It had been three days since he woke. Three days after a month-long sleep that might as well have been a death, and not once had any member of his family come to see him.
Jon Targaryen, though he still wanted himself to be known as Edric, spent those days in the silence of his chamber like a corpse inside a tomb. His chamber was vast with the bed too soft and the air thick with incense meant to mask the scent of his body. Yet no voice called his name, no gentle hand touched his brow. The servants spoke only when spoken to, their eyes lowered, their tones polished with disdain and hatred that seemed bred in their minds for a crime he didn't even know.
He had rifled through every memory the body offered him and it was a cruel gift. He saw, through his own eyes, a boy who had never been loved enough to be hated, only tolerated. A mother too scared to touch him as if he was born with greyscales. A sister born a few breaths before him, yet already the last dragon Rhaegar could have hoped for. It was clear now, in this place, blood alone bought him no safety. The game here was clear and deadlier than any he had imagined watching from the shows. Every look was a blade and every smile hid a scheme.
He had tried, in these three days, to move his body, to test its limits. That too had been its own humiliation. This flesh was soft, bloated even. His arms wobbled when he tried to lift himself, his chest heaving with shallow, panicked breaths after a few attempts at push-ups. His own reflection in the silvered glass disgusted him, a princeling gone to shit.
When he asked to see his mother, they bowed, when he asked to see his sister, they bowed again. But neither came. Only Pycelle, with his foul breath, visited to check on his body and every time to remind him that in few days time a ship would take him north, to the jagged, forgotten isle of Skagos. Exile, wrapped in the silken words of duty.
He decided today would be different. If they would not come to him, he would go to them. The next time when the door creaked open and the serving girl entered with his midday meal, he was already standing. When she looked up, startled, he brushed past her, his bulk swaying but steady enough. The guards at the gate outside reached for him, muttering warnings.
"Back to your chambers, my prince," one said.
He shoved him aside with surprising force though it was more due to surprise than power, and stumbled into the corridor beyond. The echo of his steps rang harshly off the stone, and behind him the shouts began with the clatter of pursuit.
He remembered the path from the boy's memories, down the crimson hall, past the carved columns of dragons locked in combat, toward the solar where his sister liked to read. He moved as fast as his weight allowed, breath already burning his throat and servants scattering out his way.
When he reached the doors to her chambers, the guards tensed up. "Prince Jon-" one began, but the doors were already flung open.
The room beyond was bright, awash with daylight spilling through the open balcony. In there she stood, Visenya, his elder twin. Taller than him, silver hair bound in a braid that had gems ornamented all over them. Her eyes, grey with a shadow of purple in them, the ancient blood of Winter Kings mixed with Valyrian blood, fixed on him the instant he entered. And her face, open and warm in the just a few seconds ago, turned to stone.
"My prince," a woman gasped nearby, but he barely paid attention to her. Beside Visenya stood Aegon, the crown prince, smiling with that same smug curl of lips that haunted the boy's dying thoughts. Not far form them them loomed a knight in white cloak and armour, hand already resting on his sword hilt.
"You should not be here, my prince" the Kingsguard said, his voice cool and measured. He ignored him too. His breath came heavy, and the words tore from his throat full of anger from the betrayal he had faced, before he could temper them. "Why did you do it, Visenya? Why lie to the world about your brother?"
Visenya's expression twisted, not in guilt, but disgust. "Brother," she echoed, the word sounding like a curse. She takes a step closer, her height looming over him, her face a hand away from his own.
"You acted poorly that day before the Crown Prince," she said, each word clipped and cold. " and you paid for it. Blaming Aegon for your own incompetence in wielding a sword is what led to your injuries. Stop trying to make others guilty of your failures."
Jon stares at her, his world narrowing to the sound of her voice, calm, cutting, and utterly convinced to herself. Then she turns, her face softening as her gaze slids to Aegon. Her lips curls faintly, her eyes warming. Love, he realizes, sick, stupid puppy love had made her blind. Love had made her betray blood for the sake of a boy who'd nearly killed her twin.
Something in him twisted, not rage for he didn't cared enough to what had happened to his predecessor but a deep, cold understanding settling inside seeing how alone his predecessor truly was despite all his caring for his family. He did not see another Kingsguard moving inside until a mailed hand gripped his shoulder. "Come along, my prince," the knight speaks soflty.
Jon didn't fight him. What would be the point? The man guided him back through the halls, the heavy steps echoing in the now empty corridor. He caught no glimpse of his sister following, no sign that she even watched him go. The doors to his chamber shut with a dull finality as he entered back in his room.
He stood in the center of the vast room. The air was still thick with the cloying sweetness of the incense, a futile attempt to mask the deeper, foul scent of his own sweat and the rot of the King's Landing gutters far below. His chest still heaved, the breath torn from his lungs not just by the exertion of his brief movement and meeting, but also by the cold, clean disgust in his sister's eyes.
He walks slowly to the silvered looking glass, ignoring the tremor in his legs. The reflection of unhealthy amount of soft-flesh on his face making it look unsightly to anyone. Edric stared at the flushed, sweat-slicked face of Prince Jon, thinking what to do with his future now. The cruel clarity of that confrontation with Visenya was a like sword driven into his belly. He had expected denial, a flicker of guilt even a dramatic outburst of fear. Instead, she had offered the smooth, polished answer of utter conviction. "Blaming Aegon for your own incompetence in wielding a sword is what led to your injuries. Stop trying to make others guilty of your failures."
This lie was not a lie to her. It was the truth of her world, a truth built on the foundation of the Crown Prince's image of being born in a way that seem much less bloody then their own. Jon did not exist as a person but as a person born to take the blame of deaths during Robert's rebellion. Visenya's loyalty was not to blood, but to Aegon, whose image in view of smallfolks and lords can increase her own. His mother's silence was not the worry of a protective parent, but the calculated indifference of a Queen who could not afford to show love to boy whose birth brought a war on the soil of Westeros when it was her own fault to run away with a married man.
He raises a hand and wipes the grime of sweat from his brow. The rage that should have burned in him now absent, replaced by a deep understanding that him being hated by everyone of his family was not because of his appearance but as a pawn chosen to live with the burden of wrong decisions of others. The game being played here was never about the crown but a game to present a new perception and narrative keeping the Westeros busy in it, while keeping House Targaryen in power by blaming a child for deaths due to the lust of their own. And his story, courtesy of his twin, had been finalized. A incompetent failure in exile, a disgraceful prince who would have no allies for hatred stemmed from their stories.