Her tiny lungs shuddered with the amount of effort it took to take in a breathe and she felt despair.

Her skin burned and her stomach roiled and despite just how terrible she felt, there was no conceivable way for her to shed a tear for her pain.

She was just too weak to even do that and it worried her.

It worried her because she remembered the screaming and the bleeding and the knife - and oh god! She had been murdered! - but she didn't want to die, not again god help her.

She had been stabbed and stabbed and stabbed until all she knew was red and rage and then nothing.

And she had known that very same nothing for so very very long, and remaining suspended in that stark state of nonexistence had nearly consumed her. She had spent so much time in that void that she had almost forgotten what being alive felt like.

The pitiful patter of her heart in her tiny - too tiny, too small - chest brought back so many sensations, so many memories that she could feel the false beginnings of tears budding from the corners of her eyes and she let out a brittle wheeze.

She forgot that being alive felt an awful lot like dying while awake.

This body was hungry.

This body was always hungry and thus it made its demands upon the world with angry shrieks and in an instant there were hands at the skin of her forehead and the sound of a smooth accented voice curled around and into her ear as soft murmurs comforted her piercing cries.

Fingers lifted her small form up into the air and for a horrible second, she felt vulnerable and weightless until she was curled up against a soft chest.

Something warm and uneven was pressed against her lips and despite how much she wanted to twist herself away from the offering, her meager strength allowed nothing and so instead she parted her lips and in return, a thermal liquid splashed down her chin.

She barely caught a few drops on her tongue and after a moment, a sharp sound of frustration and worry snapped through the air as a single fingertip brushed against the wet swell of her lips.

There was a sigh before she was hefted closer and the sweet coying taste of milk trickled ever so slowly down her throat.

Childhood, she thought, was horrifying.

"Bona's olvie sȳz Visenya." Her mother hummed and despite how she wasn't yet strong enough to open her eyes, Visenya knew she was smiling. "Ao ēdruta

ipradagon tolī lo ao issi naejot mazverdagon bē kostōba,issa byka Zaldrīzes." (3)

Sometimes she had dreams.

Sometimes she closed her eyes and only saw heat and blood and anger and oh! It left her awake and choking on her very own tongue.

Half the time she thought those terrible visions would be how she died once again. She thought that she would suffocate on her own terror and drown in her own tears but it never happened.

Sometimes she wished it would.

The process of her feeding was often turbulent and with minimal success and it often left both mother and daughter sick with frustration, worry, despair, and the acute sting of impotency. With her body too weak to do anything, trying to get her to suckle was difficult and taxing and frankly, not worth half the effort it demanded.

And it was made all the sadder to realize that her mother was not going to give up, even when it was all she was encouraged to do. By everyone.

Her insides roiled and gurgled painfully as she was brought closer to what she knew to be a breast and she could feel more milk wash down her jaw.

It must be hard for a mother to watch her child waste away because she was too frail to be fed.

Sometimes her faceless mother would sing for her.

Sometimes she would speak to Visenya in her native tongue and coon sadly into her ear and sometimes she would come to her room to sit and cry.

It was decidedly heartbreaking, she surmised and she knew the woman would be better off making her peace with the eventual death of her child but oddly enough that wasn't what she wanted.

Oddly enough for once, she wanted to be selfish and beg to not be left alone.

Not again for the love of god.

And maybe her silent prayers worked for her mother's determination to care for her sickly daughter seemed endless.

It was nice to be loved.

It was a new thing to have a parent who cared for her so much, Visenya thought as she forced her body to mouth at the nipple pressed against her lips. This woman was so unlike the one who left her for dead - screaming and crying as she was cut and cut and cut - that she couldn't help but marvel.

Maybe in death, she had finally gotten lucky.

"Visenya!" The woman with the beautiful voice cried and she squirmed at the vocalization of her new name. "Ao ēdruta ipradagon!" (1)

Eating was taxing and she almost hated it but she would try, she supposed, if only for her mother's sake and so she mustered up whatever meager strength lay in her muscles and lapped weakly at the breast pressed against her lips.

A little effort was better than none.

Settled neatly and nestled in smooth blankets that she could only half feel, the young woman turned infant who knew death as intimately as any lover, melted when she felt a flare of heat drift over her scalp.

Placed near what she knew to be a fire, almost every night, Visenya was treated to the sensation of her mother's slender hands running through her wispy hairs and she was content even in her sickness.

At least if she were to die again, she would do it knowing what it was like to be adored as only a mother could do her children. And despite the differences, if there was one thing that her experiences with both her past and present mothers shared, it was the emotion.

Relaxing under the stroking hand she let out a sigh that stirred up the death's rattle in her chest and she could hear the soft beginnings of a sob echoing throughout the room. The fingers in her hair shook and shivered with grief as tiny droplets of salt water dripped down her face and she lamented.

Being a mother, Visenya thought as she listened to the woman with the beautiful voice cry into her ear, was a task that was full of pain and heartbreak.

And someone always suffered, it was just a difference of opinion on who.

This is a SI-OC as the twin to Aegon which means Elia and Rhaegar are her parents.

Also just so there's no misconceptions, Visenya got the dornish skin but the Targaryen hair and eyes. I thought that it was an interesting combination so I went with it.

Vis is about Jon's age fyi.

This is one of the only chapters where I'll force you to read High Valyrian untranslated.

1- Visenya you must eat.

2- That's very good, you must eat more if you want to grow up strong, little dragon.