ALTERNATE ENDING.
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If suddenly you do not exist, if suddenly you are not living, I shall go on living.
I do not dare to write it, if you die, I shall go on living.

PABLO NERUDA, THE DEAD WOMAN
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THREE YEARS HAVE GONE BY SLOWLY. Astoria still looks no day over twenty but the child beside her has grown from an infant to a boy of four namedays.

     In Pentos no one makes a distinction between bastard children and those born withing a marriage. So the choice had been an easy one. Playing the part of a mother however, had been harder. Still, she loves the boy more than life. Not because he reminds Astoria so much of Elia that it pains her to no ends — the almond shaped eyes, the slightly crooked smile, the loose curls — no, that's not it. He's all she has now. The only reason to keep on living, and not simply living but living happily, for his sake.

     Only her mother and father know of the true heritage of Aegon Targaryen, for the rest of the world, he will be Iain Lhazar for many years to come. She named him after the brother she'd lost years ago to the sea.

     Every first day of each month she dyes the silver hair of Aegon a rich black to hide the locks that would surely reveal his Targaryen descendants. Yet, the bright lilac eyes cannot be concealed or hidden from preying eyes. But Astoria finds a solution for that, too. She had not wanted to dishonour her slain knight but she is sure Arthur had rather wanted Elia's boy to live than for his name to be clean of any shame. And so she had named him his son, conceived whilst she was still residing in the Red Keep.

FATE, MEN INSIST, IS INEXORABLE. So much followed the gift of a crown of blue roses, blue as frost. So many died. There was so much heartache, so much blood and so many tears that together they would have made a great river, yet, in time, the eddies smoothed, new rivers joined, and the tears went down to the great wide unknowable sea, and people forgot how it ever began.

     It is a day as any other, as Astoria ponders all this. She has a few hours to herself and she enjoys them, considering they have become a rarity. Aegon, as she still calls him in the hidden depths of her head, is at his midday lessons. That such a thing must exist at the age of four already seems ridiculous to Astoria, but she reckons that her parents know better about the upbringings of a child.

     As she turns to leave her little spot in the gardens of her childhood home, she stops.

Astoria does not see him and think, how handsome you are. Astoria does not look at him and think, you should be dead. Astoria does not gaze upon him and think, this is what I have prayed for.

Astoria does not think any of these things, though they are all true, they are all of them true. She looks at him and thinks, it's been two years. Where have you been all this time, leaving me to suffer on my own?

She feels like she might burst, the heart in her chest beating, pounding, exploding. He is clad in plain clothing but in her eyes she has never seen a more wonderous thing like him.

     Astoria tilts her head up to look at him. Despite the years that have elapsed, he looks younger than he ever did in Aerys's service, and she wonders if the same has happened to her. Pentos is warmer than King's Landing, and the air is thinner, yet she feels healthier here than she did in that city.

Arthur's lilac eyes take her in greedily. Her dark hair has been cut short, locks barely brushing her shoulder blades. Her complexion has turned darker under the Pentoshi sun.

"Astoria," he says, and it is the same voice, God, it is the same —

"Don't." The single word explodes out of her like a blade, sharp and cold. He is everything I ever wanted, that is her instinct. Don't, that is her humanity.

She can count the amount of times Arthur has hesitated in her presence on one hand, and now he stares at her, through dull, darkened eyes, for a moment, before hanging his head.

"It's been three years, Arthur," Astoria hisses, her voice impossibly loud in the room. "I have mourned you. I have cried for you. Where were you?"

There are tears in his eyes as he asks, "Do you remember the last time we saw each other?"

     "The night before you left for war." Nigh on four years ago that had been, and she recalls it clear as day. He'd been full of purpose back then, not like now, not when his eyes are haunted with the things they've seen.

     "Do you remember what I told you that night?"

     How could she forget? "Arthur, quiet." She does not wish to hear it. Her brain is a muddled mess. This must be a dream. I will wake up in a moment and it will all be as it has always been.

"Astoria."

She looks up at him. "You said that so long as the world still turned, you would love me."

"I meant it."

     "It doesn't matter. Not anymore. It's been years."

You could have stopped this, she thinks viciously. If you wanted to, you could have come sooner. You could have spared us both the agony.

"Four years, yes. But I was afraid."

Astoria scoffs. She is certain that the famed Sword of the Morning has not been afraid even once in his lifetime. I must still be dreaming, she thinks. But there is something blooming in her chest. Hope, she realises.

Arthur is saved by a boyish shriek and the tip-tap of small feet.

"Mama!"

It takes Arthur less than a second to recognise the child, even after four years, even with brown hair. His heart stops and for a moment he feels as if he is dreaming. This must be a dream, are his thoughts now, mirroring Astoria's.

     "Iain," Astoria replies easily. The warning in her eyes is evident. So he swallows his many questions and turns to Aegon, who is no longer Aegon.

     "This is Arthur Dayne, sweetling," she tells the boy.

     "The real one?"

     "Aye, I am he," Arthur says, and the little boy scrambles down and bows to him, his eyes insolent in the way of young boys who believe themselves to be the king's of their own world.

And suddenly, Arthur is glad that in this life, when Eddard Stark gives him a choice, Arthur runs. He upholds no vows, he doesn't cling to duty. He simply steps aside so that Lord Stark may attend to his sister in the birthing bed and leaves his honour behind.

He changes names as easily as he changes clothes. One day he is Thom, the next he is Garren, after that it is the turn of Olly and after him comes some poor love-struck fool called Allen who needs to get to Pentos as soon as possible to find his love. That last part is true, at least. Somewhere in between them all he dyes his hair blue and doesn't recognise the stranger that stares back at him in the mirror.

It is almost funny, he reckons, how swiftly he can fade into the shadows, whereas not long ago people would have honoured him as Sword of the Morning.

     Still, he is glad to be seens as Arthur again. If only be Astoria. Before she had turned and noticed him, he was able to watch her for a few minutes. Even though she is still grieving, even though many of those who have loved her are now dead, she carries the marks of one well-loved, in her bearing, her tired smiles, in the way she walks the gardens and lifts her face to the sun.

     In some ways Astoria reminds Arthur of Lady Lyanna. She was loved by her mother, who died; her brothers, one of whom lost his life, a second who will inherit a lordship and a burden he does not wish for, and a third, too young for much else; the Usurper, whose rage at the loss of her ripped the kingdoms asunder; and a crown prince whose adulterous love destroyed a dynasty and cost her her life in turn.

     Someone who inspires such feelings is dangerous; someone who expects to be loved — not because they think it is their due but simply because that is all they have known — drags supplicants in their wake, unwittingly, inexorably. It happened with Lyanna and it may as well happen with Astoria.

     Yet they both would, Arthur knows, trade any amount of love to have them, the ones who died a bloody death, live again.

     Astoria says as much to him, when the warm summer air fills her chambers later that day, when the boy squirms in his sleep between them, and a pained crease crosses her brow as she shifts and her emotions make themselves known.

     "What worth is their love when they are dead now?" she asks, her voice stark, her eyes young, and he wishes more than anything to cross the gap between them and take her in his arms.

     The love they gave her, he thinks, helps her live now, survive, like seeds planted deep.

     And might his love, the devotion he aches to set before her feet, make those seeds bloom? Or will it be unwelcome, will she turn away from him, will she scorn him? If what he has to give her is drawn from a well inside of himself, will he one day be left dry, empty, ruined?

     Mayhaps. But the need for happiness is stronger than his fear.

     "I've loved you then and I love you now. I will stay with you for a year and two and five and fifty. Until our hair turns grey and our sight blurry," he whispers, eyes bright with anticipation. "If you'll have me."

She likes, she loves, she wants. But it seems so difficult to forgive him, only hours after finding him to be alive.

     She doesn't mean to fall asleep. Astoria doesn't even think she's capable of it, after Arthur's words. But he is warm next to her and his smells so familiar. Her head nods, once, twice, and Arthur moves her into his embrace just before the darkness claims her.

     It isn't dark for long.

     She's in the Water Gardens, in Sunspear, the way it had looked in her childhood. A man sits under one of the many trees, sliding a whetstone down a rippling blade made of thought and fire, his dark head bowed in concentration. He looks decades older and the lines on his face are no longer grief. Grief as well, surely, but not only. Oberyn? she tries to say, but the words won't form. He makes no move, and Astoria is pulled towards him despite her legs not moving. She reaches out for him, her hand trembling, but as soon as her fingertips connect with flesh, he falls away like a cheap magic trick.

     A blink, and the scene changes. The world is white, white all around, empty and untouched and coldly beautiful. There's something in the distance, a shape, a shadow, and she walks for it with a shiver, feeling a cold hand close around her heart as the Iron Throne appears. An older Cersei Lannister sits on Aerys' seat, Rhaegar's seat, Aegon's seat, and Astoria notices with horror that her emerald green eyes are instead an otherworldly, burning blue.

     On instinct Astoria flaps her wings and flies, flies, flies into the white sky as Cersei's laughter follows her. "A white raven," a maester says from far away, "winter is here." As suddenly as she began to fly, she falls, her body her own once again. She braces for the impact, closes her eyes, but she doesn't feel herself hit the ground so much as feel the world grow solid around her once more.

     The world around her is on fire, all is bright and burning, and Astoria cannot feel the flames lick her skin although she can see her own flesh blackening and bubbling. Somebody is screaming, singing, a high horrible song that echoes inside her head and she claps her hands over her ears. It makes no difference to the noise. A thought occurs to her, is this hell? Is this a punishment for turning her back on R'hllor after he had betrayed her so? She sobs, her throat contracting. She is afraid. There is no pain but pain has never been as a great of a motivator to her as it was to other people, ever since Elia's murder.

     The scream-singing stops, and then there is no sound save the crackle of the flames, climbing higher, higher into what should be a starry sky but is instead a black void. But no, there's something else, a hissing that doesn't come from the fire, a crack that sounds like a stone breaking in two...

     Astoria turns her head towards the source of the noise, and sees a small, scaly winged creature pushing its way out of an egg unlike any she's ever seen before. Her stomach drops as she realises what she's looking at; which of the Targaryen's children is it? There's the black, the gold, the green, but this one just looks silver. She knows that silver, knows it and forgot it, used to brush it before she dyed it dark, and runs without thinking, without care for the colossal flames and burning wood that has trapped her in close quarters with the beast. She's already several feet away when she realises that she had sprinted through pyre's burning wooden beams as if they were made of air. She looks back and sees only a pile of ash.

     "He does not need to avenge us or fight back his crown only to be king of the ashes," Elia reminds her.

     She knows, she knows, she knows. She knows how this could end.

     The darkness yawns around her, and she forgets that this isn't real, that it can't be. Instead she cries out — for Iain the brother and Iain the bastard, for Rhaenys, who was only a little girl. She cries out Elia's name, and Arthur's. She prays to gods she had never spoken to; she prays to R'hllor for light, to the Old Gods of the Forest for guidance, to the Mother for mercy and the Stranger for swiftness.

     When she finally, finally wakes to Arthur's gentle shaking, she finds she's been crying in her sleep.

He gifts her with pleasant warmth and the new feeling of air on her bare neck, and she likes the change. She likes all changes, really. There's a lean body against hers and arms around her waist and she likes that too, and it's so good. It's near bliss how good everything is; and Astoria almost wonders how selfish she must be, that she feels happy when they are all gone. Then, she reminds herself that Elia would want this for her. Joy.

     "Good morning," she says, slow and husky with sleep, and he takes one of her hands in both of his, kisses the tip of her fingers — and it's a good morning, indeed.

After breaking their fast in a comfortable silence, she brings Arthur to an ancient oak, the one she sat under more times than she can count in her childhood, with its wide, draping branches that give the illusion of privacy. It's always summer in Pentos, so the tree blooms.

     From his belt, Arthur withdraws a dagger and carves an A into the bark, deep and indelible. "Years from now, someone will find this," he says. "Someone will wonder who was here. Someone will make up a tale."

He wonders how they can laugh in a courtyard full of the trinkets of coming blood and fire. Yet somehow amongst the stacks of plate and boxes of shields, they do laugh. Deep and rich, like honey to the tongue, like balm to a bruise.

     There is a gulf between them rent by years of ache and absence, but as Arthur tips back his head to chuckle at the sun, the earth shakes and mountains move and slowly — so slowly — the gulf stitches back together. Astoria feels the pull of its threads around her heart as they share a wine-flask in the shade of the blossoms.

     He's the dreamer between the two of them, and she the realist, but it's charming, endearing, the idea that there will be a record of them forever, even if no one will know the truth. She kisses him sweetly then takes the knife and carves another A next to his.

Above their initials, a falling star.

T H E E N D.