Chapter Text
Rhaenyra Targaryen’s campaign should be a disaster. She has a weirdly close relationship with her uncle, had an affair with Harwin Strong while married to Laenor Velaryon, dates celebrities of all genders and swears on prime-time television. She goes viral on social media, comes from old money but leads a left-leaning campaign and says the truth in interviews.
This senate race should be a slam dunk. The easiest win of Alicent’s career.
Instead, she wakes up to learn Rhaenyra is beating her father’s candidate by fifteen points in the polls.
This country is fucked.
*
Alicent forces herself to click through the full report on the polling numbers and grimaces as she takes in the data. Rhaenyra Targaryen is beating Senator Cole in nearly every demographic, except white men over fifty and white women over sixty. The younger and more diverse the demographic, the worse the numbers look for Cole.
She closes her laptop and sighs, looking up at the ceiling. Her father is not gonna be happy about this. Senator Cole himself will be absolutely unbearable. He despises Rhaenyra Targaryen. Alicent sincerely hopes he at least doesn’t punch another wall. Managing his campaign PR and social media is hard enough without more rumors of violent behavior spreading around.
She resists the urge to pick at her cuticles. This is why she didn’t want to work on Cole’s campaign. The man is a scandal waiting to happen, but Alicent’s father couldn’t have cared less about her opinion. He never has, which is why somehow Alicent is here, working for Criston Cole’s campaign, when she never even wanted to work in politics in the first place.
Alicent rubs her temples. She supposes she should give her father some grace. He did give her a job, and paid for her college even when she knows full well he’d much rather have seen her marry some wealthy politician and become a trophy wife.
Her father supported her, in his way. The least Alicent can do is help in his work as a campaign manager in return, so she’s spent the last four years of her life working for a string of conservative party candidates. The job sucks. It’s long hours and endless damage control and Gods forbid Otto Hightower ever thinks his daughter’s work is anything more than barely satisfactory but Alicent endures because she’s a Hightower, and Hightower’s don’t just give up on their duty when things are hard.
By the time Alicent makes it to her kitchen and brews herself a cup of tea, she has worked herself into a truly wretched mood, so she decides to punish herself further and check on Senator Cole’s socials.
She takes a sip of her tea. At least these are not too bad. Cole doesn’t have the online presence Rhaenyra does, but his post from last night got some decent engagement. Even if a lot of the comments are rather vitriolic attacks against Rhaenyra Targaryen, it’s engagement. She really should ask the intern to look into moderation, she thinks, as she reads the fifth comment in a row talking about the “dragon bitch”.
To her credit, Alicent does spend a good twenty minutes idly sipping her tea, confirming Senator Cole’s interviews for the day and making notes on his talking points while monitoring his socials before she gives in and, against her best judgment, opens her own personal account.
She opens her ex’s Instagram before she realizes what she’s doing.
Alicent sips her now tepid tea and frowns, looking at the pictures.
It’s not that she isn’t over her. She is. It’s been months. It was amicable. She’s fine.
It’s just that, well. It wasn’t fair , the way it ended. Alicent isn’t closeted, no matter what Jodi thought. She is private, there is a difference. She runs PR for the conservative party; she is a Hightower; she has to be.
Sure, she doesn’t go around posting pictures of partners on social media and doesn’t go on public dates, or any dates outside her apartment, if she’s honest, but she isn’t closeted . She came out to her father, for Seven’s sake! Her father, who writes conservative op-eds, is a frequent talking head at Old Town news and has the High Septon over for dinner every couple months. Admittedly, all he did was purse his lips and say, “I trust you’ll keep your lifestyle discreet ,” and they never spoke of it again or told anybody else in her family, but she still did it. Even when she thought she might actually die from fear, she did it.
That has to count for something.
She glares at Jodi’s latest post. It’s a selfie of her and some woman Alicent doesn’t know. They are out somewhere snowy, holding up steaming cups of latte with foam art on them. They are grinning from ear to ear. The caption reads “wouldn’t wish to be anywhere else”. There’s a cutesy little snow emoji. They look happy.
It’s all perfectly charming and adorable, and Alicent is entirely unaffected by it.
*
By the time Alicent makes it to the campaign center, ten minutes early, things are already in chaos.
She crosses the threshold, sees the look of abject misery on her father’s long suffering assistant’s face, hears Cole’s muffled shouts through the wall of her father’s office and wonders if she should just turn around and pretend to be sick.
“Good morning, Miss Hightower,” Tysha says.
Alicent really, really wishes she was actually the kind of person who would just turn around and leave. “Hi, Tysha. Do you know what’s going on?”
Tysha grimaces as something clearly hits a wall in Alicent’s father’s office. “Senator Cole saw the latest polling numbers,” she explains. “It’s going as well as you’d expect.”
Alicent nods, and it’s about to head to her own desk when Tysha speaks again. “Your father asked for you to go into his office as soon as you got here, actually.”
Of course he did.
“Thanks, Tysha,” Alicent says, resigns herself to this day only getting worse from here on, and heads to her father’s office.
*
Alicent opens the door to the office as quietly as she humanly can, and slips in praying to every God she knows Cole will not notice her. For once, she is lucky, because he is entirely too busy yelling in her father’s face to pay her any mind as she steps into the room.
“This,” Cole is waving a print-out of the results in her father’s face, “is your fucking fault, Otto!”
It’s clear this has been going on for a while. Senator Cole’s face is practically purple, the veins in his neck popping. There’s a big scratch on the wall, and pieces of a laptop on the floor. Alicent’s father, for his part, looks entirely unfazed, as if they were just trading small talk about the weather.
“Senator Cole,” her father says, “we have months of campaign to go. This is nothing you should be concerned about.”
This only seems to make Cole angrier. He slams his fist on her father’s desk, making Alicent flinch.
“She’s a whore ,” he spats. “How could you let this happen?”
Alicent feels the absolutely irrational and unexpected urge to defend Rhaenyra Targaryen. It’s not that she cares about the Targaryen candidate’s honor, one way or another, but Cole’s blatant misogyny is a bit tiresome. She keeps her mouth shut, though. The last thing she wants or needs is for the Senator’s ire to turn her way instead of her father’s.
“Senator,” Alicent’s father tries again, “You have nothing to worry about. Rhaenyra Targaryen is a newcomer, flashy and interesting. She has no real agenda, no plan. Her campaign will fizzle out.”
Alicent bites the inside of her cheek. Her father is bluffing, and he knows it as well as she does. Rhaenyra might be new and flashy, but her family isn’t. The Targaryens have been in politics since before the country was a country, back when it was called the Seven Kingdoms and they sat the Throne. There’s been four Targaryen presidents, countless senators and cabinet members. Her pockets run deep with money as old as money is, and there’s no level of law or government in which they lack friends.
Which makes it even more surprising, and frankly somewhat annoying, that Rhaenyra seems to have single-handedly pivoted generations of center-right Targaryen politics into a leftist campaign, against her family history and still has somehow managed to get them to stand behind her.
Cole is finally deflating. He takes a deep breath, fixes his hair, and gives Alicent’s father one last poisonous look. He turns to go, notices Alicent, and looks at her surprised, as if he just realized she exists.
The senator turns back to her father. “You better fucking hope you are right Otto,” he says, “I am not losing my seat to some spoiled cunt who decided to try politics because she’s bored.”
When Cole leaves, slamming the door behind him for good measure, Alicent’s father turns to look at her as if nothing happened.
“Have you confirmed his interview schedule?” He asks.
Good morning to you too, dad, Alicent thinks, but all she says is: “Yes, he has two radio appearances in the morning, a photo session and then the taping of the commercial this afternoon. Then the charity event.”
Her father nods. “Please see he stays on script for the radio,” he says. “I was extremely disappointed with his last interview.”
Extremely disappointed in Alicent, is what he means, since it is her job to make sure the Senator stays on script for the interviews. Alicent lowers her eyes and nods. She knows that the interview was a disaster, but Cole does very little to help.
“Yes, dad,” she says, “I’ll make sure of it.”
He purses his lips for all answer, nods and leaves the room without another word. Alicent rubs her temples and wonders, not for the first time, if she’ll ever do something right in her father’s eyes, and why the hells she even keeps trying.
She is not fifteen any longer, in-love with her best friend and crying herself to sleep, desperately wishing she was anybody else. Still she wonders what it would be like to be somebody like Rhaenyra Targaryen. Somebody whose father and family seem to squarely support, no matter what she does. Somebody who can seemingly do no wrong, even when she says and does things that others would get crucified for.
Alicent shakes her head and sits down to get some work done. She’s too old for childish fantasies. She opens up her draft for Cole’s next social media post and flicks through the pictures. The caption should probably be something about commitment and experience. She shuffles the picture of Cole shaking an old man’s hand to the front. Maybe add something about family values, perhaps a picture of Cole’s wife and kids? She’s pretty sure she can find at least one picture of Mrs. Cole where she doesn’t look utterly depressed. Probably.
*
Alicent leans against her chair and sips her drink carefully. The charity event is in full swing, and she, for once, has nothing she immediately needs to do. Everybody who’s anybody, including opposing candidates, is here tonight, so Cole and her father are busy shaking hands, gathering support and hopefully hefty donations.
She’s not sure what she’s still doing here, really. Her father insisted she came, and so she did. He then proceeded to spend half the night introducing her to men. Old, white men. It was overt and honestly kind of gross, and Alicent nearly cried in relief when her father had to leave her side to babysit Cole and she was allowed to slip into the background and nurse her drink.
She probably should stop drinking, actually, if she’s smart. She’s not much of a drinker, so she already feels a bit buzzed after only one glass.
She takes a look around the room, and her eyes are inevitably drawn to Rhaenyra Targaryen. The opposing candidate is here, just like Cole, to gather support for her campaign. Unlike Cole, Rhaenyra looks effortless as she mingles, her date on her arm. Alicent can’t quite remember her name, but she’s an up-and-coming singer, huge in the late-teens and early twenties demographic. She’s young, attractive and looks at Rhaenyra as if she’d hung the moon.
Alicent puts down her empty glass on the table and frowns. Rhaenyra looks fine, she supposes. Her suit is perfectly tailored, androgynous in a sort of relaxed, casual way. Alicent will admit, she does look rather good in black and has impeccable bone structure and what is up, really, with having purple eyes like she’s some sort of fantasy heroine?
Alicent grabs another drink from a passing tray and narrows her eyes. Rhaenyra has clearly just made a joke, her date and Senator Beesbury laughing hard as she grins. Five yards away, Cole is staring daggers at her, instead of doing his own charming of Tyland Lannister.
Alicent takes a big gulp of her drink. If the night finishes without Cole making a scene, it will be nothing short of a miracle.
*
She is not sure how it happens, really, but Alicent finds herself seated by the bar long after most people have gone home. She’s already quite drunk but still nursing one last drink as she squints at her phone, trying to make sense of Cole’s latest twitter tirade. She should really revoke his password.
“I wouldn’t want to be whoever is making you look at your phone like that,” a voice says from behind her.
Alicent turns around to find Rhaenyra Targaryen smiling at her, sitting herself down on the bar stool next to Alicent.
Gods be good, Alicent is too drunk for this. “You wouldn’t.”
Rhaenyra gestures at the bartender for a drink and then looks at her for a long moment, squinting her eyes. “Alicent, right? Alicent Hightower, you do Cole’s…”
“PR,” Alicent says, too bewildered by the fact that Rhaenyra knows who she is to stop herself from answering.
Rhaenyra snaps her fingers. “PR, that’s it. Your dad runs his campaign, right? Otto Hightower.”
Alicent nods. She definitely should get up and leave. She’s way too buzzed and gonna say something she shouldn’t, give something away that Rhaenyra can use in her campaign and her father will fire her and ship her back to Old Town so quickly her head will spin.
“How did you enjoy the event?” Rhaenyra asks.
Alicent didn’t. She tried to hide from old men, drank herself into a miserable funk and desperately prayed Cole didn’t go into a thinly veiled misogynistic rant while trying to gather donations.
“It was great,” she lies, moving her focus back to her phone and hoping Rhaenyra will just take the hint and leave.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the bartender place a drink in front of Rhaenyra. She nods her thanks and turns back to Alicent as she takes a sip.
She raises her eyebrows and gives Alicent a small, playful smile. “How does your boy enjoy being behind by eighteen points in the poll?”
Alicent puts her phone down and narrows her eyes at her. “Fifteen.”
Rhaenyra’s smile turns into a smirk. “I think,” she says, “you need to look at the latest numbers.”
Alicent groans, putting her face on her hands as Rhaenyra chuckles. She is way too drunk for this conversation. Also, Rhaenyra’s laugh is really nice. Does it have to be so damn deep and melodic?
Alicent looks up from her hands, looks around. The place is deserted, just the event employees cleaning up, and Rhaenyra and herself, sitting at the bar. Everybody else is long gone.
“He doesn’t,” Alicent confesses, “Like it, that is. He threw a computer at the wall.”
Oh Gods. What the hell is she doing?
Rhaenyra shakes her head, chuckling. “Gods, he is such an asshole. I can’t believe I slept with him.”
Alicent eyes open comically wide. “What?”
Rhaenyra laughs at her reaction. “Mm,” she hums, “it’s my dark secret.”
Alicent is still shocked into silence, so Rhaenyra continues.
“We run in some of the same circles, or did, when I was younger and much, much dumber. He was cute. I was bored.” Rhaenyra takes a sip of her drink and gives her a lopsided smile. “Honestly, the five minutes weren’t worth the effort it took to put my clothes back on.”
Rhaenyra leans in conspiratorially. “Afterwards, he got weirdly intense,” she continues, “Immediately starting going on about how he wasn’t like other guys, how he wouldn’t ‘ love me and leave me ’”
Alicent chokes back a laugh.
Rhaenyra grins. “I swear on Old Valyria, I tried to let him down gently,” she says. “He punched a wall, called me a spoiled cunt and a collection of other colorful words. Has hated my guts ever since.”
When she manages to stop laughing, Alicent looks back at Rhaenyra, her brow furrowing. “Why would you tell me this?”
Rhaenyra shrugs, the gesture so casual and relaxed Alicent wonders if they’re even the same species. “I thought it would make you laugh.”
It’s so weirdly straightforward that Alicen’t doesn’t know what to do with it. Before she can say anything else, though, Rhaenyra gets up, gestures to the bartender.
“Put whatever she’s having on my bill, please,” she says.
“I can’t let you do that,” Alicent protests.
Rhaenyra turns, looks her up and down. It makes heat rise all the way to the tip of Alicent’s ears.
“As much as I’d enjoy fighting for the privilege of buying you a drink,” Rhaenyra says, “I should go. Good luck on the campaign, Miss Hightower.”
It takes a full five minutes after Rhaenyra leaves for Alicent to realize she was flirting.
*
Alicent doesn’t see Rhaenyra again for a month. Of course she doesn’t. There’s no reason for them to meet, nor does Alicent want to, or is keeping track of how long it’s been.
She isn’t.
Sure, she does check on Rhaenyra’s socials daily, but that is her job. Rhaenyra is the opposing candidate. Her job is PR and social media. She has to stay informed. So yes, she does keep updated on what Rhaenyra is doing (she’s allegedly broken up with her singer girlfriend) and where she’s going (she’ll be at the debate this coming weekend), but it’s entirely campaign related.
She’s in the middle of her daily Rhaenyra scroll when Larys knocks on her door and pops his head into her office without waiting for her to answer.
By the seven, she hates this guy. She doesn't know why her father keeps him around.
“Good morning,” he says, “your father is looking for the latest canvassing reports.”
Oh thank the Gods, he’s here for work. “Just a second,” she says, clicking through her folders to find the right spot. “I can email it to him.”
Larys shakes his head. “He’d like it printed. I can wait for it.”
Just great. Alicent gives him a forced smile. “That’s great,” she says,“thank you.”
She sends the file to print and pretends to be extremely engrossed in her emails.
“Any plans for the weekend?” Larys asks.
“I’ll be traveling with my father and Criston,” Alicent answers, “for the debate at Harrenhal.”
Larys grins. It’s a little unsettling. “Oh, that is great,” he says, “I will be there too. Just booked my room.”
Well, that settles that. Alicent is getting herself a different hotel.
*
Alicent rolls her shoulder as she walks into the hotel lobby. Thankfully, her father didn’t question her excuse of his hotel being booked solid, so she’ll get the first free night she’s had in a while. It’s been a long week. Thanks to Rhaenyra’s ever growing popularity, the buzz surrounding this debate has been uncharacteristically large for a senate race. As a result, it will be televised, which means Alicent has worked pretty much non-stop for the past week. She’s spent countless hours helping prep Cole for the stream of interviews surrounding the event and helping her father prepare talking points on the key debate topics. She also led the research on Rhaenyra’s position on those same key topics, organized this trip and coordinated all of Cole’s media appearances.
By the time she boarded on her flight to Harrenhal, she felt like something half dead. Now that she’s finally here, waiting at the check-in counter of the Rushing Falls hotel, she feels like something completely dead. She’s pretty sure she looks the part, too.
She’s waiting in line, dragging her carry-on suitcase with one hand, holding her laptop and her phone with another while she quadruple-checks on Cole’s schedule for the following day when she hears Rhaenyra’s voice.
“Alicent Hightower,” she says, “it’s been a while. Are you staying here?”
Alicent looks up from her phone and immediately wants to disappear. Rhaenyra looks incredible. She’s wearing tailored pants, a loose-fitting shirt, her hair up in a sort of braided faux-hawk ponytail. She’s smiling in a charming, relaxed way, and Alicent could just scream. Rhaenyra has no right to look like that while Alicent certainly looks like roadkill.
She probably should just look for a different hotel.
“Hi,” Alicent says instead, “yes. You as well, I presume?”
Rhaenyra inclines her head in acknowledgment. “Seems so,” she says and then raises one eyebrow. “Will I find you at the bar later?”
Alicent resists the urge to narrow her eyes. “No,” she says, “but best of luck for the debate today.”
Rhaenyra distractedly twirls her sunglasses in her hand. “Oh,” she says, “I’d save your well wishes for your candidate.”
Alicent shifts her laptop to her other arm. “Is that so?”
Rhaenyra’s grin turns wolfish. “It is,” she says. “I plan to eat him alive.”
Alicent really, really should not find that as attractive as she does.
*
Rhaenyra does, in fact, eat Cole alive in the debate. Alicent will admit it. She’s completely blindsided. This is Rhaenyra’s first televised debate, but Alicent still watched countless recordings of speeches, rallies and interviews and Rhaenyra has never, not once, looked as prepared as she is today. She’s eloquent, sharp and candid. Her answers are perfectly timed and wonderfully quotable and Alicent finds herself both incredibly irritated by Rhaenyra and uncomfortably attracted to her, and she really should quit. Preferably today.
By the end of the debate, Cole is practically foaming at the mouth and #queenrhaenyra is trending on Twitter. Alicent waits backstage with her father, quietly bracing herself for a Cole meltdown. At least there’s a few people around. There’s the filming crew, makeup artists and caterers, so chances are Cole will at least not punch anything.
He appears moments later, his furious eyes darting around the room, clearly looking for them. Once he notices her father, he marches towards him and immediately gets one inch from his face.
“You are fucking worthless,” he spats. “what the fuck was that Otto? Who the hell was prepping her?”
Her father takes a step back, holds his hands up. “Senator Cole,” he says, “this is a minor setback but -”
Cole doesn’t let him finish. “Don’t you fucking dare try to appease me, Otto!” he yells. “you let that fucking cunt humiliate me.”
Personally, Alicent thinks Cole mostly humiliated himself. Rhaenyra can’t really be blamed for smelling blood in the water when Cole grossly misrepresented Westerosi taxation law three answers in a row.
“And you,” he turns to Alicent, and she takes a step back instinctively. He shoves his phone in her face. “Is this your fucking best effort at PR? do you even know what you’re doing?”
She tries to take another step back to look at the phone. It’s so close to her face she can’t make anything out. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices Rhaenyra walking into the backstage area, laughing at something her companion said. Laenor Velaryon, Alicent realizes, because of course Rhaenyra still has a perfectly amicable relationship with the first husband she cheated on.
Before she can focus back on the phone, Cole's patience has run out and he throws the phone to the floor. He walks into her personal space. “You’re as fucking useless as your father is. Sorry fucking excuse of a PR manager.”
Alicent involuntarily flinches, and notices Laenor making a move to intervene, but Rhaenyra stops him with a hand on his shoulder. Rhaenyra then looks straight at Alicent, raises her eyebrows in a silent question.
Alicent shakes her head minutely. As much as she’d prefer to be literally anywhere else, an intervention by Rhaenyra would spell nothing but misery for her. Cole would never forget.
“I am sorry, Senator,” she says, in the calmest voice she can muster, “we will get the PR under control.”
Cole finally seems to realize where he is, and how many people are looking at him. He shakes his head, straightens his suit. “See that you do,” he says, and strides out of the room.
Alicent’s father turns to look at her. “I’ll escort Senator Cole to his hotel,” he says, “cancel any appearances tomorrow.”
When they are both gone, Alicent lets out a sigh of relief and shoots a series of quick emails to cancel Cole’s interviews for the next day. When she looks up from her phone, Rhaenyra is alone, looking at something on a clipboard while Laenor Velaryon is quietly talking on the phone a few feet behind her.
Alicent walks the few paces that separate them. “Thank you,” she says.
Rhaenyra turns around, tilts her head. “For what?” She says, “I didn’t do anything.”
Alicent smiles. She supposes she’s right, but even so, Alicent appreciated Rhaenyra didn’t barge in like some Knight in shining armor, but didn’t walk away, either.
Alicent should definitely say that, or spew out a pleasantry and take a cab to her hotel, or anything at all, really, except for what comes out of her mouth next:
“For the drink you’re gonna buy for me at the hotel bar.”
Rhaenyra raises her eyebrows, a grin slowly appearing on her face. “Oh, in that case,” she says, “you are most welcome.”