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Oberyn Martell was many things: a lover of all the beauties of the world, a Prince of Dorne, a six-linked maester, and a Martell. The last one had mattered the most to him and thus it brought him to his predicament, one last thing that Oberyn was.
Oberyn Martell was dead.
If you were to ask him now, he would have compared it to a headache resolved by a good night’s sleep. Then he would have asked you to step aside so he could continue on his journey through the afterlife, for he had another person to pursue.
He was certain the Mountain would be burning in hell by now, though the afterlife didn’t seem to experience the same passage of time. The poison he had dipped his spear in before the fight had been of his own recipe, a slow killer that spread through the victim’s system with each pump of their heart. In people of regular size, that poison would kill a man in a few hours. For the Mountain, well, Oberyn would have to ask the rabid dog how long it took to finally kill him.
Oberyn made his way through the hazy facsimile of dry desert and stone, all of it greyed by the clouded sky and mists. He frowned up at the tower, though he felt no exhaustion at the idea of climbing this insulting monument to his goodbrother’s crimes.
The Tower of Joy, it had been called in life. Oberyn had burned it the moment Robert Baratheon laid his crown on his muscle-bound head. His goodbrother thought this part of the Red Mountains was romantic and had it built with the eager excitement of the Fowlers. It burned just the same, and with the same support.
What a mockery it was for Rhaegar to turn it into his little piece of the afterlife.
He could have chosen to focus on his memories of the silver-haired twat, to directly face him, but unfortunately, they had been positive memories. The steward of this afterlife, nonplussed by his demands, had explained that it was truly the only way to see anyone one had known in life. Focus on their memory, which without the press of existence became so much clearer, and you should arrive nose to nose with them. However, most would ask for distance, as it was deeply discomforting to open your eyes and be face to face with someone you had parted with on bad terms.
The closest Oberyn had gotten was the base of this monstrosity.
He refused to reminisce about the tower and the attached complex. It was meant to be another Summerhall, to celebrate another Dornish queen and the birth of little Rhaenys, but instead all he could think of was the muted horror on Elia’s face on that day in Harrenhal.
Elia. He’d see her after he had pummeled his goodbrother, as he had sworn he would before the bastard ran off with that knobby-kneed child.
He could hear the sounds of soft conversation before he entered the cavernous library. The Tower of Joy in life did not have such a library, in fact it looked more like the library of Dragonstone or even the Red Keep. He could see two silver-haired men talking. One was Rhaegar, he would know the ponce anywhere, but the other man was powerfully built. He looked annoyed with the younger, a frown comfortable on his lips. Rhaegar looked small compared to him, and Oberyn felt smug.
“Goodbrother! It has been a long time!” Oberyn called out, a grin on his face. Not a grin, more a baring of teeth with a cheerful tone. Rhaegar seemed to grow a shade paler and the stranger looked at him, his ire clear. “We have to catch up!”
“Oberyn! I… I can speak with you later, if you would permi--”
Still with a smile, Oberyn responded. “I will not.”
Rhaegar looked at his companion, a touch alarmed as Oberyn approached them. His companion’s face had darkened.
“Nephew, who is this?” He rumbled. He couldn’t have been Aerys. Aerys knew him, had nearly ordered his execution a hundred times, and even with his sanity restored he would surely recognize the Red Viper of Dorne. Besides, he was much too stocky, thick with muscle instead of wiry as the mad king had been. No, this must have been some other relative.
“This is my goodbrother, Oberyn Martell,” The prince offered, anxiety clear. The elder’s face hardened and, coupled with the way he spoke the common tongue with his High Valyrian vowels, Oberyn realized who he was seeing.
“I am a descendant of Meria Martell, Your Grace. I’m sure you remember her,” Oberyn gave Aegon the Conqueror a sharp smile. To see him in the flesh, such as it was, was fascinating. He wasn’t an ethereal beauty, rather striking and hard. He seemed too musclebound for the cotton and silk tunic and breeches he wore, though to Oberyn’s eye it wasn’t unpleasant.
The Conqueror almost snarled. “I do,” he looked at Rhaegar, his face drawn. “I will see you later, Nephew.”
If Rhaegar thought to beg the old conqueror not to leave him, the idea decided to leave as soon as it arrived. “Yes, uncle. Have a good return.”
The old conqueror faded away, leaving the two to their task.
“Pity, he’s my uncle too, no?” He trained his eye on his goodbrother. “I would have loved a hug.”
“Oberyn, I… How long has it been?”
“Far too long. If I had to guess… twenty years.”
Rhaegar had always been good, Oberyn supposed. King’s Landing was no place for a young man, a city with thousands of eyes and ears waiting to use the information they gleaned for whatever purpose they had. His goodbrother was famously bookish and had interrogated him about his studies at the Citadel. He had offered the idea of Rhaegar heading to the Citadel to forge links of his own, should the fancy strike him, but Rhaegar had shaken his head. “For a thousand reasons, I could not,” he said in that sad cryptic way he had.
Oberyn remembered bringing a gift to Dragonstone, a fermented drink he had gotten from the Ullers while he courted Ellaria. He had pressured Rhaegar into drinking it, claiming it a gentler brother of shade-of-the-evening. Elia had scolded him when he had finally brought the thoroughly drowned Rhaegar to her chambers with a wide smile. The prince had ended up clinging to his sister and babbling about prophecy and how their babies would save the world.
He liked to think that helped bring Rhaenys into the world.
Rhaegar looked away. “Yes. Well. I suppose you want something.”
Oberyn rose a brow. “I can’t simply want to see a member of my family?”
Rhaegar looked at him, his delicate eyebrows furrowed, before sighing a put-upon sigh. “One second,” He turned, headed off in search of something.
“I have waited so long, what is another second?” Oberyn took the Prince’s absence to feel for his spear. He was grateful to feel it, familiar and light. He had always wondered if he could fight in the seven heavens, pestered many a septa about the idea. Even Tyene’s mother had heard the question posed, but still shared his bed after she had gone red with anger over his incessant questions. He would be sure to let her know when, if, he saw her.
Rhaegar came back, still in his light tunic and breeches, but carrying little squares of parchment, all in a stack. His eyebrows were furrowed in concentration as he shuffled through them. “Ah! Oberyn,” he looked up at him. Then, carefully, he looked back down. “You were always a good goodbrother to me. I was always very happy to see you and I cannot make up for all the suffering you have gone through.”
Oberyn frowned. “Are you… Are you attempting to apologize?”
Rhaegar’s face twisted before he nodded. “Yes.”
Oberyn’s shoulders dropped. He had hoped for a fight, a battle to reclaim Elia’s honor. He sometimes dreamt of it. Instead of Robert crushing his chest at the Trident, it would be the two of them fighting at Harrenhal, in the arena where Rhaegar had decided to shame Elia to the hoarse cackle of his mad father. Rhaegar would offer apologies and sometimes Oberyn would listen and other times he would make sure the last name on his tongue was Elia’s.
Ellaria counseled against it, the idea of revenge, she always had and he always thought it was Uller’s madness expressing itself in her as the Targaryen’s madness had in Rhaegar.
He pushed the existential question away. He had an eternity to contemplate it.
Rhaegar took the slump as a sign to continue. “When I died, I thought everyone would understand what I did and why I did it. The Stark girl… Lyanna,” Oberyn noticed his face soften. “Lyanna is good and just and strong. She was the perfect mother for a Visenya, the knight of laughing tree. I enjoyed her company. She would have been wasted in her father’s ambitions, wasted as a bride of my cousin Robert. I would have found him a good match, once everything had settled. Then Elia found me.
“I don’t know how long I had been dead when she found me. I was with every Targaryen who had ever lived, even Daenys the Dreamer was there… And Elia found me. Our children,” Rhaegar stopped to take a breath. “Our children were with her.”
Oberyn could see the scene. All those silver-gold and fair-skinned people with Elia in the middle, Rhaenys following at her mother’s heels and baby Aegon so very quiet. Elia approaching her husband, countless millennia of grief in her eyes.
“I didn’t think anyone would hurt them,” Rhaegar was quiet, ashamed. “Your sister… She told me everything, told every one of my ancestors what I had done and what had happened in the Red Keep. After she had struck me, of course.”
Oberyn snorted. He couldn’t imagine his sister’s strength now without the limits of her earthly form. “And what of your Northern whore?”
Rhaegar shot him a glare, but Oberyn had seen worse than his rage. “Lyanna found me after. She aimed lower.”
It took Oberyn a moment to register Rhaegar's implication.
One second.
Two seconds.
Oberyn collapsed into laughter. He could see it, the look of shock as the prince was taken out by the last woman to handle him. Had the princeling ever been struck that way? It was a blunt tactic, foreign to the landed knights, but known to anyone who fought to win. Oberyn had known the flat of a girl’s knee himself, and yet he couldn’t find it in himself to sympathize with Rhaegar’s pain. In fact, he wished he’d have died earlier just to see it.
“Are you finished?” Rhaegar asked hotly, almost pouting. The Prince of Dragonstone, pouting!
“One-- One moment, I--” He looked at his goodbrother, only to start cackling again. His laughter echoed off the stone walls and slowly petered out. He laid flat on the cool stones. “Ah… Go on. You were saying?”
Rhaegar looked back at his notecards. “It turns out we had a son instead of a daughter. She named him Jon.”
Oberyn smirked. “Rhaenys, Aegon, and Jon. What a trio.”
“I had hoped it would be a girl. The dragon must have three heads and now there is only one,” he covered his face with his hand. “Neither woman will talk to me now.”
“And why should they? You shamed them both because a maester said my sister couldn’t have another child. Even I could have told you it was a bad idea for a woman to have back to back pregnancies,” he sat up, looking up at his goodbrother. “You know, I always thought it suspicious that Elia was pregnant so often, especially given the trouble all of our mothers and fathers had, but after the Stark girl, I presumed you just enjoyed dipping your cock,” Oberyn tried to keep his grin from taking over his face as the dragon prince blushed all the way to his hairline. “Not the worst vice, but certainly there was a better way to handle it without shaming my beloved sister.”
“I always thought Pycelle was a wise man.”
Oberyn threw up his hands. “Pycelle! The Pycelle with pockets fat with Lannister gold? He was probably saying such a thing to throw Cersei into your marriage bed!”
Rhaegar looked at his notecards, trying to shrink behind them. Oberyn got up. “You know, Rhaegar, I have only avoided hitting you so far because of our good relationship. You were a good man,” Oberyn took the cards and looked through them, reading the loopy writing. Rhaegar had written to him while he had been at the Citadel, always encouraging him to take up the Valyrian link. It should have been a warning, though at the time Oberyn thought it was the prince living his maester dreams through him.
Upon the little pieces of parchment, he saw the names. Aemon. Viserys. Mother. Father. Robert. He looked up at Rhaegar on that one. “How did this one go? I never took Robert Baratheon for a man who listened to apologies.”
Rhaegar looked at the stones. “Cousin Robert barged in with one of the stewards of the afterlife. He demanded a fight, clutching his warhammer and bellowing like a stag in heat. I offered him my apology… and he left. Said he wouldn’t fight a woman.”
Oberyn snorted. “What a charmer he is.”
“None I have known in life will see me. Even my ancestors hold me at a distance.”
“The old conqueror came to visit. And I’m certain your lady mother has come, no?” He couldn’t assume to know how the Targaryens were behind closed doors. The northern families always felt so cold, too controlled to love their sons and daughters outside being tools. He presumed it was the Valyrian way: what better way to send brothers and sisters to the marriage bed if not to isolate them?
“I invited him. He wouldn’t come otherwise,” he looked at Oberyn. “My mother visited once but… I couldn’t stand to look at her,” Guilt. Of course. “Elia sent the children back into the world. They never got a chance to grow. She informed me it would be done, the last time I saw her.”
“Ah, sounds fair of her.”
“I don’t know what I can do. When I was with Lyanna, I wanted us all to be together, happy. I would have talked to the High Septon, to the Starks, to anyone and they would have seen sense, I’m sure of it! It got away from me.”
Oberyn handed back the notes and thought of his nephew Quentyn. The boy never really took advantage of his position: he hadn’t even kissed a girl and swore the first time he did it would be his true love on the day of their wedding. He loved the stories of Florian and Jonquil, of the great knights and their lady loves. At the time it was fine, for Quentyn was a little boy. But little boys grew up.
Maybe not all the way when they are the sons of a mad king. Perhaps it was too difficult to let go of those stories when reality buried its twisted claws in your body.
“Perhaps, but it got away all the same. Now we cannot go back, and the dead cannot move forward,” They cannot change, Oberyn. Only the living can move on. He remembered Ellaria saying it when he was in a black mood during Elia’s day. He and Doran made her nameday a holiday after she had passed, a day of celebration for her life and yet he always got into a fight. It was how he handled that day, that day until he could finally slaughter the Mountain.
“There is one way,” Rhaegar offered. “Rebirth, as Elia gave to Rhaenys and Aegon.”
Oberyn looked at his goodbrother. “Are you considering it?”
“I don’t know. I want to see what happens to my son and to my sister. Perhaps they will succeed where I did not.”
Oberyn nodded. “Fair enough,” He flipped through the notecards and took the ones designated for Elia. “I will take these to my sister.”
“Oberyn!”
“She won’t see you face to face, at least allow me to bring this to her. I can’t stand to see two lovebirds separated.” It was bullshit, of course. Rhaegar could spend the rest of eternity mooning over his sister, as he should. Elia deserved nothing less than for this child of a man to fall on his knees and beg her forgiveness. He owed her that. Elia was the sun and all things needed the sun to survive, especially dragons.
But perhaps it would be a good laugh for Elia, though his sister could have mellowed in the decades since.
Rhaegar looked after him. “So, you accept my apologies?”
“Give me a decade in death for me to think about it. Perhaps I’ll come back tomorrow and avenge my defeat at Storm’s End. Then after that, I will think again and punish you for Elia.”
Rhaegar looked chastened at that but nodded.
Oberyn turned and finally let himself think of Elia. Elia under a blood orange tree, a Rhoynish scarf draped over her head to keep the sun away. Elia repressing her laughter at Baelor Breakwind, her eyes twinkling with the restrained laughter. Elia who should have seen her daughter and nieces grow up, Elia who should have had a husband who desired more than just her womb. Elia. Elia. Elia.
“Oberyn?”
Oberyn opened his eyes and saw his sister, her favorite Rhoynish veil over her head and carrying blood oranges in her arms. Had the afterlife always been so bright, its skies so blue and its flora so green?
The notecards fell from his hands and Rhaegar Targaryen was forgotten in that moment. Now it was only Elia. Now he had his sister again, hugging her tight like she would fade away. There was Elia, and that was all that mattered.