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Harry chuckled. "We are not completely without mercy, Rhaegar. But if one cannot defend the honour of their own house, one has no business ruling the other houses. It is imperative that we uphold the Targaryen honour and such slurs are ruinous to our reputation. It cannot ever be allowed to stand or to go unpunished."

Rhaegar nodded and he touched his back gently. "Sometimes it's easy to forget how young you are when you speak like an ancient Maester."

Harry turned, catching sight of Rhaegar's squires and he stood back a step, putting some unwanted distance between them. He made a show of checking out his brother, taking in his armour, his tall, broad body and that beautiful face.

"Newly knighted and already up to the champion's tilt. I hope that I'll become as fine a knight as you one day, brother."

"You won't be anything if you don't squire for someone."

Harry did his almost giggle again. "You're a knight now, Rhaegar. You could knight me right now and it would be binding."

Rhaegar laughed. "I could, but I won't. If you want to be a knight, you will be a squire first, as all knights have been before you. As I was before you."

Harry sighed. "Following the arse of some stuck up, saggy goat who thinks he has even half a chance of being a member of the Kingsguard and will take huge pleasure in ordering me around like a servant." Harry sighed heavier. "Maybe I don't want to be a knight after all. I might go and forge some links for a Maester's chain instead. "

"You want to become a Maester?" Rhaegar actually looked betrayed and Harry touched his bare hand gently.

"No, not a Maester, I just want to forge some links. Prince Lewyn was telling me of his youngest nephew, Oberyn, who went and forged a few links without becoming a Maester. I could do the same."

"You want to be away from me?" Rhaegar asked sadly.

Harry pulled his brother's head down. "It would only be for a year or so and only if Father allows it. I'm most interested in medicine. It might help with birthing our children, I don't have the right parts, Rhaegar. It might help us stick to the minimum age too if I weren't here to tempt you." He said with a pointed look.

"I'd miss you." Rhaegar said, utterly devastated.

"I'd miss you more than words could ever describe, Rhaegar. I love you." He said under his breath. "But I can't keep my hands from you. I want you, even now. If you didn't continually stop me, I'd have already lain with you. I don't want to wait another minute, though I know that we must. I'd be back before you know it and it's only if Father allows."

"I will speak to him myself if need be. If it's something that you want to do, I will see that you get to do it."

Harry smiled. "It won't be for long, Rhaegar. I won't take any oaths, I will not become a Maester proper, I just want to learn."

Rhaegar sighed. "Well, how can I stop you?"

"You can't, but Father can."

"My Prince, are you ready?" A voice called loudly from outside.

"Oh, I'm sorry to have brought this up now, you need to concentrate." Harry said worriedly.

"I am newly knighted, this is one tilt that I am like to lose." Rhaegar smiled. "I got lucky in the tilt against Ser Barristan, I am not like to do the same with Ser Arthur. I'll be happy if I stay seated after the first charge."

"I am still very, very proud of you. Remember that." Harry said firmly. "Do your best, Rhaegar. I'll be in the stands, cheering you on."

"I saw you every time I wheeled around, you kept me trying even harder than the last lance."

Harry grinned. "I'd kiss you for luck if we were alone." He said before turning and leaving Rhaegar's tent. He heard his brother cursing behind him and he giggled, making his way back up to his chair.

"Father, you've come!" He said happily. "Rhaegar has done so well!"

His Father smiled at him and pulled him into a short kiss, which surprised Harry. His Father was not entirely without love. In fact he loved them all so much, he just loved Harry less than Rhaegar and Viserys, because of his black hair and green eyes. His Father must have been in a very good mood to show such public affection towards him.

"I have been told that he has reached the champion's tilt. I had to come and cheer him on." Aerys said, ignoring Lord Tywin on his other side, even going so far as to turn slightly more towards Harry, putting his back to the Lord of Lannister and his two oldest children.

Ser Oswell Whent was stood beside Prince Lewyn Martell once more, behind his Father, and Harry sat primly on his cushion, smiling proudly as Rhaegar emerged from his tent looking splendid in his pitch black armour and the red painted three headed dragon of house Targaryen over his chest.

Harry cheered along with his Father for Rhaegar, but after twelve broken lances apiece, Rhaegar toppled from his horse and he landed very hard on his back. He did not move to get up, or at all. Harry gasped and he was up before the crowd could shout in surprise. He ran to Rhaegar, getting to him just as his two squires did and it was he who unbuckled Rhaegar's helm and pulled it off of his very still brother as gently as he could.

His heart pounded in relief as he saw Rhaegar's dark purple eyes looking up at him, a little dazedly, blinking rapidly, but he was alive and that was better than what Harry had been thinking a moment before.

"Are you okay?" He asked a little tearfully.

Rhaegar chuckled, a little breathlessly as he was winded, but Harry took it as a good sign.

"I'm alright." His brother told him. "Just a little winded, that was a hard fall."

"Can you stand, Rhaegar?" Their Father asked, having immediately moved to where Rhaegar lay, but at a calmer pace than Harry's flighty run.

"Try sitting up first." Harry encouraged, helping Rhaegar to ease himself upright.

Ser Arthur Dayne, instead of celebrating, had come charging over to check on Rhaegar when he hadn't immediately stood up or moved after falling. As a member of the Kingsguard, it went directly against his oath to have harmed a member of the royal family. Harry had no idea what happened to a member of the Kingsguard who killed a member of the royal family as it had never happened before, but he assumed torture and then death, accident or no.

It was Ser Arthur who helped tug Rhaegar back to his feet and the crowd cheered happily, and with no small amount of relief too, that their favourite Prince was unharmed. Rhaegar smiled and waved, walking unaided and Harry breathed out heavily in relief himself. He would have gone completely mad if he'd watched his love die before him like that.

There was no celebratory feast to mark the end of the tourney jousting that night. Harry didn't really understand what had happened, but his Father had gone from happy, proud and even excited, to being worried about Rhaegar, relieved that he was truly fine and unharmed and then back to happy again and then he'd become very, very angry. He had stormed into the solar, connecting the rooms that Lord Tywin had given them for the tourney, and he'd told them to pack their belongings immediately and be ready to leave at day break, he had then disappeared again with two members of the Kingsguard. He and Rhaegar had been woken up before daybreak and King Aerys had taken them both, as well as the Kingsguard, from Casterly Rock and they had started the trek back to Kings Landing the very next morning, before the sun had even fully risen.

Harry was almost asleep in the saddle of his palfrey, he had wound the reins around his wrists, just in case he did fall. He had been up late that night, trying yet again to find 'Lord Tywin's Bane'…his dwarf son, Tyrion. He'd never seen a dwarf before and he was so very curious and he knew that the boy had to be at Casterly Rock, but he hadn't been able to find the three year old, not even the hint of a room for the grotesque and he'd really wanted to see him before he'd left. He yawned again and slumped further in his saddle.

The next he knew he was falling and someone grabbed the top of his arm and hauled him hard, another hand touching his waist as that arm wound around him to tug him onto another horse. He blinked and he turned his head to look at Ser Gwayne Gaunt's rather unimpressed face. He was sitting sideways on the knight's lap, having been plonked there to prevent him from falling and most likely breaking something or even braining himself on a rock.

"Thank you, Ser." He said sleepily, rubbing his gritty feeling eyes.

"Are you alright?" Rhaegar thundered over to ask, wheeling his horse about to ride next to them, so close that his knees knocked into Harry's lower legs.

"I'm okay. Just tired."

"What were you doing last night when you were supposed to be sleeping?" Rhaegar asked curiously.

"None of your business." Harry said.

"You weren't sowing some dragonseed in Lord Tywin's daughter, were you?" Rhaegar teased, knowing as he did how strongly Harry disliked the ten year old girl.

"That's disgusting!" Harry complained loudly, completely aghast at the mere suggestion, much to the amusement of Rhaegar and the few Kingsguard members who could hear them and weren't up ahead with the King.

Rhaegar laughed happily. "I suppose it is still a little soon for you to start making bastards."

"I'm not ever going to have a bastard child. I won't live through the shame of it. All of my children are going to be with the one I marry. I swear it now, before all the gods with you as my witness."

"There's nothing wrong with practising beforehand, Haradarian." Rhaegar told him with a kind smile.

Harry considered that seriously. "Practice is one thing, making bastards is entirely another." He said firmly. "I want no bastards to my name."

Rhaegar looked at him and nodded, understanding that Harry was talking to him just as much. Neither of them would have bastard children.

"I suppose painting the back of them with dragonseed will be just as satisfying."

Harry blinked. "What?" He asked, not understanding.

Of course his brother and the Kingsguard laughed at him again, all except Barristan Selmy, who looked strangely proud.

Harry huffed before he settled in against Ser Gwayne Gaunt and he yawned widely before he curled up as comfortably as he could in the other's lap and, uncaring of what he looked like or what anyone else thought, he went to sleep. He really needed it after his late night searching Casterly Rock while avoiding the guards, the servants and especially the Kingsguard. He wondered again where Tywin had kept his dwarf son while the tourney was being hosted at Lannisport and he wondered if he'd actually been in the dungeons. Surely not even Tywin Lannister would have locked a three year old up in a dungeon, but Harry truly had not been able to find him and not through lack of trying either. He'd only been curious, he'd never seen a dwarf before and he wanted to meet one. Perhaps one day he would get the chance to meet young Tyrion Lannister, but the opportunity had passed him by this time as they headed back to Kings Landing from the tourney earlier than had been planned.

It was only several days later, after they'd arrived back at Kings Landing, that Harry learned what had upset their Father on the last night of their stay in Casterly Rock as he raged and ranted to his sister-wife while they supped together in the royal solar.

"How dare he think that I'd marry my Heir, my Rhaegar, to my servant's daughter?!" He complained as he tore at a loaf of bread as if it were a living creature. "My Rhaegar and that stupid girl of his! As if she is the least bit worthy of the blood of the dragon." He laughed, a short, angry and harsh sound. "Trying to tell me that it's time that my son settled down and married, as if it's any business of his!"

Harry shared a panicked look with Rhaegar, who was as calm and as peaceful as ever. He'd known that this would be an issue, that Rhaegar, at seventeen, was going to be expected to marry and start having Heirs of his own. If only he had been born closer to Rhaegar, then they might already be married. There wasn't anything that anyone could do when they were married.

"Then…then do you know what he said? He told me that our Haradarian needed to marry! That Haradarian and his daughter were of a similar age." King Aerys carried on, oblivious to the uncomfortable silence around him as everyone tried to eat. "I reject his daughter, not once, but twice! I told him that he was an able servant, but that I would not be marrying my sons, my Princes, to my servant's daughter!"

"Haradarian is far too young to be thinking of marriage." Their mother agreed as she rocked their baby brother. "What next, is he going to suggest that you marry off our Viserys to someone of his liking too?"

King Aerys looked at the babe and scoffed. "I've had enough of that man. I should never have gone to that tourney, as I'd planned in the beginning. He wasn't holding it to celebrate my son's birth, he was using Viserys as an excuse to try and swindle a marriage for his daughter to my sons! No, my sons will marry properly, I have no daughter for Rhaegar, so we'll have to find a woman suitable for him. Rhaella, we must try for a daughter to be Haradarian's wife."

Harry swallowed and he sent another wide eyed, panicked look to Rhaegar, trying to beg his brother to do something, but Rhaegar was eating just as peacefully, as if he couldn't hear their Father's rantings. He did notice Ser Barristan standing at attention a few paces away from the table however, watching him, and Harry tried to school his panic and smoothen his expression into something more neutral. He needed to learn to control his emotions and his facial expressions better, or else he could put himself, and others, in danger.

Rhaegar had the right of things however, their Father did nothing. He did not call for all maidens in the Seven Kingdoms to be brought before Rhaegar. He did not mention it again since that one rant at Tywin Lannister's gall to suggest his own daughter for Rhaegar and then for Harry after being rejected and he relaxed a little as he rested on Rhaegar's chest in a small, stolen moment in the dead of the night.

"I'm so worried that I'll lose you before my fourteenth name day." He said sadly.

"You won't, Haradarian. Father isn't about to marry me to anyone who he sees as unworthy and as he sees all the Lords of the Seven Kingdoms as servants, he won't marry either of us to their daughters. He'll send someone to Essos to find Valyrian blood for me to marry to keep the dragon blood pure and even if he and Mother do have a daughter, it is going to be years before she is flowered and ready for marriage and children. We do not need to worry so much."

Harry nodded and he swallowed, slipping his arms around Rhaegar's neck and tightening his thighs around Rhaegar's waist as his brother stroked his back gently through Harry's sleeping tunic.

"We shouldn't be doing this, you're too young." Rhaegar sighed, but he made no move to dislodge Harry from his perch on his chest.

"I know. I was just so worried, Rhaegar." Harry said softly, squeezing tighter for a moment. "I don't want to lose you. I don't want to marry my sister, I want to marry you."

"We don't have a sister." Rhaegar chuckled. "Only Viserys."

"Maybe if we marry each other he can marry any sisters we have." Harry said thoughtfully.

"Maybe by the time that we have a sister, it won't matter and they can marry whom they please." Rhaegar told him.

Harry smiled. "Perhaps, but I won't have anyone interfering, Rhaegar. I love you."

"I love you as well, Haradarian." Rhaegar told him, placing a kiss to his brow. "Are you still thinking of going to Oldtown?"

Harry nodded silently. "I don't want to be apart from you, of course not, but all I want is to marry you, right now. Today, so that no one else can." He sighed. "I need a large distraction and perhaps some distance so that if it does not distract me adequately, I can't come and touch you like this."

"Will you wait until after your name day?" Rhaegar asked.

"Another turn won't make much difference. I'll stay for my twelfth name day. Then I'll go to Oldtown if Father allows."

"He should, he has Viserys and I here to secure the bloodline and perhaps more children here after if Mother and Father are trying for a daughter."

"He's obsessive of poor Viserys as it is. I can't believe that he has his food taster suckling the wet nurse before he'll allow Viserys to feed. I'm afraid of what he'll do if he has another child."

Rhaegar shook his head. "All those dead babes is playing on his mind recently. Jaehaerys was poisoned by his mistress. He took that hard."

"Mistresses are more trouble than they're worth!" Harry spat. "You had better not take any when we're married. You can practice all you like beforehand, as long as you don't sire any bastard children, but afterwards, you'll have just me until the day that we die."

Rhaegar laughed. "You know that I don't frequent brothels, brother. I have no taste for it. I prefer simpler pleasures than the complications added by other people. You and I are much alike in that respect."

Harry nodded and calmed himself. He didn't like many people either and much like Rhaegar had in his youth, he preferred reading and playing the high harp. Hawking, riding and fishing too. Though with Rhaegar being older, he'd been more interested in a sword and shield at an earlier age than Rhaegar had as they had practiced and sparred together.

"I best be getting back." Harry sighed. "Just in case I'm found missing and some well-meaning servant sends Father into another panic."

Rhaegar sat up with Harry still held to his chest and he kissed his forehead lingeringly.

"Take care back to your rooms and remember that I love you."

"Pleasant dreams, Rhaegar." Harry smiled as he kissed his brother's cheek innocently and stood up, padding his way back to his own rooms that were just down the corridor from Rhaegar's rooms.

Of course the best made plans were often waylaid and Harry's was no different when, eight turns later he was still arguing his case for going to the Citadel. After Rhaegar had gotten involved, their Father had finally given in and allowed him to go to Oldtown as long as he took a personal guard with him. But those plans had crumbled when his Father, rapidly slipping further into madness, was taken prisoner at Duskendale by Lord Denys Darklyn early in the year 277AC.

The crown had been having problems with Duskendale for a while, as they refused to pay their taxes and insisted that port fees should be made lower so that they might thrive as they once had. Lord Denys wanted a charter for Duskendale and when he was refused, he'd taken the King hostage.

It had started with an invitation to Duskendale for King Aerys, it had ended with one member of the Kingsguard, Ser Gwayne Gaunt, dead and the King taken prisoner, barricaded within the Dun Fort, the ancient seat of house Darklyn.

Harry, who had only just been approved to travel to Oldtown with Prince Lewyn Martell as his personal bodyguard, had immediately stopped packing and preparing to travel and he'd delayed his plans and rode immediately to the walls of Duskendale on the far side of Blackwater Bay with Rhaegar as soon as they'd heard the news.

Tywin Lannister, the Hand of the King, was stationed there with a very sizable host of men, surrounding the entire of Duskendale and holding it under siege.

"What's happening?" Harry asked, swinging down from his horse, only just twelve years old and facing the very real threat of losing his Father, mad and erratic though he might be, but it didn't matter. Aerys was still his Father, he was still family and this insult could not be allowed to stand.

"Perhaps, my Prince, this is not the best place for you." The Hand of the King, Tywin Lannister, suggested not unkindly.

"I need to know how he is." Harry said worriedly as the remaining Kingsguard surrounded him and Rhaegar. If King Aerys was killed, then Rhaegar would be the King. He needed to be protected. "How did this even happen?" He demanded, very upset.

Rhaegar touched his shoulder and then inched his hand across to hold the back of his neck comfortingly.

"Father should never have come here." Rhaegar told him. "It was foolish to personally treat with a hostile force. If he'd wanted to have settled this matter himself, then he should have invited Denys Darklyn to Kings Landing, not accepted an invitation to Duskendale."

"He should have listened to Lord Lannister in the first place!" Harry cried out, almost in tears from frustrated emotions, half of which he couldn't even name. "What use is there in having a Hand if you don't use it?!"

Tywin looked pleased and that had been Harry's intention. If he and Rhaegar were to rule, they couldn't afford to alienate any of the Lords of the realm. They needed all of them to be behind them, but King Aerys was doing his very best to stomp Tywin Lannister into the ground, making the Lord of Lannister hate all Targaryens. Harry couldn't allow that, so he was attempting, and at least partially succeeding, in showing that he and Rhaegar didn't feel the same way as their Father.

Rhaegar turned to him and bent a little to get on his eye level…Harry was still only a boy of twelve and Rhaegar was a tall, broad man at almost eighteen.

"Everything is going to be fine, Haradarian." He said gently.

"I can't lose him. I've never lost anyone before." He confided softly, though still loud enough for the few who were close enough to hear him.

"We've lost four brothers and a sister." Rhaegar told him.

"That's not the same! They were babies, they didn't do much of anything. They didn't speak or think or move and half of them were born dead. They were babies that barely had a chance to live before the Stranger took them as his own, this is Father! He's been there for my entire life, Rhaegar. I don't want to lose him so soon!"

"We won't." Rhaegar told him, clasping him to his chest with his strong arms and Harry calmed down immediately. "Duskendale can't possible hope to come out of this favourably. The Darklyns sealed their fate as soon as they took Father and threatened his death. They would not dare."

"And if they do?" A member of the small council, a man completely loyal to their Father, who had rode out with them, demanded.

"Then we have a better King ready and waiting." Tywin said, raising a hand to indicate Rhaegar. "But the Prince is correct, I too believe that the Darklyns wouldn't dare to kill the King. They would have no hope of achieving anything other than their own deaths if they did so."

"They lose their only hostage if they kill Father." Harry said, blinking his unshed tears away, thinking about it, his quick mind racing through his rapid thoughts. "They'd have no bargaining hostage to hold against us. We could hold this siege until the whole of Duskendale starve behind their walls if they killed him."

Harry smiled then, his bright, beautiful smile that attracted attention like a moth to a flame.

"Rhaegar, they can't kill him!" He said in joy. "Their only hope of achieving anything is if we give in and accept their terms because of the threat to Father! But we don't have to because they can't kill him."

Rhaegar smiled at him and touched his head, cupping the back of his skull before getting eye contact with him.

"Go back to Kings Landing, Haradarian. Be with Mother and Viserys. I will stay here and handle this foolish situation. You need to rule Kings Landing in Father's stead while I stay here. Can you do that?"

Harry nodded decisively. "I shall. Write to me often, so I know what's going on. I'll protect Mother and Viserys until you and Father return."

Rhaegar smiled so proudly at him that Harry's chest swelled. He loved this beautiful man and he wished that he could hold him, kiss him goodbye, but he couldn't. Not here in front of all of these people. Not just yet.

Harry travelled straight back to Kings Landing with his favourite guard, Prince Lewyn Martell. There he informed his Mother of what was transpiring and he played a bit with his brother Viserys until he retired for the night.

The very next morning, after he'd broken his fast, he took the head of the court and listened to the grievances of the smallfolk and passed his judgement as he saw the right of things. He was but a boy of two-and-ten, five turns from being three-and-ten, but it had been said before that he had the intelligence of an ancient Maester.

He became known to the smallfolk as Haradarian the Heart as he chose justice and the love he held for the people over playing favourites and he doled out punishments fairly. So fairly that he ignored the unspoken hierarchy of status, wealth and even noble blood and passed his judgement as he saw the right of things, even peasants over their landlords and a homeless scrounge from flea bottom against the Commander of the city watch about him sleeping every night against the mud gate to escape the rain and wind. He executed no one in his scant several turns of ruling Kings Landing, he hadn't seen the need to take the lives of others so easily, so uncaringly.

He attended his duties without a single murmur of complaint. He was only twelve, but he had a duty to his family and to the people, so he woke up extra early every morn, he broke his fast just as dawn was breaking, he dressed in his best clothing and he attended to the people of Kings Landing with Prince Lewyn by his side at all times for his protection.

It took half a year for the fall of Duskendale and only then it was thanks to the bravery and boldness of Ser Barristan Selmy, who, as he heard from Rhaegar's own mouth, had scaled the walls of the town in the black of night, disguised himself as a beggar, stole into the Dun Fort, all the way down to the dungeons and he'd freed the King before charging back out again on stolen horses, cutting down anyone who stood in the way, all the way back to the walls of Duskendale where Tywin Lannister's archers kept the way clear for them to escape the confines of the town. As soon as the King was out and safe, Lord Darklyn had opened the gates of Duskendale and he'd surrendered, there would be no mercy for him however. None at all. They couldn't risk anything like this happening ever again. Lord Darklyn had to be made an example of and he had been.

Though at that time Harry could never have even fantasised about the horrors that his Father, the King, had in store for Duskendale. He couldn't have stopped it even if he had known, but what had happened to the Darklyns, even to those not involved in the kidnap plot of the King, haunted him almost as much as the husk of the man he'd once known and loved that had been saved from the dungeons of the Dun Fort.

The damage had already been done long before he'd been saved, King Aerys was little more than an unkempt madman who was not sleeping and complained under his breath that the Darklyns had dared to strike him and strip him of his royal raiment before imprisoning him like a common thief. He had had all of them, every single Darklyn of birth, not just in name, aunts, uncles, cousins, every single distant kinsman, put to death and making extinct the Darklyn name. Not even the Darklyns good-family, the Hollards, had been spared the fate of their married family and they had been put to death too, all except for one, a mere babe named Dontos Hollard whom Ser Barristan Selmy had claimed for himself as a boon to repay his bravery of personally saving the King's life at great risk to his own.

The cruellest fate by far, however, was saved for Lord Darklyn's wife, Lady Serala, the Lace Serpent of Myr. The one who was said to have started the defiance of Duskendale with her poisonous pillow talk into Lord Denys' ear.

Rhaegar had refused to tell him what had been done to her, but Harry had found it impossible not to learn of the grisly details when all of the King's men were talking about it within the Red Keep. The Lady Serala had had her serpent tongue, as well as all of her womanly parts, torn out before his Father had burned her alive. He felt sick whenever he thought of it, such a punishment, and for a woman too, was much too barbaric for his tastes, but his Father had changed, he was no longer the man who Harry had grown up with. He was cruel and mean and not in the least bit loving or affectionate any longer.

His Father became increasingly unstable in the days and weeks after Duskendale and he wouldn't allow anyone to touch him. He refused to wash or cut his hair or nails. He refused any ointments when he cut himself on the Iron Throne and he became known as King Scab as he was always covered in them.

He was suspicious of his Queen and he was convinced that Rhaella and Rhaegar were in a conspiracy with Tywin Lannister to have him killed so that Rhaegar could take the Iron Throne from him. He held Rhaegar, his once beloved son, in utter contempt. He had prevented Harry from celebrating his thirteenth name day and it had passed as if it were any other day, as he had also forbidden everyone else, even his own Mother, from acknowledging the day of his birth.

King Aerys took his new mean disposition and evil temperament out on Harry with a single minded determinedness to crush him under foot, to utterly destroy him and he wouldn't even allow Harry to so much as speak in his presence, cutting him off with a snarled order as soon as he opened his mouth to say anything, that was if Harry was even allowed in the same room as him in the first place. Not content to stop there though, no, his own Father kept calling him the false Targaryen and he had started insisting that Harry was not his son. That he was a bastard boy pretending to be a Prince and that he should be imprisoned for his crime of impersonating a member of the royal family.

The only one that he truly cared to be near these days was Viserys, who was not yet two years old and his young, impressionable mind was being infected with the madness of King Aerys.

Today was just one step too far in his mind though, he had been as patient as he possibly could, recognising his Father's trauma after being imprisoned and held captive for half a year, but he was at his topmost limit, especially after his uncelebrated name day and his forced removal from his Mother and brothers, Rhaegar in particular, whom he was forbidden from seeing or speaking to. It was too much for him to handle and so, after being told that he wasn't allowed to eat with the family yet again and being ordered to scavenge for scraps in the kitchens like a mangy, stray dog, Harry ran sobbing, tears falling down his cheeks, from the royal solar to his bed chambers as his once beloved Father viciously turned on him, declaring him unfit to be near any 'true Targaryens'.

His own Father had dubbed him Haradarian the Hideous to spite him after he'd heard the people calling him Haradarian the Heart once he'd gotten back to Kings Landing after his imprisonment.

Swallowing hard as he reached his rooms, Harry packed a light bag and took up his dagger, which he wasn't allowed to wear in the presence of the King. Only the Kingsguard could arm themselves around the King these days as his Father had formed a phobia of knives and swords after cutting himself so often on the Iron Throne.

He was going to Oldtown, to the Citadel, as he'd planned before the debacle at Duskendale. Rhaegar was planning to sail to Dragonstone and he had asked him to go with him, but their Father had heard of the plan from his new hired spider, Varys, whom he paid to whisper the secrets he found out into his ear and King Aerys had forbade Harry to go to Dragonstone, so Rhaegar hadn't gone either. The conditions in the Red Keep were becoming dire, neither he nor Rhaegar could stay here, not with the Mad King as unstable as he was. He was a breath away from having Harry burned alive and Rhaegar disinherited in favour of Viserys.

He wrote a cryptic letter to Rhaegar and he left it wrapped around the hilt of Rhaegar's own dagger in his brother's rooms. He knew that his brother would not leave it behind and as such he was like to find it.

He didn't say goodbye, he didn't take any Kingsguard with him, not that they would have been able to come. The King hadn't given Harry any protection in weeks and he had commanded all seven of the Kingsguard members (including Ser Gwayne Gaunt's replacement Ser Jonothor Darry) to ignore him and to not speak to him and to leave him if ever there was any trouble. They were to protect the true Targaryens and leave him to his death if such a situation arose.

Harry took his own horse, a beautiful, well-bred palfrey that he'd had for years, and he rode out of Kings Landing and he knew that he would not be back for years to come. The hardest part about riding off was leaving his beautiful Rhaegar behind, but out of the two of them, Rhaegar was like to survive the madness of the King. He, with his hair as dark as a moonless night and his eyes like summer grass, was more likely to be cut down or burned alive by the mad King's cruelty and shattered sanity. The hints were coming thicker and faster, the barbs crueller and more hostile and Harry had been living in fear of his life, that fear was only growing with each new morning. He couldn't live like that any longer, so he was leaving for Oldtown. With any luck, and the will of the Seven, his Father would be dead by the time that he was ready to return.

A/N: This fic is completely finished, so I feel absolutely no guilt in posting up a new WIP. I took a break from my other fics for a bit to write this one and it has taken me just nine weeks to write it, from start to finish to posting it up today, which is a serious accomplishment to be honest. This is the shortest chapter out of all six, so there is a lot more to come for this fic and I hope that I've done it, and the fandom, justice.

But I hope that you all like it as I post my first foray into this fandom. Updates will come weekly, as I want to make sure that each one is perfect and there are six chapters in total, five and an epilogue chapter. I'd like to remind you all to please take note of the warnings, they are important and I will reiterate that this fic IS an incest fic, which if you've read The Song of Ice and Fire Series isn't actually that big of a deal due to canon events, but it can be a bit shocking if you're new to the fandom. Thank you very much for reading, I hope that you've enjoyed the experience and the next chapter won't be too far behind this one as it is already written, I just need some time to sort everything out and make it as perfect as I can and sort out my next updates.

StarLight Massacre. X