Burn me • Aemond Targaryen

I Must

Chapter Seventy-Six~ I must

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Rhaella woke in an empty room. The fire had burnt out, small traces of smoke still drifting from the old wood that lay in the heath.

Her hair smelt like the outside after rain had showered through the air. Her skin was soft, as it would be after soaking in water. She pulled herself from the bed, noticing how the space next to her was cold.

She remembered then where she was. Trapped in a free castle, a home for cursed souls.

Perhaps that was what she was now. Cursed.

It seemed that way, her life had be cascaded into turmoil and was now being spun into a web of ill wished wars.

She knew she was a pawn in a bigger game. She would not be the first and definitely not the last to fall down the rabbit hole into this game, it was like a virus, once it caught you escaping its clutches was near impossible. Unless you knew the right remedies.

She wondered then how she would be remembered. Would they tell stories of her for years to come. Or would she simply go down as another Targaryen wife who lost so much and then, in turn, also lost her mind.

It didn't really matter she supposed. History was recorded years after the events that bind it, by then memories will have faded and lies would have spread. So nothing that would be written about her or her family would ever really be the whole truth, unless of course she wrote it herself.
But there wasn't the time for that.

In truth there wasn't much time for anything. There was nothing much left they could do now. It was just about waiting.

Waiting to give birth.

Waiting for war.

Waiting for death.

Time consumed her every thought, what she was waiting for mattered little.

She envied time, it had seen a thousand life times, been there from the beginning of man, and would be there long after. It could be commanded by no winds and burned by no flames because it just simply, was.

It had no family, nobody to care for. Suppose that was what made taking its victims so much easier. The stranger built its home in the shadows of time. Perhaps they were friends. Perhaps the stranger wasn't a god at all, perhaps he was a slave to time too, just like everyone else.

Time gives itself to each and every soul, like a noble maid on the night of her wedding. It connects with you in a way so intimate, not even your greatest love could compare.
It gives you enough of itself to build a pathway to the heavens or the hells, because they are the only two destinations we are all on a path towards, and at each checkpoint in life you are judged by times companion, and if the stranger wants to engulf you with his black cloak then you will fall where the choices you have made fit.

Oh, to hold that power.

But then perhaps Rhaella pitied time too. Eternity in the company of death seemed a sentence worse than the hells. To never know love, to only be able to watch it. To never hold a babe, to only watch them grow. It seemed a horrible way to live.

But her thoughts had wandered now, she had forgotten what she was thinking about in the first place.

Nothing.
Everything.

All at once.

"You're awake." Stated a voice from the door, dragging her back from her whirlwind of thoughts.