A Song of Ash and Empire

There were nights when Rhaegar dreamed of her.

Not her face—he could barely remember it clearly now. It had blurred at the edges, like a painting left too long in the sun. But the sound of her voice lingered in his mind, soft and lilting, like the faint hum of a lullaby. Sometimes, he thought he could still smell the faint scent of lavender that clung to her, warm and sweet and impossibly comforting.

Alyssa Targaryen had been his second mother.

His first mother—his real mother, if such a thing existed in the tangled mess of two lives—was a woman he barely remembered from his first life. That life was distant now, fractured and fading like a dream forgotten upon waking. But it had been real.

And so had she. His first mother, whose name he could no longer recall. She had been a quiet, hardworking woman, her energy always depleted from long hours, her face kind but tired. He'd loved her in the way that all children loved their mothers—thoughtlessly, instinctively, without ever pausing to wonder what would happen if she were gone.

She had died too young.

And then he had died too, and somehow, impossibly, he had been born again.

Alyssa had become his mother in this new life.

And though he had known, even as a child, that she was not the woman who had brought him to consciousness, it hadn't mattered. She was his mother now. The one who had cradled him as an infant, sung to him when he couldn't sleep, brushed his silver hair back from his face when he cried.

She was patient in a way that almost hurt to think about now. Patient with his endless questions, and his early attempts to understand this strange world. She hadn't laughed or scolded when he asked about dragons before he was old enough to speak properly. She simply smiled and said, "You'll see one day. You'll see how beautiful they are."

And she was right. He'd seen them, ridden them. She'd take him on Meleys often. It felt beautiful then. But it didn't feel beautiful now.

He could remember the day she died as vividly as if it had happened yesterday.

It had been early morning, the Red Keep alive with anticipation. His mother had gone into labor, and the servants whispered anxiously in the halls. The pregnancy had been a difficult one. Everyone had known it, though no one dared say it aloud in front of Alyssa.

"She's strong," Baelon had said. "She's always been strong."

But strength wasn't enough.

Rhaegar had been roaming in the gardens when the news came. He could still remember the way the flowers swayed in the breeze, bright and vibrant against the stone walls of the keep. 

And then the air had shifted. The servants had stopped and whispered. His father's footsteps had echoed louder than they should have as he strode toward the birthing chamber.

Rhaegar hadn't followed at first. Something inside him—something instinctive and primal—had told him to stay away. But when he saw Baelon emerge from the chamber hours later, his shoulders hunched and his face pale, Rhaegar had known.

"She's gone," Baelon had said. His voice was raw, stripped of its usual strength. "And the boy… he didn't make it either."

He knew of her death in the story he read in his first life. He had tried everything that he possibly could to deter her from having another child, gods knew he was worried enough that she would die when Daemon was born. 

But alas he was but a boy of 5 name days, and there was only so much he could do to meddle in his parents' private life.

Even still he had hoped against everything that she would survive, after all, she had given birth to him. Someone that shouldn't have existed, meaning that Daemon was already her third child. So he had seen at least some reason to hope that she would survive this one as well.

And he was proven wrong.

Alyssa had been larger than life to him in this cruel, unforgiving world—an endless source of warmth and comfort, a figure who seemed eternal in the way only mothers could. The idea that she was gone, that she would never hum to herself as she combed his hair again, was heart-shattering.

He'd sat by her bed for hours that evening, long after the maesters and servants had left, staring at the empty space where she had been. His father had tried to comfort him, but Baelon's grief had been too raw, too heavy to offer anything beyond hollow words.

Rhaegar hadn't cried then. He didn't cry at her funeral either.

But he felt hollow.

Barely half a decade into this life and he had already failed.

The funeral pyre had been a grand affair, befitting a princess of House Targaryen. The flames had roared high, consuming Alyssa and her infant son, little Aegon, as the family gathered to watch.

Baelon had stood stiff and silent, his face a mask of stone, though his hands trembled faintly at his sides. Viserys had clung to Rhaegar's hand, his small fingers tight enough to hurt, while Daemon sat on a nursemaid's hip, too young to understand what was happening.

Rhaegar had stared at the flames, his thoughts too tangled to form anything coherent. He hadn't cried then, either.

But he had wanted to.

In the years that followed, Rhaegar often found himself thinking about Alyssa in ways that felt uncomfortably tangled. She had been his mother, in every way that mattered, and yet… she hadn't been. She was his second mother, a mother he'd known for too little time.

And yet he felt he knew her too well.

He knew her patience, her warmth, her boisterous strength. He knew the way her hands had felt as she held him, the way her laughter had filled the room like sunlight.

But he didn't know the woman she had been before him. The daughter of Jaehaerys and Alysanne, the warrior wife, the princess who had once dreamed of adventure. Those parts of her were strangers to him, pieces of a puzzle he could never fully assemble.

He sat in the godswood now, the faint rustling of leaves overhead breaking the silence. The weirwood tree stared down at him with its carved face, its red eyes unblinking, its mouth twisted into something that could almost be mistaken for a smile.

"She'd have hated this," Rhaegar muttered to himself, leaning back against the trunk of a gnarled oak. "All the plotting. The scheming. She'd have told me to put the chessboard away and go climb a tree like a normal boy."

He let out a dry laugh, though there was no humor in it. "As if that were ever an option."

He often wondered what Alyssa would think of the boy he was becoming. Would she have seen the cracks in him, the fractures caused by the weight of two lives and the knowledge he carried? Would she have understood why he was always watching, always planning?

He didn't think so.

Alyssa had been patient, yes, but she'd also been stubborn in her way. She would have wanted him to live, to laugh, to be a child like his brothers. And perhaps that was why her absence hurt so much.

Because she would have wanted something for him that he could never give himself.

"A mother," Rhaegar whispered to himself, his voice barely audible. "Twice over, in two lives. And I didn't get to keep her in either."

The thought sat heavy in his chest.

In truth, he barely knew her. At least not completely. Five years wasn't enough time to truly know anyone, let alone someone like Alyssa Targaryen. And yet, those five years had shaped him in ways he couldn't begin to untangle.

She had been a memory and a presence, a ghost who lingered in the corners of his mind, her warmth forever just out of reach.

"I miss you, mother."

The wind carried his words away, soft as a sigh.