ℒove always wakes the dragon (Aemond x OC)

Crimson flow (part 2)

And then the joyful cheering changes its tone but the sound is drowned out by her heart racing, pounding, flooding her with a feverish heat. Lia feels lightheaded. It is suddenly hard to focus, to stand straight, and a cold wave of sweat emanates across her whole body. She is shivering violently, she can't stop her hands from shaking. Still, she tries to remove the chainmail; but her fingers slip. She looks blankly at her palm — only to see it covered in blood. And it's dripping. Lia slowly lowers her gaze, her throat tightening at the sight.

It's not just a few drops of red — she watches as it pours from her left side, a fascinating flow of liquid crimson. It runs down the weave of metal rings, as vivid as a scattering of rubies set in silver. It stains and slips down to her clothes and doesn't stop. It makes her breathing shudder. Only then Lia realizes that his sword didn't just cut her arm but also slid between her ribs, landing right at the gap in her armor, slicing through her skin. And that is where the blood is coming from.

The headache turns into drowsiness.

Her knees feel weak, people and colors mash together and flash before her eyes as she gets dizzier by the second, and Lia misses the moment when she falls. There's still a part of her that wants to fight, to get up and regain some strength but her legs give out from under her, and she can't seem to take a full breath. The rest of the armor feels heavy, sweaty, suffocating, pulling her to the ground. Or maybe it's the pain that pins her down as it spreads through her, sharp and all-consuming.

It was very naive of her to believe in a happy ending.

Lia blinks, her eyelids drooping, and it takes a lot of effort to open her eyes again. Blurred faces surround her, and she hears a chorus of voices — cries, screams — but can't make out the words. She can hardly make out anything until she catches a glimpse of light, a flicker of silver that frames the face she knows so well. Aemond leans over her, brushing hair away from her forehead, his touch as gentle as his gaze. Has he always looked at her like this? She'd like to think so.

"You came back for the show, didn't you?" Lia mutters, and saying each word feels like rubbing sand against her throat.

He dismisses the topic completely, his eye wide and fixed on her, his legs bent at the knees and already dirtied with soil.

"Please don't move," his voice cuts through the haze, low and worried.

Lia struggles to put up a brave face for him and even smiling feels painful. Aemond looks like he is hurting too. She wants to ask him what is going on but she has trouble forming a coherent sentence.

"I need you to stay awake. Can you do that?" he insists softly, "Here, squeeze my arm."

"I fear I will get blood on it," she musters up a weak reply.

"I don't care," Aemond takes her hand in his and then places it right under his elbow, his fingers pressing onto hers to keep them there. She sees blood smearing all over his sleeve but he doesn't look at it, his eye never leaving her.

"You must stay awake," Aemond repeats with an evident, mounting desperation in his tone. In a silent plea, he cradles her head, his thumb lightly stroking her cheek. She can barely feel it.

Lia is losing focus but she can't glance away from the dark red stain on his clothes. She's worried it will be the only thing left for him to remember her by. She is so heatedly overwhelmed by all the memories she has of him, of them together — and right at this moment she wants, she craves even more. Having a future with Aemond would've been just enough, she suddenly thinks. Only it's too late to wish for that.

When Lia looks at him again, everything else fades away.

She slowly takes in every feature of his face, leaving one final engraving in her memory. Here are the curves of his lips she never got to kiss, the lines of his cheeks she wants to trace with her finger, the storm trapped in his gaze she knows so well. She thinks of his smile, a spark of joy lighting his face in the darkness, the sharp blue of his sapphire shining even brighter — and she comes to terms with her fate.

She loves him and it doesn't hurt anymore.

"I wish we had more time," Lia whispers with the faintest of a smile that makes him quiver.

Aemond shakes his head as his knuckles glide from her temple to her chin. "No, don't say that," he ardently protests against the implication in her words — only to inevitably grasp the dire truth behind them. And he is horribly helpless against it. And he can't fight it anymore.

"I didn't want to leave, I shouldn't have left," he ardently blurts out, sorrowful and frantic. "It doesn't matter, I swear, none of it did. Please, just hold on a little longer. Ophelia, I am begging you, just stay awake, you can't —" Aemond's voice breaks.

She wants to reach out and caress his face but her body is irrevocably too feeble. Instead, she gathers her strength to intertwine her fingers with his, clinging to his warmth like it's the last thing she will ever feel. It probably is.

"You did it, you know?" she croaks, only for him to hear.

His gaze, his lips, his fingers holding hers, his shaking voice. She thinks of nothing but him.

The feeling of his hand on her cheek is slowly disappearing, her body going numb.

But she makes an effort to tell him, her voice barely above the whisper:

"You cut into my heart first."



She surrenders to darkness then, too tired of fighting.