Fanfiction takes away so much of my life...

Do not own.

She does not hate or blame the wolf girl. How can she? She remembers too well what it was like to be young and foolish and love someone for the first time. Not knowing the heartbreak that comes with it. Maybe she is luckier than I, Elia thinks. Then she thinks about what has happened and knows that cannot be true.

Perhaps it is pointless to ask for a reason why. Perhaps some things are just meant to be. Elia wonders if this is what Rhaegar likes to speak of with his Targaryen talk of destiny, of fate, of prophecies. She had never understood and only pretended to be convinced for his sake, but now, she questions it herself.

If not fate, then why could she not love the right man?

It would have brought her so much happiness if she did. Her husband is perfect as they all say. Handsome, gallant, gentle. As far as arranged marriages goes, Elia knows she is more than fortunate. Other girls, even princesses, can be stuck with a man three times their age, fat and drunk, mean and crude. Then there is Rhaegar who jousts men off horses as gracefully as he plays his harp. He won the wolf girl's heart in one fortnight.

But he could never win his wife's.

He tried; Elia knows he tried. Even if out of duty, motivated by his prophecies, he was kinder than he had to be. Flowers on the pillow when she least expected it; a song sang to her on her name day; when she was feverish or coughing, there'd be his hand stroking her hair or holding hers. His kisses were tender and he always touched her body carefully as if she was precious treasure. Elia is grateful to him, she really is, for trying.

Rhaegar meant well. It is not his fault that her heart was already taken before she met him. It is not his fault that her heart could not be changed.

It cannot be her own fault, either. She tried as well. True, at first she did not. She cried to her mother, she plead with her father. She even went to him - the other man, but still a boy back then. Let's run away, she had said. His uncertainty, his silence, had made her decision for her. The next day she accepted the betrothal with a cool face. Her mother smiled and whispered, "Love grows with time and patience, and that kind of mature love is stronger than any fleeting love of your youth. You will see." Elia bore her mother's words into memory.

Her mother was always so wise. Growing up, then, Elia learns, is when you discover mothers can be wrong, which she did.

But maybe if other things had gone differently, it would have worked. She would have forgotten about that boy and that foolish, immature love. She would have grown to love her lord husband and set things right.

Yet how was she to guess that the person she was determined to forget would follow her to King's Landing?

And even worse - that he, as a shadow of the king and friend of the prince, would be at the corner of her eye almost every minute of her life?

The torture that had been, to look up and catch him gazing at her with his familiar eyes. To hear him call her my lady and bow to her, always standing far away enough to be a stranger but close enough to make her heart jump. To have to nod back and call him Ser Arthur courteously and calmly as she would call any of the other Knights, while inside she was dying to scream.

She did not know whether to laugh or cry when one day, in the darkness of the night, he managed to find her alone. For a while he seemed unable to speak; he just held her tightly to him and would not let go even when she pushed against.

Part of her was pleased. The other part of her felt like she was drowning.

"Leave me. We can't be seen."

"Do you love him?"

She wanted to tell him yes just to hurt him as he had hurt her. But breathing in his scent, all she could think was how much she missed it. How much she missed his everything.

"You know I can't."

He lit up with a smile but all too fast, it crumpled like leaves. "I'm sorry. That time, when you... I should have - I wish I had - "

She once thought she wanted to hear this more than anything, but now that he was about to say it he realized she could not bear to hear it at all. "I must go. Please, don't do this to me. Leave me be."

The look on his face was even more unbearable, so she left as quickly as she could. That night was the worst. Rhaegar looked at her, confused and frightened. "Did I hurt you?" Elia turned her face so that her tears could leak onto the silk sheets and shook her head. She was afraid she would start sobbing like a child if she opened her mouth. It was to Rhaegar's credit that he did not pursue his inquiry and instead retreated to his side of the bed for the rest of the night.

Arthur obeyed Elia's request. He did not approach her again, and he made sure to keep his distance. Elia waited for her heart to listen to her brain. She was patient, so patient.

But her efforts went to waste.

Oh, she never did anything. She remained faithful to Rhaegar in body, but what did it matter? Her mind, heart, and soul were not. She only looked, just as Arthur only looked, but often she was gripped in a frenzy of fear that somebody would know. Ashara was her oldest and truest friend, yet Elia still sometimes worried Ashara would tell. Then she would feel ashamed, and shame added onto her guilt and yearning.

Time went on, and although her feelings did not dim, she would not call herself miserable. Those were peaceful days, working on embroidery, chatting with Ashara and the other ladies. That was consolation, Elia supposed, that no matter what, time goes on.

So the days went on to become months, then years. She received news that her mother passed, just weeks before she became a mother herself. With her baby in her arms, she was allowed a brevity of happiness before the king denounced her as "useless" in front of everyone in court. Rhaegar said, we can try again and Elia had no choice but to force a smile. Her second birth was longer and more difficult than her first one, and in her haze of pain she was sure she heard the midwife speculate Elia's death. This one might be the end of her... The baby too. In a burst of anger Elia gave one last, forceful push and her son was born.

She lived.

Her womb did not.

But that, as of course it is well known, and it might forever be well-known... is the beginning of the end.

Is it fate?

Elia is starting to understand why Rhaegar loves his prophecies so much. If you believed that events were set in stone, that some people were born to do certain things, then you wouldn't feel so sad or so regretful when you made the wrong choices or found yourself in a bad situation.

Except, if they all had a role to play in - well, whatever this is - then Elia's role is... what, exactly?

To give Rhaegar his heir?

To be barren afterwards so that Rhaegar will need a wolf girl to birth his third "head?"

To love a man who she can never be with?

(Why is the last role even necessary? Why did fate curse her with such a love if all it results in is heartache for two people? Perhaps even three... or four? Or...)

Elia takes it back. She doesn't understand, after all.

War is looming. Rhaegar comes to say farewell. What he doesn't say hangs in the air between them like fog. In the silence that stretches, Elia finds she finally can look at him objectively. His silver hair and indigo eyes, sharp nose, thin lips, have not changed since meeting him for the first time on her wedding day. But there is a worn look in his eyes now that was not there before, like he is tired. He has lost that shining confidence of a Targaryen prince. Elia almost asks him what he thinks of her, but the looking glass has already told her the answer.

To her surprise, he does not give up on the awkwardness of it all and leave. Suddenly, without warning, he kneels at her feet.

"Forgive me."

Elia is nursing Aegon and Rhaenys sleeps next to her. "You should ask for their forgiveness, not mine."

"Do you hate me?"

It is funny that all men seem to want to know is whether she hates or she loves. As if feelings only falls on two extremes. "I do not." You have to feel something to hate. She spares him that.

But Rhaegar just looks at her and she senses that he knows. "Do you think in another life, we could have been happy?"

If I had not met Arthur... if you had not met your wolf girl... if you had not been a prince and I had not been weak... Would she have loved him? It is curious, these things, curious indeed.

"Perhaps," she answers. Perhaps not.

He rises to his feet and kisses the back of her hand gently. Elia thinks back to her mother's words again. Mature love. Maybe she has gotten to it. Mature love is the kind of faded affection, like what you feel for an old, nostalgic past, or what you feel for a sleeping child in your lap. It strikes Elia that it has been ten years. Ten years of marriage and two children. Even if Elia will never know him, they are not strangers.

Cradling Aegon with one hand, she touches Rhaegar's cheek with her other. "Fight well, my lord, and return safely." She means it. She cannot see happiness in a future if he lives and returns, but she knows at least that she does not wish for his death. Ten years of marriage have accumulated to this.

Rhaegar hides his surprise well. Nodding, he turns his back to her and strides out, and for a moment the tiredness is gone and he is her silver prince all over again.

The next farewell is harder and unexpected. Elia has just put Rhaenys to bed when Ashara enters the chamber. Elia smiles and goes to greet her, but then Ashara shifts aside and Elia sees the color white.

"You cannot..." Elia begins.

"He is leaving at dawn, same time as the prince," Ashara says. "My lady, for once in your life, don't force yourself. Not when times are like this." There are tears glistening in Ashara's eyes. "I will guard. Quick, before it is too late."

She flees before Elia can say another word, shutting the doors behind her. Then it is Elia and him.

"You will leave tomorrow?" she asks stupidly, because Ashara has already said so.

He looks away. "The prince has ordered us to the Tower of Joy."

To protect the wolf girl. She feels no shock, no despair. She just feels an empty sort of acceptance. If this is what is meant to be... "Take care. Be safe." She is old enough to know now. Seeing him may have caused her pain, but not seeing him would hurt a thousandfold more.

He steps closer to her so that she can count his fair lashes. His hair, though light before, shows traces of gray. "Elia..."

She does not want him to see her crying, because she is hideous at it. "That should not be what you call your princess."

"Then you are not a princess. And I am not a knight." He bends down to her and tilts her chin; his hands are shaking as much as hers. "Just for a little while, you are you and I am-"

"-just me," she finishes for him. These were the same words he'd said years and years ago, in the hot desert air that smelled like oranges. When he kisses her it is like they are both fifteen once more and their hearts are full and the path before them is still open, still free.

If fate is real, and her ending has already been written for her, if she is born to do something decided by the gods, by beings greater than the stars... then she can be allowed one small moment to only belong to her. They will not begrudge her that, will they?

Before it is too late. It may already be too late, but Elia does not care. For once in her life, she lets go. She feels and she does not think.

They say that when you are at the very end, you remember from the beginning.

And she does.

Her mind is not preoccupied with one image, one moment, or one person. Instead, like water, all of it washes over her. The smallest things she remembers, things she thought she has forgotten: as a little girl, tickling her little brother to hear him giggle; holding up a handful of red sand in her fist and watching it drift like dusty rain; braiding her mother's hair; learning to dance for the first time. Then, like time is speeding up and catching up with her, the memories go by faster. They are like flashes, bursts... Ashara smiling at her, Rhaegar kneeling, the mad King shouting, the wolf girl blushing, Rhaenys wailing in her arms, Aegon laughing, Arthur on their last night...

The good and the bad, her joys and her griefs, all blending into one whirlwind.

Her eyes slowly shut and she knows it is not long.

(Is it fate?)

She shall never know, but she realizes she does not need to know.

Fate or not, she has led a life of twenty-six years. She has been selfish, she has been sad, she has been lonely and she has been happy.

She is Elia Martell, princess of Dorne, a woman grown but a young foolish girl she remains.

That might not be such a bad thing.

Arthur/Elia IS SO EFFING REAL.

(a girl can dream :P)