhaps it’s fitting.
[ it's disappointing at first, that there isn't anyone for him to take his frustrations out on. he would have liked something to blame, someone else to point his endlessly churning rage at that isn't any number of the others he's already spurned. it seems all he's done since returning is burn bridges, though for most he hadn't needed to say anything at all. it's the strange avoidance, though it's for good reason. he wants to hurt danny johnson, and some people want to flock to him. embry hasn't found a way to coexist with these concepts. ]
I really wanted to show you how brutish I could be and fight someone on your behalf. [ flopping down onto his back, he carelessly wrinkles a pair of wool trousers as he pushes them out from beneath him. ] I'm not just a pretty face, you know.
[ he cradles her hands to his chest, a pair of bird wings against the thud of his heartbeat. it's the softest thing he's felt since coming back. ]
If you did, I know you had a reason. [ he counts himself lucky that he wasn't one of the poor bastards caught in her crossfire — lucky that he was dead, or he might have been. what he doesn't say is that a betrayal from alicent would have gouged him open worse than danny's knife sinking into flesh. ] If you're gonna play, you might as well play to win.
[ how many times has he thought of giving in, of confessing every lie to ash, of throwing his every sacrifice out the goddamn window and saying yes, yes, i will marry you, i will move to bumfuck nowhere and raise cows with you and damn your career to hell. a million times. but he's already playing the game. he's already hurt the people he loves the most. there's no sense in losing now.
he maneuvers her fingers so her nails press to his palm, leaving little crescents marked in his skin. ]
When you feel like tearing yourself up, find me instead. It hurts in a good way, if you're the one doing it.
[ she could say any number of things to him. i’ve never wanted to hurt anyone less, not now, with him freshly returned to her, a fragility in his evasive gaze. for a moment, she presses her bitten and blunt nails into his skin, too ruined to bleed him even if she wished it. a persistent pressure, nothing more. ]
[ wryly, ] Men have fought and killed for me before. [ a jape, a truth. she thinks she hears them, sometimes, harwin strong and his father clawing at the doors, begging for a quicker death than burning. the queen makes a wish. ] My queensguard trounced an entire tourney with my favour in hand. [ her fingers curl into his palm. she follows him down, brushing a kiss to his temple before laying her head on his shoulder. ] And then named me the Queen of Love and Beauty before mine own husband’s eyes.
[ for the slight of disrespecting her, ser criston smashed a man’s skull (a fact she’ll recall again later, when her newest knight dies the same way; the gods punish her). ]
I prefer this to all of that. [ closeness, over brutish displays. ] I prefer you, Embry.
[ sometimes cruel, oft careless, but not monstrous. simultaneously honest and evasive, wretched and kind. it’s easier to confess with her eyes fixed above them. ]
— I shall try.
[ to seek him out when the impulse to bleed herself strikes. she cannot promise she’ll inflict the pain bubbling inside her on him instead, but she can come to him, if she remembers herself in the stress and chaos. she can allow him to bear witness, when they have seen the other clearly for this long. ]
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no subject
I suppose that’s preferable to rotted.
[ just a little werewolf joke for you.
alicent finds him shortly thereafter. she raps her knuckles on the door only once before easing it open, eager to see him, whole and hale. heart stuttering, breath caught, a look somewhere between awed and pained carving open her features. not at all the controlled queen he left behind, all her poise sanded down to nothing by weeks of sorrow.
in her mourning blacks, she still clings to an air of regality, flowers and vines of fine lace winding down her arms and up her neck. hair pinned into a tidy bun, so as not to tell of her worrying fingers, carding through it. tells persist: the prominent shadows under her eyes can’t be entirely obscured with concealer, and though her hands have begun to heal, a few fingers remain covered by bandages while others rim red from her picking.
she blinks once, twice. her hands twist. she should — say something, anything, if she could find the words to recognise the miracle of him, returned to her. instead, she moves quicker than one might expect in her little heels and slips her arms around him. ]
no subject
Hey, sunshine.
[ there's a smile in his voice despite himself, despite how ash told him the house is blanketed with death now, despite how he hadn't even wanted to leave ash's room to come and fetch his own clothes because parisa's clothes are still strewn all over and she's dead and his heart aches with every beat. he gives himself a swift kick to the brain and then he's bear-walking alicent backwards in his tight grip, knocking them both onto his bed atop messy piles of his luxury clothes, plus a few pairs of parisa's lacy underthings. ]
Did you have fun at my funeral? [ he rolls to sit up on his elbows, a flop of dark hair in his eyes, the fully healed gash across his throat on display through his open collar. ] I heard it was lame. No strippers. You might know them as whores. Hawk really tried to keep it classy.
no subject
an assessing glance, then, for embry will not show the pain of his lot; he’ll simply stomach it, bile corroding his insides.
she would do the same. ]
I told the Lady Greer you would have hated it.
[ a knowing arch of her brows. embry hadn’t mentioned her, but the girl’s love for him had been obvious from her endless tears and familiar words. her hand flattens again his covered chest, feeling the heartbeat surging into her palm. even viserys hadn’t felt so alive, the last few years of his life. her composure falters, lashes fluttering. ]
And I assured her she looked beautiful, on your behalf. [ she lifts her hand higher, fingers featherlight as they trace the mark at his throat. the same wound alina suffered, though embry’s feels scarred where hers had ached in its freshness, tender to her touch. absentmindedly — ] Perhaps with less vulgarity than you’d like.
no subject
his throat bobs in a swallow beneath her touch, almost a little shamed that he hadn't mentioned her to alicent. she knows nearly everything else — more than most, now, because not even ash or greer know about abilene, and he plans to keep it that way. how could he possibly tell her greer her cousin is a psychopath and he dreams blissfully of her death? ]
If you didn't ask about her underwear, then yeah, you didn't do it right. [ he pries her hand from his throat and instead twines their fingers together, careful of her bandaged hands. ] She's Ash's girl. But we have a lot in common.
[ including being fucking obsessed with the same person, and each other, but the details feel too complicated for his recently resurrected brain to even attempt to explain. it feels good to just sit in his room with alicent, who's seen his ridiculous and ugly parts, and still somehow finds it in her to be grateful that he's alive. ]
Did someone hurt you? [ his thumb skids her knuckles, his eyes sharpening with reckless confrontation, an old habit from his younger days that he's yet to outgrow. ] Looks painful.
cw: self-harm
at the question, her eyes fix on their linked hands. a telling flutter of her lashes and tug at her mouth. it’s a shameful thing, always has been. her father has scolded for it since she was a girl and now aemond has taken up the miserable work in his absence. you’re the most comely girl at court. why do you destroy yourself? ]
No. It is — an ugly habit. [ unbecoming of a queen. ] I thought I had overcome it. Before the game.
[ an admission of how deeply the last month has affected her, if her thinner form and shadowed eyes did not convey as much already. ]
[ attempting a dry tone, ] Though I’ve now hurt people most dear to me, so perhaps it’s fitting.
[ that she hurts, too, even in this small way. ]
no subject
I really wanted to show you how brutish I could be and fight someone on your behalf. [ flopping down onto his back, he carelessly wrinkles a pair of wool trousers as he pushes them out from beneath him. ] I'm not just a pretty face, you know.
[ he cradles her hands to his chest, a pair of bird wings against the thud of his heartbeat. it's the softest thing he's felt since coming back. ]
If you did, I know you had a reason. [ he counts himself lucky that he wasn't one of the poor bastards caught in her crossfire — lucky that he was dead, or he might have been. what he doesn't say is that a betrayal from alicent would have gouged him open worse than danny's knife sinking into flesh. ] If you're gonna play, you might as well play to win.
[ how many times has he thought of giving in, of confessing every lie to ash, of throwing his every sacrifice out the goddamn window and saying yes, yes, i will marry you, i will move to bumfuck nowhere and raise cows with you and damn your career to hell. a million times. but he's already playing the game. he's already hurt the people he loves the most. there's no sense in losing now.
he maneuvers her fingers so her nails press to his palm, leaving little crescents marked in his skin. ]
When you feel like tearing yourself up, find me instead. It hurts in a good way, if you're the one doing it.
no subject
[ wryly, ] Men have fought and killed for me before. [ a jape, a truth. she thinks she hears them, sometimes, harwin strong and his father clawing at the doors, begging for a quicker death than burning. the queen makes a wish. ] My queensguard trounced an entire tourney with my favour in hand. [ her fingers curl into his palm. she follows him down, brushing a kiss to his temple before laying her head on his shoulder. ] And then named me the Queen of Love and Beauty before mine own husband’s eyes.
[ for the slight of disrespecting her, ser criston smashed a man’s skull (a fact she’ll recall again later, when her newest knight dies the same way; the gods punish her). ]
I prefer this to all of that. [ closeness, over brutish displays. ] I prefer you, Embry.
[ sometimes cruel, oft careless, but not monstrous. simultaneously honest and evasive, wretched and kind. it’s easier to confess with her eyes fixed above them. ]
— I shall try.
[ to seek him out when the impulse to bleed herself strikes. she cannot promise she’ll inflict the pain bubbling inside her on him instead, but she can come to him, if she remembers herself in the stress and chaos. she can allow him to bear witness, when they have seen the other clearly for this long. ]