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.
Jaime stares back, unmoving yet mysteriously not as phased as he ought to be. Perhaps it's because he's faced a mad dragon in human form that's haunted his dreams and left a lasting scorch upon his honor, or maybe it's something else entirely. Whatever the case, Jaime's lone hand tightening slightly on the saddle is the only sign of possible alarm he gives as the dragon bathes him in the stink of dragon breath.
Stink that is soon overpowered by the smell of the person pressing up against his backside, whose fingers are now sweeping through and plaiting his hair.
Unbidden, Jaime thinks to trading clothes with his sister and exchanging sharp commentary as they filled one another in on that which they ought to know. Cersei telling him not to ruin her reputation with Queen Rhaella's ladies-in-waiting, Jaime insisting that she either trust him or go to her own damn sewing lessons herself. Looking at his preteen self in a clouded looking glass while donning a Lannister red gown, corset, and jewels as he plaited his own hair and twisted it up into a style resembling the one his sister was busy taking down in the background.
He clears his throat, shifts in the saddle. (It was just as uncomfortable being hard while astride a dragon as it was atop a horse, perhaps more so.) "Don't let yourself be the first Targaryen to fall to his doom because he was blinded by hair and didn't strap himself in to his own mount."
Jaime reaches back with the intention of just sweeping fingers through the air to indicate the lack of chains around the other man, but the fingers of his left hand brush against the man's thigh instead.
Jaime is beautiful, but Daemon doesn't usually go for pretty, in a man. The contrast of his height and his clear competency with violence cuts some of it down, but there's something else that makes him appealing; distant, merely a curious blink, but still there. He'd have abandoned anyone else after those depressing dramatics, probably. Instead he's letting him up on Caraxes, and doing his hair.
The one-handed knight misses Daemon's smirk. Hmhm.
"My second wife," he says as he shifts forward, chest to Jaime's back, "had ringlets down to here," and he slides his hand down Jaime's questing arm, then across to the blond man's own thigh, mirroring that 'accidental' touch, "and I enjoyed many-a-time sailing from my dragon to hers. It is of course advisable to be locked in, I never allowed any of my children to fly otherwise, but you and I are grown men. Did you ever chain yourself to your horse?"
The hand on Jaime's thigh shifts inward, questing into the knight's pockets for a strip or tie or something-or-other. He has so much hair, there's sure to be something. Don't mind this groping; Daemon pays close attention as he does, devilishly entertained. Once successful, he withdraws so that he can tie off the end of the gold braid.
On some level, Jaime is aware of the fact that he's also attracted to men. But that level is buried beneath thirty some odd years of his sister's possessive manipulations and the vow of chastity he took upon joining the Kingsguard at the tender age of ten and seven. Whatever pull he felt towards men like Prince Rhaegar and Ser Arthur was squashed immediately by the double-whammy of Cersei and his vows.
But, seven fucking hells, is he cluing into it now.
Jaime sucks in a sharp breath, only to immediately bite down on his bottom lip to keep himself from making any other sort of noise in response to being touched.
People do not touch Jaime Lannister. He is the kingslayer, a man without honor, a Lannister, a twisted man who sits atop too high a pedestal that no one dares to go near else they face the wrath of his covetous, cruel and unyielding sister. Especially not without some measure of violence accompanying it. The last time someone was so gentle with him, it was Brienne after he'd passed out in the baths at Harrenhal.
"I had to be tied to one after I lost the hand, but I challenge any man to remain upright in a saddle while mad with fever and dying of infection."
Daemon is aware of a number of things: his own magnetism, the horrifying ease of inappropriate arousal following tense conversation, men who find their repressions blowing up in their faces. He came to terms with his own wider interests long ago, when he was just as captivated by watching his brother in a brothel as he was the girls, and personally thinks that most (if not all) people do not truly exist in the one mandated path of sex. Society everywhere in the world is regretfully peculiar about it.
Jaime isn't obvious. It's just that Daemon is old and experienced, and can tell. Good. They could both use a little fun.
"More theatrics, Ser Jaime," he tsks. Hands back at the blond's sides as Caraxes begins to shift. "You survived. What a bunch of weak cunts the rest of them are, hm?"
The dragon beneath them flexes his wings and stretches them forward, knuckles digging deep into the sand as he re-balances. It's like sitting atop a great wave in the ocean. Daemon reaches in front of Jaime, pressed close one more, chin over his shoulder. (Barely. Jaime's taller.) One hand alighting on the ridge of the harness, the other gripping one side of the double-pronged pommel.
"Don't yell or kick. He won't heed you, but I just find it annoying."
Okay? Okay. Daemon leans enough to get one palm on his dragon's scales, and Caraxes begins to move in earnest. His long body and the soft sand means he'll need a little lift to get into the air, and he's going to run towards the water and the denser, wet sand first. A bumpy ride. Jaime better hang on.
Jaime's taller, but he has the presence of mind through the haze of ill-timed arousal to hunch forward as to not completely obstruct the view of the rider who the dragon that's shifting beneath him like unstable sands about to go cascading down a hill is loyal to. It has the unintended reward consequence of pushing his rump against the other man's hips, the winged cross-guard of a blade he knows to be the famed Dark Sister grazing his hip.
How he wishes he didn't find it so thrilling that such a legendary bladed rested directly behind him.
"Yell or kick," Jaime grumbles sourly in (poor) attempt to mask everything else. "What do you take me for, some sort of petulant child?"
Is that your ancient Valyrian steel sword, or are you happy to see me? Well. Daemon is eight-and-forty and particular, he doesn't share in Jaime's current tender predicament, but there's no hesitation or awkwardness in the way he presses himself to the younger man. He's comfortable, and perhaps even enjoying himself, given the way he stays right where he is with no attempt to politely give him a courtesy inch of space.
A chuckle. Don't ask silly questions, Andal.
No time to answer. Caraxes moves and is up with more speed than seems possible. Daemon's never experienced his stomach dropping out from it, having been flown since he was a newborn, but the sensation is still unlike anything else. Too fast, an unnatural transition, the sound of sail-sized leather wings a deafening roar, the sudden rush of wind harsher than any horseback gallop could conjure. One might expect backsplash from the surf to reach them, but Caraxes lifts above the water too quickly for any of it to make contact, barely touching the dragon's underside as he rises— at once as easy and weightless as a bird and as horrifyingly dense as any monster from a fairytale.
Dragons don't make sense.
For a moment they're nearly vertical, and Daemon holds on firmly, practically a seatback behind Jaime, but they even out quickly; the dragon banks to one side and spirals up higher, higher, crooning his relief at finally being off the beach and where he belongs. Daemon pushes the desire to get a look at the scope of the battlefield into him, and so he drifts to one side along the shore, beginning an observation run. It's quite the view. However high up Jaime thought they'd get: they're higher.
Jaime's stomach does do something of a somersault, but only because he was unprepared for how much of a true rush the experience of lifting off the ground on the back of a dragon would be. It's nothing like being aside a horse while it vaults over brush, a gorge, or stream. There's absolutely nothing he can compare the whirlwind of sensations he's experiencing to.
Especially with a Targaryen prince at his back acting as a firm, immovable stone pillar as the dragon makes its ascent, forcing Jaime to lean back against him whether he wants to or not. He grips the pommel in his lone hand tight and wishes — not for the first time and certainly not the last — that he had a better substitute for his missing hand than the gaudy golden hand Cersei had constructed for him.
Damned thing was useless for everything save backhanding smarmy so-called knights with the gall to insult a highborn lady in his presence. (Talk shit about Brienne of Tarth, lose teeth.)
"Seven hells," he breathes in wonder, not fear, once they're up amongst the clouds.
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hieroglyphics2023-02-02 11:18 pm
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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.
no subject
"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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
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?"
no subject
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?"
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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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Stink that is soon overpowered by the smell of the person pressing up against his backside, whose fingers are now sweeping through and plaiting his hair.
Unbidden, Jaime thinks to trading clothes with his sister and exchanging sharp commentary as they filled one another in on that which they ought to know. Cersei telling him not to ruin her reputation with Queen Rhaella's ladies-in-waiting, Jaime insisting that she either trust him or go to her own damn sewing lessons herself. Looking at his preteen self in a clouded looking glass while donning a Lannister red gown, corset, and jewels as he plaited his own hair and twisted it up into a style resembling the one his sister was busy taking down in the background.
He clears his throat, shifts in the saddle. (It was just as uncomfortable being hard while astride a dragon as it was atop a horse, perhaps more so.) "Don't let yourself be the first Targaryen to fall to his doom because he was blinded by hair and didn't strap himself in to his own mount."
Jaime reaches back with the intention of just sweeping fingers through the air to indicate the lack of chains around the other man, but the fingers of his left hand brush against the man's thigh instead.
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The one-handed knight misses Daemon's smirk. Hmhm.
"My second wife," he says as he shifts forward, chest to Jaime's back, "had ringlets down to here," and he slides his hand down Jaime's questing arm, then across to the blond man's own thigh, mirroring that 'accidental' touch, "and I enjoyed many-a-time sailing from my dragon to hers. It is of course advisable to be locked in, I never allowed any of my children to fly otherwise, but you and I are grown men. Did you ever chain yourself to your horse?"
The hand on Jaime's thigh shifts inward, questing into the knight's pockets for a strip or tie or something-or-other. He has so much hair, there's sure to be something. Don't mind this groping; Daemon pays close attention as he does, devilishly entertained. Once successful, he withdraws so that he can tie off the end of the gold braid.
"Caraxes would catch me, anyway."
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But, seven fucking hells, is he cluing into it now.
Jaime sucks in a sharp breath, only to immediately bite down on his bottom lip to keep himself from making any other sort of noise in response to being touched.
People do not touch Jaime Lannister. He is the kingslayer, a man without honor, a Lannister, a twisted man who sits atop too high a pedestal that no one dares to go near else they face the wrath of his covetous, cruel and unyielding sister. Especially not without some measure of violence accompanying it. The last time someone was so gentle with him, it was Brienne after he'd passed out in the baths at Harrenhal.
"I had to be tied to one after I lost the hand, but I challenge any man to remain upright in a saddle while mad with fever and dying of infection."
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Jaime isn't obvious. It's just that Daemon is old and experienced, and can tell. Good. They could both use a little fun.
"More theatrics, Ser Jaime," he tsks. Hands back at the blond's sides as Caraxes begins to shift. "You survived. What a bunch of weak cunts the rest of them are, hm?"
The dragon beneath them flexes his wings and stretches them forward, knuckles digging deep into the sand as he re-balances. It's like sitting atop a great wave in the ocean. Daemon reaches in front of Jaime, pressed close one more, chin over his shoulder. (Barely. Jaime's taller.) One hand alighting on the ridge of the harness, the other gripping one side of the double-pronged pommel.
"Don't yell or kick. He won't heed you, but I just find it annoying."
Okay? Okay. Daemon leans enough to get one palm on his dragon's scales, and Caraxes begins to move in earnest. His long body and the soft sand means he'll need a little lift to get into the air, and he's going to run towards the water and the denser, wet sand first. A bumpy ride. Jaime better hang on.
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rewardconsequence of pushing his rump against the other man's hips, the winged cross-guard of a blade he knows to be the famed Dark Sister grazing his hip.How he wishes he didn't find it so thrilling that such a legendary bladed rested directly behind him.
"Yell or kick," Jaime grumbles sourly in (poor) attempt to mask everything else. "What do you take me for, some sort of petulant child?"
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A chuckle. Don't ask silly questions, Andal.
No time to answer. Caraxes moves and is up with more speed than seems possible. Daemon's never experienced his stomach dropping out from it, having been flown since he was a newborn, but the sensation is still unlike anything else. Too fast, an unnatural transition, the sound of sail-sized leather wings a deafening roar, the sudden rush of wind harsher than any horseback gallop could conjure. One might expect backsplash from the surf to reach them, but Caraxes lifts above the water too quickly for any of it to make contact, barely touching the dragon's underside as he rises— at once as easy and weightless as a bird and as horrifyingly dense as any monster from a fairytale.
Dragons don't make sense.
For a moment they're nearly vertical, and Daemon holds on firmly, practically a seatback behind Jaime, but they even out quickly; the dragon banks to one side and spirals up higher, higher, crooning his relief at finally being off the beach and where he belongs. Daemon pushes the desire to get a look at the scope of the battlefield into him, and so he drifts to one side along the shore, beginning an observation run. It's quite the view. However high up Jaime thought they'd get: they're higher.
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Especially with a Targaryen prince at his back acting as a firm, immovable stone pillar as the dragon makes its ascent, forcing Jaime to lean back against him whether he wants to or not. He grips the pommel in his lone hand tight and wishes — not for the first time and certainly not the last — that he had a better substitute for his missing hand than the gaudy golden hand Cersei had constructed for him.
Damned thing was useless for everything save backhanding smarmy so-called knights with the gall to insult a highborn lady in his presence. (Talk shit about Brienne of Tarth, lose teeth.)
"Seven hells," he breathes in wonder, not fear, once they're up amongst the clouds.
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