Always fire. They live in fire, they dire in fire; if one cannot have a dragonrider's death, then their body will be cremated anyway, and spared the insult of turning to rot. Daemon's brave girl Laena and Rhaenyra's loyal Harwin had died burning, accidental sacrifices to gore open the path towards unity. A nightmarish trade. Spells of Old Valyria are not always asked for, though. Sometimes they create themselves, from fire and blood.
"Daenerys."
An echo. Daemon stands so still. Jaime can't know the insanity of what he relays so thoughtlessly. Though a dragon may have many riders over their long lives, riders only have one. The death of a dragon is the death of the soul. Daemon knows the deep searing weight of teasing on the edges of it whenever he commanded Laena's Vhagar during her pregnancies, and seducing his grandfather's Vermithor. To bond with three, and at once—
The dragon must have three heads.
A good family name. His eldest aunt was Daenerys. Grandmother wanted her to be heir, but Grandsire wouldn't allow it, and then little Daenerys fell so cold and ill, and they'd been too cowardly against the Westerosi after Maegor's death; there weren't any dragon eggs or hatchlings in King's Landing. She died with nothing capable of warming her before anyone could even get to Dragonstone. Dragon eggs were kept in the Pit from then on, and Daemon... will not voice any of this, no matter how his thoughts spin.
"I hear they appreciate oaths, in the North," Daemon says eventually. "They trust their own and keep to the old ways. Sensible people who swore themselves rightly to my wife. Do you believe in prophecy, Ser Jaime?"
"Sensible is one word for it," he grumbles. And yet: "I swore an oath to the Lady of Winterfell's mother. To keep her and her sister safe and in Winterfell. If they are threatened, then I must join her in defending them."
Jaime doesn't notice his own slip up, going over his histories in his head to figure out which wife Daemon might be referring to. He doesn't know the analogues of history nearly as well as his little brother, but he always had a keen interest in wartime affairs, knights, and swords with good names. He had aimed in his youth, after all, to be a knight worthy of songs. To have ballads sung about him long after he was gone.
Rhaenyra, perhaps?
"Me? Seven, no. I think they're a load of horseshit. Prince Rhaegar, however, I recall believed in one involving— What was it he always told me? The dragon has three heads? Whatever it was, he fully believed himself and his siblings to be those dragons. Can't say it came true."
He doesn't make the connection with Daenerys's three dragons, his prince having presented the prophecy to him as the three heads being that of Targaryens and not their mounts. Of course, at the time, everyone had believed that the dragons were long gone, never to grace the skies again.
"Wise of you. Prophecies are delusions of convenience. No one should need a dream to understand that a massive wall built with magic is meant to keep something dangerous out." Fucking prophecies, fucking Aegon the Conqueror, spinning a fairy tale to sooth his artist son's gentle heart. A father's folly despite all he'd done. "... But that's not a prophecy. It's a prayer."
And perhaps easy for a fanciful person to twist into something else. The Targaryen crest of a three-headed dragon, all their lullabies and old spells, legends of how exactly they came to have the blood of the dragon in the first place.
In High Valyrian, he says, "But two heads to a third sing. From my voice: The fires have spoken, and the price has been paid with blood magic."
Spooky, or beautiful? Daemon stands still, but Caraxes shifts, restless.
"Three is powerful number in blood magic, and the magic of Targaryen blood is very real."
What did Rhaegar see? A dream, or merely wishful thinking? If he believed the fantasies of their origin, did he want a love story? If he believed the nightmare of it, did he want destruction? Perhaps three siblings could have willed something great into being, if one alone is powerful enough to bring dragons back into the world. Or perhaps her brothers needed to die in a sacrifice to make it possible. (If he knew their names and their reasoning, he'd laugh. Three dragons, named for the three men in her life, who each died terribly. Fire and blood.)
For a moment, Jaime contemplates lying. He's a good liar — a very good liar — and can spin a tale with a straight face to the point that he sometimes wonders if he's remembering the truth wrong and it's the lie that's the reality. Why lie about that here, though? There's no Cersei or little birds whispering in Qyburn's corrupt ear. No one he needs to protect her from.
Having ties to him won't endanger her here.
"Brienne of Tarth," he answers. "She is Lady Sansa Stark's sworn sword. We swore that oath together."
Even if she has been the one to uphold it for the both of them, for the most part. Jaime might have financed her journeys with Lannister gold, commissioned custom armor for her, and gifted her with a priceless Valyrian sword that he insisted she keep, but he's done little himself. He had been hoping to change that, but fate intervenes in intention in the strangest of ways.
Such as bringing him here.
"A prayer, you say? Huh. He spoke those words with reverence, yes, but never the faithful sort that you see septons get themselves worked up with." Born into the Faith of the Seven, Jaime has no personal stake in it. Religion is as much of a farce to him as prophecies.
Jaime doesn't know how much he believes in the magic blood of the Targaryen line, but he can't deny that they're simply built different and magic would honestly explain a lot. He is just jaded beyond reason and likes to think that if there were more magic in the world, it wouldn't be nearly as miserable as it was.
Septons, penitents and their Faith of the Seven are utterly unlike the gods of Old Valyria— primordial forces meant to be bargained with, not worshiped. Rituals, not rules. Prayer is offered in song and in battle, and the most holy offering is a blood sacrifice. Daemon will trade himself for his children. He knows the gods will listen and he will be devoured, taken away to the annihilation of their culture.
"Perhaps your prince was, too."
How much of what a Targaryen should be has been lost by Jaime's time? Just about everything, he imagines.
Daemon moves finally, and with his movement, Caraxes stills and becomes calm again. His attention is pulled back to the younger knight properly.
"A lady swornsword? I like the thought of that. Women are infinitely more reliable. They tend to make more sensible vows."
Much as Jaime wants to argue in Rhaegar's Valyrian favor, even a poor student of history such as he understands that by the time his prince was poised to inherit the Iron Throne, Aegon the Conquerer's bloodline had been significantly diminished. Although they'd kept up the tradition of intermarrying best they could, their numbers weren't what they once were and they were forced to marry into the Great Houses of Westeros in order to ensure their survival. Rhaegar was a Targaryen, yes, but his great-grandmother had been a Blackwood, his great-great-grandmother a Dayne... The bloodline had been considerably diluted and it was honestly a testament to the strength of their Valyrian ancestry that the Targaryens he knew in his youth were still silver-haired and purple-eyed.
though sometimes those features don't shine through at all cough jon and coughjaimehimselfcoughcough
"He thought in the only way he knew how," he finally settles on in Rhaegar's defense. "With the admiration he had for his House and his heritage, I've no doubt that he would have thought differently had he been able to."
Rhaegar tried, but he also for some unfathomable reason also saw fit to kidnap Lyanna Stark and instigate a war and wound up dead instead of seated on the throne that should've been his.
Jaime won't pretend to understand why he did that, only that the kidnapping and the death of Ned Stark's sister does not line up with anything he knew about the Prince of Dragonstone. It didn't make sense, but he's long given up on trying to wrap his head around that.
What's done is done. History cannot be rewoven, especially not by him.
"She is the most sensible person I've ever met," Jaime declares without hesitation. "Stubborn, yet honorable to a fault. She sets her mind on the impossible and defies expectation by seeing it through. She's far more knightly than I'll ever be."
Genetics are like shuffling cards, and Targaryen genetics are no more dominant or recessive than any other; they might be dealt any which way. Rhaenyra's bastards were as Targaryen as her father's children by the Hightower whore, and yet all three came out with brown hair and eyes, while her half-siblings had all the markings of 'real' Valyrians. Bastards with good hearts whose dragon eggs all hatched, and silvery usurpers who had to command their beasts cruelly and used them for nothing but ruin.
(If Viserys had just let Daemon have Rhaenyra when he asked, everything would have been fine.)
"Mm."
Just a monosyllabic sound, for Rhaegar. There's nothing much he can offer, here. Two hundred years is two hundred years, and clearly, much has been lost. He isn't surprised. He wonders what Daenerys knows, if anything. If she's lost, or if her dragons make up for it. Daemon has had far more than her, and has felt unbearably alone in their world.
Anyway—
"Pity you've taken one of those useless vows and can't wed her."
Rhaegar's own children were far more Dornish than they were Valyrian, though Jaime would argue that was only in their coloring. Little Rhaenys had her father's regal facial features, sharply prominent even as a toddler. (He remembers, too, Aerys dismissing the little girl for being too Dornish, claiming he could 'smell' it on her. Holding a grudge against both Rhaegar for not producing silver-haired children and his sister-wife for not birthing a daughter for Rhaegar to wed.)
"Pity I what?"
It takes him a moment to understand, and once he does, he's practically rambling as he tries to catch up with the underlying meaning(s) of the Rogue Prince's words.
"Brienne is a friend at best, to insinuate that I would— That I—" He can't even deny it, so he shifts gears: "If I wanted to, my vows would not be a problem, as I was released from them not long ago. A white cloak no longer sits on my shoulders. A one-handed man who was seen as both useless and a threat to high climbing Tyrells was done away with first chance they got to whisper in a young, impressionable king's ear."
Jaime's own son. Dismissed from the Kingsguard he'd devoted his life to, sacrificed his youth and innocence to, by his own godsdamned son.
Pale eyebrows arch at the fumbling, amused. Sure, buddy.
"Sounds like your only remaining expertise," since he got the hand chopped off, rip, "is finding yourself in improbably awful situations. Not exactly the worst motivation to keep such a sensible woman close."
What else does he have for entertainment around here? Might as well torture this guy about his lady knight. Caraxes huffs smoke, and it sounds like laughter.
"Freed from your vows and the Red Keep, can't be all that bad. And now you're here to make a wish. Perhaps your luck will turn, Ser Jaime."
Jaime's head whips around to finally regard Caraxes dead-on at the almost eerie sound of draconic 'laughter.' he's curious, but oddly not afraid; intrigued, almost.
Instead of commenting on anything Daemon has said, the golden knight remarks: "We used to have lions — beneath the Rock. They were sad, toothless things that hadn't seen the sunshine in generations, much like the hatchlings I'm told were small and underdeveloped that had spelled the end for dragons until Daenerys birthed hers in fire, or so they say. Lions have disappeared from Westeros, but dragons have returned to it."
He takes a step towards the entrance (and Caraxes). Then another, and another— Pausing still a decent distance away, he looks back over at the Rogue Prince.
"Perhaps that's a sign that your House is once more on the rise."
And his is about to come crumbling down.
Here lies House Lannister, brought down by its own ruthless ambition. A Lannister always pays their debts.
"Valyria is gone. My House has no home, and if your miracle princess takes the Iron Thone, she will have to decide if she is a Targaryen at all, or something new."
Refugees surviving in a hostile world, needing to keep power or be run out as heretics, needing to keep their bloodline close to maintain the tenets of their culture and their race. It's over. They are bred out, and have been for some time. Daemon knew, when he saw the ruins, just how foolish the Conqueror had been.
His dream. What a fucking joke.
Less dismal, perhaps, is watching Jaime regard Caraxes. It's always interesting observing someone getting used to a dragon. There's nothing like them.
"You'd have to have slain quite a number of lions," he observes. "Hundreds of the fucking things prowling around in my time, and just a handful of dragons. Are you all so self-devouring?"
Jaime laughs. A mirthless, almost bitter laugh as he shakes his head at the thought of swearing allegiance to the daughter of the man whose throat he slit. ...and yet, when it comes to the array of options of people to perch themselves on the Iron Throne, oddly a Targaryen Princess doesn't seem like a bad idea. Especially not when—
"They call her 'The Breaker of Chains.' It's said that she overthrew the slavers of Astapor and liberated the slaves of both the Red City and Meereen. The armies she has brought with her to Westeros to reclaim her birthright are said to genuinely love her and have faith in her power, in her ability to bring forth change. Hells, they say that the Dothraki consider her to be some sort of deity for being supposedly fireproof. They call her 'The Unburnt,' too. She has a whole host of titles."
He waves his lone hand dismissively at the list in his head, not caring whether he recalls the paragraph of scrawl beneath her name in the treaty they all signed. (In the treaty Cersei immediately broke by refusing to send aid to the North.)
"My point is, where we Lannisters and the Lions on our house sigil may be a dying breed, victims of self-sabotage... You Valyrians manage to keep finding ways to survive. Even if that means marrying someone who isn't your cousin to ensure that survival. Is survival not Targaryen of her?"
"In Valyria, Targaryens were a House of little renown," Daemon says. It is known (hah), but almost never spoken of aloud, for fear of retribution from the ruling powers that be. "We loved our dragons too much to be economic forces. We bonded with them as deep as children, as deep as lovers, instead of only using them as cudgels. Husbands and wives ruled the House side by side, hand in hand."
There were wars of annihilating subjugation, there were dragon-roads of immense trade, and the Targaryens were only footnotes, if that. It was the work of a woman—
(legend says she had a dream, but Daemon believes she was a fucking geologist and this horrid Westerosi influence has made a competent woman into a mystic)
—that spared them, when their peers were too egotistical. Her name was Jor-El.
"Valyrians came to have dragon's blood one of two ways. Either they used magic, or they forced slaves fuck monsters. Which do you think is more likely, I wonder."
Caraxes stretches; the sound of the ocean mingles with the sound of his breathing, a dull, rhythmic roar.
"I suppose most of the people in my day would assume the worst and go with the latter. It would compliment the narrative that's been spun in the wake of your house's decline." A narrative that the Mad King unfortunately fed into. (A narrative where people both condemned Aerys for his madness but also condemned Jaime for putting an end to it.) "And yet I'm inclined to say it was magic. Magic is..."
There's a heavy pause as Jaime once again seems transfixed by Caraxes, green eyes taking in every little movement until he sucks in a sharp breath and turns his attention back to the prince.
"Prophecies are a load of shit, but magic is real; I've seen it. I've seen one of the Others. It moved as if it were still living in spite of the eye-less face and decaying flesh that barely clung to the bone. When split in two, both halves of it continued to crawl. It snarled and did not stop until one half was burnt and the other was pierced with dragonglass."
Jaime might have looked at it with an expression akin to 'an ice zombie, in front of my salad?' but on the inside, it scared him shitless. He was fucking terrified of the potential that threat carried, of the very real possibility that the fabled Night King was real, of Westeros being taken over by these mindless creatures while they were too busy bickering about whose arse should be seated upon that godsdamned Iron Throne.
"Perhaps if she succeeds in helping save Westeros from the Army of the Dead, she might be. Until then, my allegiance remains with Sansa Stark." and Brienne of Tarth
"Of course magic is real." Daemon is an awful lot closer to Jaime than he was before, when he shifts attention back. His tone of voice is slightly impatient; of course doing a lot of heavy lifting. A shift to dark and wry, "How do you think they got any results out of violating slaves?"
Magic is real, and magic is a nightmare.
Daemon likes it that way. He has to. It's a part of him.
"Is Sansa Stark doing anything to stop the 'army of the dead'? Sounds like you might want to keep a closer eye on that problem than shrugging it off to a girl you're frightened of."
Daemon walks past him to the mouth of the cave, surveying glimpses of the beach outside. Caraxes looks in at them with one big yellow eye, but doesn't linger. Handy thing about his long neck, he can periscope about at will, surveying in all directions.
"I've seen things like that. Not precisely, but close enough to envision it without thinking you mad."
The twisted creatures in the ruins of the Freehold were unlike anything Daemon had ever seen, surpassing even the freakshow monsters and cursed familiars of the witches of Asshai and the Shadow Lands, and it was on that damned journey he came to understand too much about the world. It makes perfect sense, actually, that the Wall was constructed to keep out things.
"Our world is older than we can conceptualize, I think. We will never understand the true scope of what has lived there, or that yet will live."
Jaime rears back with a jerk when Daemon draws nearer, a vision of Aerys flashing in his mind's eye. (Perhaps through the memory sharing link they share here?) A decrepit old man with a gold-silver beard and hair that hung to his waist, wild purple eyes, and long, discolored nails that curled like a nautilus shell.
I'll give them naught but ashes, the old man cackled. Let Robert be king over charred bones and cooked meat. Burn them all. Burn them in their homes, burn them in their beds. Burn them all! BURN THEM ALL!
He blinks it back, a momentary internal struggle taking place as the prince peers out of the cave's entrance, Jaime forcing his walls back up, burying the traumatic recollection.
"I don't need to understand it to know that it wants to fuck us all over."
It should unnerve Daemon more, but even if he were disgusted — it's more like pity — he wouldn't show an outsider. Instead he is stoic in the face of Jaime's secondhand horrors, because no matter how much of a monster King Aerys was, he was a Targaryen. And as a Targaryen, it was his right to do as he wished with his kingdom and his subjects. Burn their homes, burn their children, burn everything. Those things were all his, to cherish or to carelessly destroy.
Admirable? No. But the way of things. Smallfolk do not choose their kings.
"But you don't care very much."
Or else he'd be kneeling for the Breaker of Chains, is his implication.
"Don't presume to know anything about how much I do or not care."
Jaime cares. Jaime abandoned his twin because he cared, he broke Tyrion out of prison because he cared, sent Brienne after Sansa because he cared, slit the Mad King's throat because he cared— And all for what, the judgement of others?
Perhaps he ought to return to leaning into the image others have of him, should crack a crooked smile and laugh about how those daring to fight the dead are nothing but cattle ripe for slaughter. Remark about the glory of House Lannister and how whichever forces remain hobbled together in the aftermath won't be able to stand a chance agains the forces of the Golden Company.
("Good riddance," the old Jaime, that deliberately crafted Lion of Lannister persona that still had two hands would have said. "Less for us to cut down after.")
But after thirty something years, Jaime has finally hit a point beyond his tolerance for his own bullshit.
He's tired.
So fucking tired and over it all.
"This isn't about houses or honor or oaths; it's not about who has the stronger claim or who is more deserving of the Iron Throne. It's about survival. It's about living to see dawn on the other side of the Long Night. The Wall has fallen and the Others and the dead are coming for us all. Fuck the Iron Throne."
Caraxes heaves his long body off the sand and shifts forward, crawling with wing-knuckles, the dragon equivalent of stretching his legs. Daemon walks out after him, and raises both hands in a not-very-polite gesture, obscure and yet impactful. Ohhh, I'm presuming, look at me presume, ooohh, the Others.
Kind of a cunt, Daemon Targaryen.
He doesn't disbelieve Jaime. He doesn't even think he's being all that contrary, because the man's clearly traumatized, and it's hard to pitch oneself when you're having a breakdown. He understands. It's just, and this is the crux of all of his reactions, Daemon doesn't care very much about the fate of Westeros. In fact, he'd probably sleep fine at night if he knew for certain that the whole thing was fated to sink into the waters of the world, swallowed up and forgotten. It's a massive, putrid island, full of ignorant fools who worship false gods and cling to ancient uselessness. House Targaryen should have gone anywhere else to escape the Doom, or they should have exterminated everyone they could during the Conquest.
A plague of wights is what the accursed place needs. Fuck it, fuck all of them. If that lost princess is returning, it should only be to burn down the entire continent.
(Though Jaime should still go and kneel to her.)
“Come, Jaime the Andal. The weather is clearing and I tire of this cave. You're not afraid of heights, are you?”
switching to using this journal bc i can, keeping with my show/tv mashup characterization tho
Kind of a cunt, indeed. Fortunately for Daemon, Jaime is the last person in existence with the right to throw stones, given that he's kind of a cunt himself. He is crass and rude, speaks of iniquitous things intended to scandalize, and has a penchant for being deliberately awful at inopportune times for the sheer sake of being awful.
Just because he was raised highborn and grew up in the courts of kings and thus is well-versed in proper etiquette doesn't mean he always chooses to exercise it.
"Never been to Casterly Rock, have you?" A question answered with a question and an indignant scoff as Jaime trails after him, perhaps foolishly, towards the dragon. "I shirked many lessons in my youth in favor of cliff diving, so no. I am not afraid of heights."
Wait.
Jaime stops, looks between the prince and his dragon.
The dragon shifts around at some silent command given by Daemon, or perhaps he just knows the drill; Caraxes kicks up some sand shuffling about, but then returns, his long body stretched out low, wings tucked, waiting.
Daemon has been to Casterly Rock. Sort of. He has looked down at it from on high, a speck on the coast, soaring up and down the edges of the Sunset Sea. He doesn't bother saying so, because Jaime will find out what he's angling at soon enough. Used to being near a creature so large, Daemon hasn't blinked at the way Caraxes has been moving near them, the bulk of his form casting shadows, the stink of char and animal becoming almost overwhelming, the radiation of heat. (Neither cold-blooded nor warm-blooded, not a bird, not a lizard. A magic being.)
"Because we're not walking back, obviously. Not going to turn precious, are you?"
Daemon extends his hand with a smile that's more of a smirk, as if offering aid to a lady moving towards a step.
On the long list of stupid things Jaime has done, this certainly ranks up there. Any sane man would decline the offer, but there's something strangely appealing about the notion of both taking to air on dragonback and doing so while seated behind (or in front of?) this man in particular.
Jaime hesitates, but only for a moment.
He steps closer and reaches out, sliding his fingers into the prince's offered palm.
Surely it would be more stupid to bloody his feet with the trek back. Already missing a hand!
Daemon smiles; whether it's kind or warm or not is up to interpretation. He pulls the knight forward and shuffles him towards the dragon's side, indicating where the ropes to pull himself up are. Jaime can get onto a horse, so Daemon doesn't think his handicap is going to make this impossible, even if it might require some more strenuous pulling.
"Do you want the wind in your face, or my hair?"
He'll give the other man a boost up, and if one hand ends up on his arse to shove him higher, it's only because Jaime's not wriggling fast enough. C'mon, kingslayer.
It would be stupid to refuse, sure, but he wouldn't be in the worst condition of his life. Jaime traipsed through the Riverlands in far worse footwear, half of which was spent on the end of a gaoler's chain and the other with his own rotting severed hand hanging from his neck.
Still, he doesn't go back on his silent agreement to accompany the infamous Rogue Prince on dragonback. Even if he does stiffen (in more ways that one) when he feels the other man's hand on his rear, which has him quickly answering, "The wind," as he hoists himself the rest of the way into the saddle.
He does make sure Jaime is up and on, straddling the leather expanse of the saddle, which asks for a kneeling position. It can feel dodgy for a first-timer, as a dragon's idle shifting and breathing cause far more movement than a horse's, and it's a much longer way down. With his feet planted in the rope net, Daemon leans against dragon scales and Jaime himself, ensuring he's settled in properly and reaching across him to slide a little-used harness around his hips and buckle him in.
Caraxes makes a low sound, tangible through his great body, and Daemon pats him. A firm touch— the dragon wouldn't feel much of it otherwise.
"Sit still for a minute," in High Valyrian, when the Blood Wyrm's head swivels back to take a look at what the hell his rider is doing. Big yellow eyes regarding Jaime, awful dragon breath sweeping over them. His nightmare grin looks mocking. But he relents, settling back and continuing to wait. Maybe he was just hazing the blond man.
When he's satisfied that Jaime is seated correctly, Daemon hoists himself up, as easy about this as he was about fighting, his years rolling off of him like water from a duck, and tucks himself in behind the other man. By necessity, there's an awful lot of full body contact. Daemon sweeps Jaime's hair around and out of his face, pushing it all over one shoulder to take stock of.
"You won't fall out." FYI. Daemon settles himself and then sees to the waterfall of gold curls without asking permission, gathering it up and preparing to braid it. "And you won't lose any hair. But I'll need to be able to see."
Fortunately for Jaime, Daemon's a deft hand with it. Nothing at all like his second wife's hair, and their daughters; he has a wealth of experience with coils and curls and not pulling on any tangles. He braids well, too. Nothing lumpy or misshapen, he decides on a medium-tension plait for the spun gold strands, and merely hums something unconcerned when Caraxes shifts impatiently.
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hieroglyphics2023-02-02 11:18 pm
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"Daenerys."
An echo. Daemon stands so still. Jaime can't know the insanity of what he relays so thoughtlessly. Though a dragon may have many riders over their long lives, riders only have one. The death of a dragon is the death of the soul. Daemon knows the deep searing weight of teasing on the edges of it whenever he commanded Laena's Vhagar during her pregnancies, and seducing his grandfather's Vermithor. To bond with three, and at once—
The dragon must have three heads.
A good family name. His eldest aunt was Daenerys. Grandmother wanted her to be heir, but Grandsire wouldn't allow it, and then little Daenerys fell so cold and ill, and they'd been too cowardly against the Westerosi after Maegor's death; there weren't any dragon eggs or hatchlings in King's Landing. She died with nothing capable of warming her before anyone could even get to Dragonstone. Dragon eggs were kept in the Pit from then on, and Daemon... will not voice any of this, no matter how his thoughts spin.
"I hear they appreciate oaths, in the North," Daemon says eventually. "They trust their own and keep to the old ways. Sensible people who swore themselves rightly to my wife. Do you believe in prophecy, Ser Jaime?"
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Jaime doesn't notice his own slip up, going over his histories in his head to figure out which wife Daemon might be referring to. He doesn't know the analogues of history nearly as well as his little brother, but he always had a keen interest in wartime affairs, knights, and swords with good names. He had aimed in his youth, after all, to be a knight worthy of songs. To have ballads sung about him long after he was gone.
Rhaenyra, perhaps?
"Me? Seven, no. I think they're a load of horseshit. Prince Rhaegar, however, I recall believed in one involving— What was it he always told me? The dragon has three heads? Whatever it was, he fully believed himself and his siblings to be those dragons. Can't say it came true."
He doesn't make the connection with Daenerys's three dragons, his prince having presented the prophecy to him as the three heads being that of Targaryens and not their mounts. Of course, at the time, everyone had believed that the dragons were long gone, never to grace the skies again.
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And perhaps easy for a fanciful person to twist into something else. The Targaryen crest of a three-headed dragon, all their lullabies and old spells, legends of how exactly they came to have the blood of the dragon in the first place.
In High Valyrian, he says, "But two heads to a third sing. From my voice: The fires have spoken, and the price has been paid with blood magic."
Spooky, or beautiful? Daemon stands still, but Caraxes shifts, restless.
"Three is powerful number in blood magic, and the magic of Targaryen blood is very real."
What did Rhaegar see? A dream, or merely wishful thinking? If he believed the fantasies of their origin, did he want a love story? If he believed the nightmare of it, did he want destruction? Perhaps three siblings could have willed something great into being, if one alone is powerful enough to bring dragons back into the world. Or perhaps her brothers needed to die in a sacrifice to make it possible. (If he knew their names and their reasoning, he'd laugh. Three dragons, named for the three men in her life, who each died terribly. Fire and blood.)
"Join 'her'?"
The Lady of Winterfell?
no subject
For a moment, Jaime contemplates lying. He's a good liar — a very good liar — and can spin a tale with a straight face to the point that he sometimes wonders if he's remembering the truth wrong and it's the lie that's the reality. Why lie about that here, though? There's no Cersei or little birds whispering in Qyburn's corrupt ear. No one he needs to protect her from.
Having ties to him won't endanger her here.
"Brienne of Tarth," he answers. "She is Lady Sansa Stark's sworn sword. We swore that oath together."
Even if she has been the one to uphold it for the both of them, for the most part. Jaime might have financed her journeys with Lannister gold, commissioned custom armor for her, and gifted her with a priceless Valyrian sword that he insisted she keep, but he's done little himself. He had been hoping to change that, but fate intervenes in intention in the strangest of ways.
Such as bringing him here.
"A prayer, you say? Huh. He spoke those words with reverence, yes, but never the faithful sort that you see septons get themselves worked up with." Born into the Faith of the Seven, Jaime has no personal stake in it. Religion is as much of a farce to him as prophecies.
Jaime doesn't know how much he believes in the magic blood of the Targaryen line, but he can't deny that they're simply built different and magic would honestly explain a lot. He is just jaded beyond reason and likes to think that if there were more magic in the world, it wouldn't be nearly as miserable as it was.
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Septons, penitents and their Faith of the Seven are utterly unlike the gods of Old Valyria— primordial forces meant to be bargained with, not worshiped. Rituals, not rules. Prayer is offered in song and in battle, and the most holy offering is a blood sacrifice. Daemon will trade himself for his children. He knows the gods will listen and he will be devoured, taken away to the annihilation of their culture.
"Perhaps your prince was, too."
How much of what a Targaryen should be has been lost by Jaime's time? Just about everything, he imagines.
Daemon moves finally, and with his movement, Caraxes stills and becomes calm again. His attention is pulled back to the younger knight properly.
"A lady swornsword? I like the thought of that. Women are infinitely more reliable. They tend to make more sensible vows."
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though sometimes those features don't shine through at all cough jon and coughjaimehimselfcoughcough"He thought in the only way he knew how," he finally settles on in Rhaegar's defense. "With the admiration he had for his House and his heritage, I've no doubt that he would have thought differently had he been able to."
Rhaegar tried, but he also for some unfathomable reason also saw fit to kidnap Lyanna Stark and instigate a war and wound up dead instead of seated on the throne that should've been his.
Jaime won't pretend to understand why he did that, only that the kidnapping and the death of Ned Stark's sister does not line up with anything he knew about the Prince of Dragonstone. It didn't make sense, but he's long given up on trying to wrap his head around that.
What's done is done. History cannot be rewoven, especially not by him.
"She is the most sensible person I've ever met," Jaime declares without hesitation. "Stubborn, yet honorable to a fault. She sets her mind on the impossible and defies expectation by seeing it through. She's far more knightly than I'll ever be."
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(If Viserys had just let Daemon have Rhaenyra when he asked, everything would have been fine.)
"Mm."
Just a monosyllabic sound, for Rhaegar. There's nothing much he can offer, here. Two hundred years is two hundred years, and clearly, much has been lost. He isn't surprised. He wonders what Daenerys knows, if anything. If she's lost, or if her dragons make up for it. Daemon has had far more than her, and has felt unbearably alone in their world.
Anyway—
"Pity you've taken one of those useless vows and can't wed her."
Daemon likes a bad bitch. She sounds cool.
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"Pity I what?"
It takes him a moment to understand, and once he does, he's practically rambling as he tries to catch up with the underlying meaning(s) of the Rogue Prince's words.
"Brienne is a friend at best, to insinuate that I would— That I—" He can't even deny it, so he shifts gears: "If I wanted to, my vows would not be a problem, as I was released from them not long ago. A white cloak no longer sits on my shoulders. A one-handed man who was seen as both useless and a threat to high climbing Tyrells was done away with first chance they got to whisper in a young, impressionable king's ear."
Jaime's own son. Dismissed from the Kingsguard he'd devoted his life to, sacrificed his youth and innocence to, by his own godsdamned son.
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"Sounds like your only remaining expertise," since he got the hand chopped off, rip, "is finding yourself in improbably awful situations. Not exactly the worst motivation to keep such a sensible woman close."
What else does he have for entertainment around here? Might as well torture this guy about his lady knight. Caraxes huffs smoke, and it sounds like laughter.
"Freed from your vows and the Red Keep, can't be all that bad. And now you're here to make a wish. Perhaps your luck will turn, Ser Jaime."
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Instead of commenting on anything Daemon has said, the golden knight remarks: "We used to have lions — beneath the Rock. They were sad, toothless things that hadn't seen the sunshine in generations, much like the hatchlings I'm told were small and underdeveloped that had spelled the end for dragons until Daenerys birthed hers in fire, or so they say. Lions have disappeared from Westeros, but dragons have returned to it."
He takes a step towards the entrance (and Caraxes). Then another, and another— Pausing still a decent distance away, he looks back over at the Rogue Prince.
"Perhaps that's a sign that your House is once more on the rise."
And his is about to come crumbling down.
Here lies House Lannister, brought down by its own ruthless ambition. A Lannister always pays their debts.
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Refugees surviving in a hostile world, needing to keep power or be run out as heretics, needing to keep their bloodline close to maintain the tenets of their culture and their race. It's over. They are bred out, and have been for some time. Daemon knew, when he saw the ruins, just how foolish the Conqueror had been.
His dream. What a fucking joke.
Less dismal, perhaps, is watching Jaime regard Caraxes. It's always interesting observing someone getting used to a dragon. There's nothing like them.
"You'd have to have slain quite a number of lions," he observes. "Hundreds of the fucking things prowling around in my time, and just a handful of dragons. Are you all so self-devouring?"
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Jaime laughs. A mirthless, almost bitter laugh as he shakes his head at the thought of swearing allegiance to the daughter of the man whose throat he slit. ...and yet, when it comes to the array of options of people to perch themselves on the Iron Throne, oddly a Targaryen Princess doesn't seem like a bad idea. Especially not when—
"They call her 'The Breaker of Chains.' It's said that she overthrew the slavers of Astapor and liberated the slaves of both the Red City and Meereen. The armies she has brought with her to Westeros to reclaim her birthright are said to genuinely love her and have faith in her power, in her ability to bring forth change. Hells, they say that the Dothraki consider her to be some sort of deity for being supposedly fireproof. They call her 'The Unburnt,' too. She has a whole host of titles."
He waves his lone hand dismissively at the list in his head, not caring whether he recalls the paragraph of scrawl beneath her name in the treaty they all signed. (In the treaty Cersei immediately broke by refusing to send aid to the North.)
"My point is, where we Lannisters and the Lions on our house sigil may be a dying breed, victims of self-sabotage... You Valyrians manage to keep finding ways to survive. Even if that means marrying someone who isn't your cousin to ensure that survival. Is survival not Targaryen of her?"
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There were wars of annihilating subjugation, there were dragon-roads of immense trade, and the Targaryens were only footnotes, if that. It was the work of a woman—
(legend says she had a dream, but Daemon believes she was a fucking geologist and this horrid Westerosi influence has made a competent woman into a mystic)
—that spared them, when their peers were too egotistical.
Her name was Jor-El."Valyrians came to have dragon's blood one of two ways. Either they used magic, or they forced slaves fuck monsters. Which do you think is more likely, I wonder."
Caraxes stretches; the sound of the ocean mingles with the sound of his breathing, a dull, rhythmic roar.
"Lions will return. And she is your princess."
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There's a heavy pause as Jaime once again seems transfixed by Caraxes, green eyes taking in every little movement until he sucks in a sharp breath and turns his attention back to the prince.
"Prophecies are a load of shit, but magic is real; I've seen it. I've seen one of the Others. It moved as if it were still living in spite of the eye-less face and decaying flesh that barely clung to the bone. When split in two, both halves of it continued to crawl. It snarled and did not stop until one half was burnt and the other was pierced with dragonglass."
Jaime might have looked at it with an expression akin to 'an ice zombie, in front of my salad?' but on the inside, it scared him shitless. He was fucking terrified of the potential that threat carried, of the very real possibility that the fabled Night King was real, of Westeros being taken over by these mindless creatures while they were too busy bickering about whose arse should be seated upon that godsdamned Iron Throne.
"Perhaps if she succeeds in helping save Westeros from the Army of the Dead, she might be. Until then, my allegiance remains with Sansa Stark."
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Magic is real, and magic is a nightmare.
Daemon likes it that way. He has to. It's a part of him.
"Is Sansa Stark doing anything to stop the 'army of the dead'? Sounds like you might want to keep a closer eye on that problem than shrugging it off to a girl you're frightened of."
Daemon walks past him to the mouth of the cave, surveying glimpses of the beach outside. Caraxes looks in at them with one big yellow eye, but doesn't linger. Handy thing about his long neck, he can periscope about at will, surveying in all directions.
"I've seen things like that. Not precisely, but close enough to envision it without thinking you mad."
The twisted creatures in the ruins of the Freehold were unlike anything Daemon had ever seen, surpassing even the freakshow monsters and cursed familiars of the witches of Asshai and the Shadow Lands, and it was on that damned journey he came to understand too much about the world. It makes perfect sense, actually, that the Wall was constructed to keep out things.
"Our world is older than we can conceptualize, I think. We will never understand the true scope of what has lived there, or that yet will live."
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I'll give them naught but ashes, the old man cackled. Let Robert be king over charred bones and cooked meat. Burn them all. Burn them in their homes, burn them in their beds. Burn them all! BURN THEM ALL!
He blinks it back, a momentary internal struggle taking place as the prince peers out of the cave's entrance, Jaime forcing his walls back up, burying the traumatic recollection.
"I don't need to understand it to know that it wants to fuck us all over."
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It should unnerve Daemon more, but even if he were disgusted — it's more like pity — he wouldn't show an outsider. Instead he is stoic in the face of Jaime's secondhand horrors, because no matter how much of a monster King Aerys was, he was a Targaryen. And as a Targaryen, it was his right to do as he wished with his kingdom and his subjects. Burn their homes, burn their children, burn everything. Those things were all his, to cherish or to carelessly destroy.
Admirable? No. But the way of things. Smallfolk do not choose their kings.
"But you don't care very much."
Or else he'd be kneeling for the Breaker of Chains, is his implication.
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Jaime cares. Jaime abandoned his twin because he cared, he broke Tyrion out of prison because he cared, sent Brienne after Sansa because he cared, slit the Mad King's throat because he cared— And all for what, the judgement of others?
Perhaps he ought to return to leaning into the image others have of him, should crack a crooked smile and laugh about how those daring to fight the dead are nothing but cattle ripe for slaughter. Remark about the glory of House Lannister and how whichever forces remain hobbled together in the aftermath won't be able to stand a chance agains the forces of the Golden Company.
("Good riddance," the old Jaime, that deliberately crafted Lion of Lannister persona that still had two hands would have said. "Less for us to cut down after.")
But after thirty something years, Jaime has finally hit a point beyond his tolerance for his own bullshit.
He's tired.
So fucking tired and over it all.
"This isn't about houses or honor or oaths; it's not about who has the stronger claim or who is more deserving of the Iron Throne. It's about survival. It's about living to see dawn on the other side of the Long Night. The Wall has fallen and the Others and the dead are coming for us all. Fuck the Iron Throne."
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Kind of a cunt, Daemon Targaryen.
He doesn't disbelieve Jaime. He doesn't even think he's being all that contrary, because the man's clearly traumatized, and it's hard to pitch oneself when you're having a breakdown. He understands. It's just, and this is the crux of all of his reactions, Daemon doesn't care very much about the fate of Westeros. In fact, he'd probably sleep fine at night if he knew for certain that the whole thing was fated to sink into the waters of the world, swallowed up and forgotten. It's a massive, putrid island, full of ignorant fools who worship false gods and cling to ancient uselessness. House Targaryen should have gone anywhere else to escape the Doom, or they should have exterminated everyone they could during the Conquest.
A plague of wights is what the accursed place needs. Fuck it, fuck all of them. If that lost princess is returning, it should only be to burn down the entire continent.
(Though Jaime should still go and kneel to her.)
“Come, Jaime the Andal. The weather is clearing and I tire of this cave. You're not afraid of heights, are you?”
switching to using this journal bc i can, keeping with my show/tv mashup characterization tho
Just because he was raised highborn and grew up in the courts of kings and thus is well-versed in proper etiquette doesn't mean he always chooses to exercise it.
"Never been to Casterly Rock, have you?" A question answered with a question and an indignant scoff as Jaime trails after him, perhaps foolishly, towards the dragon. "I shirked many lessons in my youth in favor of cliff diving, so no. I am not afraid of heights."
Wait.
Jaime stops, looks between the prince and his dragon.
"...why do you ask?"
the prettiest
Daemon has been to Casterly Rock. Sort of. He has looked down at it from on high, a speck on the coast, soaring up and down the edges of the Sunset Sea. He doesn't bother saying so, because Jaime will find out what he's angling at soon enough. Used to being near a creature so large, Daemon hasn't blinked at the way Caraxes has been moving near them, the bulk of his form casting shadows, the stink of char and animal becoming almost overwhelming, the radiation of heat. (Neither cold-blooded nor warm-blooded, not a bird, not a lizard. A magic being.)
"Because we're not walking back, obviously. Not going to turn precious, are you?"
Daemon extends his hand with a smile that's more of a smirk, as if offering aid to a lady moving towards a step.
"I won't let you slip off."
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Jaime hesitates, but only for a moment.
He steps closer and reaches out, sliding his fingers into the prince's offered palm.
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Daemon smiles; whether it's kind or warm or not is up to interpretation. He pulls the knight forward and shuffles him towards the dragon's side, indicating where the ropes to pull himself up are. Jaime can get onto a horse, so Daemon doesn't think his handicap is going to make this impossible, even if it might require some more strenuous pulling.
"Do you want the wind in your face, or my hair?"
He'll give the other man a boost up, and if one hand ends up on his arse to shove him higher, it's only because Jaime's not wriggling fast enough. C'mon, kingslayer.
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Still, he doesn't go back on his silent agreement to accompany the infamous Rogue Prince on dragonback. Even if he does stiffen (in more ways that one) when he feels the other man's hand on his rear, which has him quickly answering, "The wind," as he hoists himself the rest of the way into the saddle.
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He does make sure Jaime is up and on, straddling the leather expanse of the saddle, which asks for a kneeling position. It can feel dodgy for a first-timer, as a dragon's idle shifting and breathing cause far more movement than a horse's, and it's a much longer way down. With his feet planted in the rope net, Daemon leans against dragon scales and Jaime himself, ensuring he's settled in properly and reaching across him to slide a little-used harness around his hips and buckle him in.
Caraxes makes a low sound, tangible through his great body, and Daemon pats him. A firm touch— the dragon wouldn't feel much of it otherwise.
"Sit still for a minute," in High Valyrian, when the Blood Wyrm's head swivels back to take a look at what the hell his rider is doing. Big yellow eyes regarding Jaime, awful dragon breath sweeping over them. His nightmare grin looks mocking. But he relents, settling back and continuing to wait. Maybe he was just hazing the blond man.
When he's satisfied that Jaime is seated correctly, Daemon hoists himself up, as easy about this as he was about fighting, his years rolling off of him like water from a duck, and tucks himself in behind the other man. By necessity, there's an awful lot of full body contact. Daemon sweeps Jaime's hair around and out of his face, pushing it all over one shoulder to take stock of.
"You won't fall out." FYI. Daemon settles himself and then sees to the waterfall of gold curls without asking permission, gathering it up and preparing to braid it. "And you won't lose any hair. But I'll need to be able to see."
Fortunately for Jaime, Daemon's a deft hand with it. Nothing at all like his second wife's hair, and their daughters; he has a wealth of experience with coils and curls and not pulling on any tangles. He braids well, too. Nothing lumpy or misshapen, he decides on a medium-tension plait for the spun gold strands, and merely hums something unconcerned when Caraxes shifts impatiently.
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