Hell is a fourteen-year-old girl
ALICENT
Her room was so empty. So heartbreakingly empty. The walls had been stripped of everything, the sheets had been pulled from the bed, and the desk was devoid of any of her decor and writing utensils. At least he had left the guitar. Thank God he had left the guitar.
She dropped her bag on the floor, and sat on her bed. This had been a world - filled with evidence that she had lived, and she had loved, and she had been happy. If anyone would have walked in, they could have known her. They could have seen that she liked to take pictures with her friends, and write music, and collect CDs and hang them up on shelves.
And now all that was left was the dry green walls, a bedframe with a naked mattress, and the bare wooden floorboards. Thank God he had left the guitar.
Her bandaged fingers reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. She had to leave something. Some sign that she still existed. That she was ok. That she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
Everything in her clawed to pull the damn bandages off her fingernails, keep biting at them until there was nothing left but brittle bones. Alicent almost dropped her phone with the force that her hands were shaking. But she had to do this. She had to.
And so she started typing.
Rhaenyra-
She paused. What could she say? What the hell could she say that would make everything fine? That would erase everything that happened? That could heal all the wounds?
Alicent erased the name she had written, and started again.
Rhae,
I was so sad the day I met you. I can’t remember why.
[23rd October - 5 years before the incident]
"Let's paint stars!" Rhaenyra said, grabbing Alicent's hands to pull her closer.
"What?"
"Come on!"
Rhaenyra started pulling her over to the drawers where she knew her best friend kept her paints, while Alicent giggled uncertainly and just followed her.
"Rhaenyra, what are you doing?" she cried.
At that, Rhae turned around with a very serious expression on her face. "We are going to paint stars all over your ceiling until your it fucking shines." At that, Alicent aimed a blow at her head, a scandalized look on her face.
"Don't swear!"
Rhaenyra rolled her eyes. "You're too sensitive about this shit." She burst into laughter as Alicent aimed another blow at her, and held up her hands in mock surrender. "Ok, ok, fine! I won't swear! But we are painting your ceiling."
"Why do we have to paint my ceiling?"
"Let me ask you this," Rhae said, sitting down cross-legged on the floor so she could gaze up at her best friend. "When you're feeling anti-social and you want to just stare at something and just disassociate, what do you look at?"
Alicent shrugged, giggling despite herself. "I don't know, like... my ceiling? Or my salt lamp."
"Bingo!" Rhae exclaimed, enunciating the word with a clap. "Your ceiling needs something on it that you can stare at and your eyes can make weird shapes out of while your brain disassociates. So we're drawing stars." She started going through Alicent's crafts drawer, haphazardly rooting through the carefully organized watercolors and paintbrushes.
"Rhaenyra!" Alicent exclaimed, scandalized. "It took me ages to work out how to get all those in there neatly!"
"Well, then you'll just have to work it out again. Art isn't organized, darling."
"And who made you a conaisseur on what art is?"
Rhaenyra shrugged. "I don't know, RuPaul's Drag Race? Anyway, where the he-e...eck are your tempera paints?" she asked, cutting herself off when she saw the look on Alicent's face.
Alicent rolled her eyes and knelt down next to her. "In the box labelled 'tempera paints'," she said, pulling it out and dropping it into her best friend's lap. Rhaenyra laughed and took it. "Take out all the yellow tubes, I'll gather all the paintbrushes."
"Don't we need to sketch anything out first?" Alicent asked, to which Rhaenyra laughed.
"Art isn't planned, either."
"Fine," she sighed. "But Father isn't going to like it."
"Otto never comes in here anyway. And even if he did, what problem would he have with you drawing stars on your ceiling."
Alicent sighed. "He'll find a reason. He always does."
But even so, she started taking out all the tubes of yellow paint she could find. It's not like she could ever have refused Rhaenyra anyway. It had always been like that, from the first day that they had met. Rhae had all these ideas about the world. She was fearless in a way Alicent could never be. And she also had a never-fail way to convince Alicent to make stupid decisions.
They spent the next three hours standing on Alicent's desk, moving it throughout the room so they could get stars everywhere, playing an odd assortment of Clairo, Maneskin and Coldplay until Alicent's ceiling was virtually yellow, and so much paint had dripped into their eyes that it looked like they had worn sun-themed mascara. In retrospect, it was such a Rhaenyra thing to do. She sang, danced, jumped up and down and painted. And Alicent watched.
"Draw one over there, too," Rhae pointed.
"I can't reach there," Alicent nagged. "We'll have to move the whole desk again and I'm lazy."
"Oh, just reach over. Go on, it's not that far."
"Fine." Alicent reached over, holding the very end of her paintbrush in an attempt to paint a star in a further corner. But as she was straining to reach the empty space, her legs started wobbling, she lost her balance and she toppled over - thankfully onto her bed.
Rhaenyra squealed and covered her mouth with her yellow paint-stained hands, before giving a loud whoop and jumping from the bed on top of Alicent. Alicent gasped and groaned under her best friend's weight, but she was laughing too hard to care. Rhaenyra, too, was laughing, flipping over so she lay on top of Alicent, resting her chin on her chest.
"We could have gotten seriously hurt," Alicent said breathlessly.
"But we didn't," Rhae winked. "And you're a mess," she added, booping her nose, which earned her a giggle.
Alicent looked past her up to the ceiling. "You were right," she admitted after a while. "I like it. It's pretty."
"I told you so," said Rhaenyra, booping her nose again.
Just then, the door banged open, and Alicent roughly pushed Rhaenyra off her as soon as she recognized who walked in the door. Her father, Otto Hightower, still wearing the suit and tie he always did for work, was looking at the two with narrowed eyes. Alicent looked at him guiltily, hating herself for that look in his eyes. He wouldn't shout, she knew that. At least, not this time. He would be disappointed. And sure enough, he walked away, saying nothing, and of course, leaving the door open.
Rhaenyra looked at her, the guilt in her friend's eyes mirrored in her expression. "Sorry," she said quietly.
"Not your fault," Alicent mumbled - even though it sort of was. But she would never say that. She would never even think about being angry at her.
"Fuck him," Rhae said, sitting up. "No, listen a minute," she said, as Alicent opened her mouth to protest. "Don't let him control what you want and want not to do. He's always disappointed, or expecting more, and for what? So that you spend your life worrying about what he has to say?"
Maybe it was the need to believe something good. Maybe it was the first time they were having this conversation. Or maybe it was just the idealism of a thirteen-year-old girl. In retrospect, Alicent thought it was probably all three. But, for whatever reason, she nodded and smiled. "You're right," she smiled.
Little did she know, nineteen-year-old Alicent was standing in the corner, screaming, trapped - "She's wrong! She's wrong! She's wrong!"
"I should go talk to him," she sighed.
"Or you could stay here and keep me company so I don't have to be bored out of my mind in my room waiting for nighttime to come so I can fall asleep," Rhaenyra said, trying to make puppy dog eyes (and remarkably succeeding, if Alicent was completely honest).
"It'll have to happen sooner or later," she sighed. "And I thought you had that dinner thing with your parents tonight."
"Yeah," Rhaenyra sighed. "It'll be an absolute shitshow, though. My uncle's coming, and you know that spells trouble."
"Dang," Alicent exclaimed. "Text me when it's done, I want Targaryen family tea."
"I thought gossip was sinful according to the Bible or whatever."
"Not when it's my best friend telling me what happened at a random family dinner," Alicent said. "It's just the news. Now go, I don't want him to wait too long."
"Goody-goody."
"...Can't think of a good comeback right now."
"Ha!"
Rhaenyra gripped the sides of Alicent's face and kissed her forehead, as she so often did, before clambering out of the window. Alicent smiled in the direction she had left for a few moments before sobering up as she realized what she had to do. And with another sigh, she started making her way downstairs.
As expected, Otto was waiting for her at the dining room table. That table always seemed to be the center of everything that happened in that family. Where Bible study happened, where they ate, where Otto would check report cards... according to her older brother Gwayne, they had sat at that table when Otto had told them what happened to their mother, although Alicent was too young to remember that.
"Hey," she said quietly, sitting down opposite her father. "How was work?"
"Went smoothly enough," he replied. "Quite a lot of paperwork to be done as usual."
Alicent nodded, but didn;t say anything else. The silence was excruciating, painful, even. Involuntarily, she raised a hand to her mouth and started nibbling at the nail of her ring finger. It gave her a temporary respite, at least for now. Otto was staring at the table in front of her, saying nothing. She knew he was disappointed he had not found her doing something "productive", and yet he seemed intent on torturing her with his silence.
She wanted to defend herself somehow, and at the same time, to run away as fast as she could. Defend herself against what? God only knew. Rhaenyra was right, she shouldn't have to care this much. All she had been doing was spending time with her best friend. Was that so wrong?
"You're wasting time," Otto said shortly.
Crap. There it was. Good luck, strap your seatbelts in and get ready for the ride.
"She only came over for an hour or two."
"An hour you could have been spending doing something to prepare yourself. You yourself told me you wanted this. You wanted to get baptized, you wanted to go to this school, you wanted to do all these things."
Yes, because you never let me believe I had another choice and now I can't imagine doing anything else.
"I do," Alicent said. "Dad, I'm trying. My grades have been good-"
"Good? What good? You got a 75% on your history paper."
"And that's fine-"
"Fine? Yes, of course it's fine. You know how many university applicants are fine? 99%. Fine gets you nowhere. Fine is mediocre. Fine is average. Right now, you are average. You think you can do everything you want to do with average?"
"Dad, it's only the beginning of the year-"
"And what does that say about the rest of the year if this is how you start?"
"That I'll improve!" Alicent cried.
"I sincerely hope so," Otto nodded. "And I sincerely don't hope your application is doomed. Because that is what your attitude is
At that, Alicent immediately got up and walked out of the room.
"Bible Study is at six!" he called out after her.
"Yeah..." she scoffed, though far too quietly for him to hear her. She ran up to her room, closed the door, and burrowed herself into her closet. Only then did she feel safe enough to clap a hand to her mouth and let out a sob.
She didn't know why her father's lectures affected her so much. She'd heard so many that she could predict almost every word now. But now, things were different. She was starting to apply for tournaments, competitions, internships - and she had to do it all while juggling her volunteer work at the Church and her spiritual "duties". Each Bible Study would last longer and longer, inching slowly into lasting two, three, three and a half hours - Otto wouldn't let her give any less than 100%.
And when would she finally run out of energy? What would happen then? If she did everything exactly like her father told her to, if she disciplined herself and organized herself exactly the way he wanted her to, would that work? Would she stop being a failure in Otto's eyes? Would she then finally be happy?
No! screamed nineteen-year-old Alicent from the corner. No no no no no no no!