Jon is a most reluctant king. It’s a title he never wanted, a title that should’ve gone to one of Robb’s true siblings who instead of a cousin masquerading as a bastard sibling. But the people declared him king and they need his expertise and leadership when it comes to dealing with the horrors from the Lands if Always Winter, so he hasn’t contested it — yet.
He’d contest being the princely title he was born with and the fact that he’s heir to the Iron Throne if people knew about it. All his life he wanted to be someone and now after dying and seeing the worst that both the living and dead have to offer, he would give anything to just be plain Jon Snow again. A montherless bastard with no set destiny before him.
The people need him to be the King in the North; he hopes to the Old Gods that they won’t need him to be King of Westeros, too. He prays that Daenerys will take the throne without the truth ever coming out.
“My apologies, but I don’t speak Valyrian. I only know a couple of words and they’re all commands that Rhaegal understands.”
Ones that Daenerys made sure he knew: fly, land, stop, back, and of course, fire.
What in the fuck. (Internal sigh. Some godsdamned people.)
When Daemon has regained from his pause, perhaps of shock, he moves closer, giving this northern 'King' (suspicious now) a close look. His body language will not radiate any kind of threat to Rhaegal, though in the distance, there's an odd sound of— trees branches snapping?
"You are a Targaryen."
A confident, low-voiced assertion. Daemon has seen the result of unblooded men claiming dragons (death, disaster), and he has seen the spark in dragonseeds. This is the latter, and no Velaryon or Celtigar. Dragonfire burns plainly, no matter how distant. And while it could just be Daemon's biases speaking, there's also the matter of the fucking dragon.
"How do you commune with our gods? How do you bond closer with your mount? They hear the language of Valyria in their bones."
What flitters across Jon's face is at first, surprise at the immediate (correct) assumption; no questions, no demands, just a (very correct) statement. Alarm and panic soon follow, causing Rhaegal to make a nervous chirping sort of sound as he shifts from one foot to the other, feeding off of his rider's sudden burst of anxiety.
Something, perhaps an unseeing magic that coats this foreign landscape, prevents Jon from outright lying. He wants to deny it, but he can't. He's never had to deny it. No one's had reason to assume. He's always just been Ned Stark's bastard son, why would anyone stop and consider the possibility that he was actually Rhaegar's legitimate son?
"I grew up in Winterfell," he says — more like snaps — instead. "Why would I commune with any gods but the Old Gods of stream, forest, and stone?"
Magic, or the dreaded internal compulsion to comply with male authority figures who incidentally represent paternal longing? A mystery.
Daemon gives him a flat look. Winterfell indeed, what a bitey wolf.
"The Old Gods have no dominion over the blood of the dragon."
He isn't nearly as disrespectful about the gods of the northmen as he is about the Faith of the Seven; he has no interest in their spirits, but he respects the instinct towards tradition. Their old ways and steadiness have served them well, and they've not weaponized it. No septs or faith militant for the gods of stream, forest, or stone. And yet even with all these points in their favor, the Old Gods are still not in a position of power over a Targaryen. Dragonlords inhabit a space between gods and men, and cannot be expected to scrape and bow and shuffle about like other mortals.
Rhaegal's shifting does not go unnoticed, and Daemon regards him with a calm gaze. Lykiri, lykiri. A juvenile still, and it's difficult to tell how much time, if any, it's spent chained up. Fairly domesticated, by his body language, so perhaps some. But not until he had grown past the size that the keepers at the Pit would have started weighting him, the prince suspects. After a long moment, his violet gaze ticks back to the dragonseed.
"Maybe not the blood of the dragon, but I am as much a Stark as I am a Targaryen," tumbles out before he can stop it. (A true Stark. Lyanna's legitimate son, not Ned's bastard.)
Saying it aloud, although terrifying, feels utterly freeing in a way he hadn't expected. Jon has been sitting on the knowledge of his true paternity for some time now, having sworn both Bran and Sam to secrecy. No one knows. He doesn't dare speak of it; it's not the time to dredge up such revelations when there are far more important things to focus on, especially when he has absolutely no interest in ascending to a higher throne than the one he's presently seated upon.
(Which is more like a bench at a fancy picnic table that sits the front of the Great Hall than it is a throne... #Northerners)
Jon knows that both Rhaegal and Viserion were chained up for a time beneath the Great Pyramid of Meereen, but he doesn't know for how long. As for how domesticated the beast is... That is purely the result of Daenerys raising her dragons as if they were her own sons. Mother of Dragons is an apt title in many ways.
"Jon Snow," he answers easily, but since the truth is already out there and there's something else he hasn't dared say aloud since the day he repeated it after Bran told him what it was— "is who I am known as, but the name you are likely looking for is Aerion Targaryen."
A Stark called Snow, whose Targaryen name is tacked on as the last of all of them.
"Your whole upbringing must have been an abysmal arse-ache," is what Daemon says eventually.
In both of these threads: behold, Daemon taking nothing at all about the Song of Ice and Fire (for which his entire bloodline is boiled down to) seriously. Perhaps this will go over better with good lad Jon than with Ser Jaime the Andal, being northern. Or perhaps Daemon will bat 0/2 and he'll be a stick in the mud.
"Jon you shall be, Aerion, if that's what you're known as. And you'll now know me as Daemon."
That's all, no king-consort, no prince, no protector of the realm as the queen's sword. The air of a man who's heard that jinx about calling oneself a king. He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, then, indicating a slippery-suspicious-sliding rock sound a heartbeat before it happens. Despite this, nothing appears; the terrain stays as it is.
"I had a happy childhood, believe it or not," he finds himself telling his veritable stranger (that oddly doesn't feel like a stranger, what's up with that?). "I was kept in the dark about my true identity for most of my life. It wasn't until recently that I was told."
His father uncle had implied before he went to the Wall that he would tell him the truth soon. Jon wonders if the 'truth' that Ned had to offer would have been another fabrication designed to placate his curiosity or the actual truth in hopes that he would remain true to his vows and be another 'useless' Targaryen at the Wall like Maester Aemon had.
(And oh, how it genuinely hurts to know that Maester Aemon was his great-great uncle. That he'd been around family the whole time and hadn't known. That the old man had taken his last breath thinking that he and the great-niece he'd never met were the last of his kind when Jon had been around him the whole bloody time and neither of them knew.)
Jon's eyes dart in the direct indicated, but he doesn't see anything. There's an awareness at the back of his mind that he's only just been clued into that tells him something is there, but what, he can't say. Caraxes? Was that a horse or a boat or was he the type to name a gilded carriage or—
"Caraxes," he echoes, looking over his shoulder at Rheagal, then back at Daemon. "Wasn't that the name of the fabled Blood Wyrm?"
Daemon does not, in fact, believe it. Snow means he was raised a bastard, he calls himself a king, he doesn't speak High Valyrian, he has a bonded dragon that seems more like a friend from the tavern hanging about than something he's trained to be in synch with. Some bullshit's going on here, even past hidden heritage, and he doesn't think for a minute it was pleasant, even if whatever the young man has been through recently has made him look upon his childhood with wistful nostalgia. And he has been through something. The exhaustion around him is palpable, even more so than the ordinary northman drama. Daemon has nothing against dramatics, but the men of always-winter have a very different brand than silver-haired Valyrians.
Like a magic eye trick, something beyond the treeline shifts, but it doesn't yet materialize. Daemon laughs at his dragon in the privacy of his own mind, and gets a smug feeling in return. Show off.
“It was indeed,” he says wryly. “Uncle Aemon's, and then mine, and then we hit the water, I know.”
Not before Caraxes had torn out Vhagar's throat— killed her when nothing else alive in the world could have. Nothing, no one, not even Meleys, could have taken out the last of the conquering greats. Only age would have come for Vhagar, if not for Caraxes, and though Daemon loved the old queen in his own way, there is vicious, perfect pride at the fact that his dragon had fought her and won. Caraxes had crawled to shore, while Vhagar sank, carrying with her his wretched nephew and Visenya's sword skewered through his skull.
Daemon and his Blood Wyrm are dead.
It doesn't matter, here. Apparently. Very odd, but oh well. Life before had been odd, also.
He doesn't know what this is, but he's most certain it isn't death.
Death had been darkness devoid of sound, a hollow nothingness like no other that still shook him to his core each time he thought back upon it. He knows now that he'd disappeared into the back of Ghost's mind and that doing so had kept his consciousness intact while Melisandre worked to revive his mortally wounded body, but had been too weak and too untrained to fully surface.
So there was only the dark nothingness until he was jolted back into the world of the living.
A living world that hasn't felt real since he returned to it.
Which probably explains why he's content to disassociate from the bulk of it and lie to himself about a happy childhood running through Winterfell's halls while ignoring all the times Catelyn Stark said horrible, vicious things to his face. How everyone, especially his stepmother, had held him accountable for his father's supposedly dishonorable misgivings. Treated cruelly by Sansa until she had no one else left, seen as lower than the criminals sent to the Wall by his sworn brothers for being a bastard and tarnishing Ned Stark's reputation.
The same sworn brothers that had assassinated him, the evidence of his brutal slaying still marring his torso beneath the leathers and furs.
What would they say if they knew who he really was? Would Catelyn apologize, would the brothers think twice before taunting him?
He can't say.
He hasn't given it much thought. (See: Disassociating.)
"My uncle's name was also Aemon," Jon says sadly, giving voice to one of the few things he has thought long and hard about. "A great uncle of sorts who did not know know he was my great uncle and at the time, neither did I. He was Maester of Castle Black. Lived past his hundredth nameday and went peacefully in his sleep. He never knew."
Maester of Castle Black, who never knew about a secret nephew. It makes something curdle unpleasantly in Daemon, and he thinks of the Baratheons, putrid fools who've forgotten their own heritage, content to consume Targaryen blood and do nothing with it but live in Westerosi squalor. What has happened, in between his lifetime and Jon's?
It doesn't matter. He knew it was over when Viserys wed a Hightower.
"You are one of the last survivors of an apocalypse," Daemon says after a while. "It's worth being proud of. But there's no comfort to be found."
Sinful foreigners who command demons. They were never going to thrive in Westeros, nor anywhere else; the Essosi tradition of being proud of their Valyrian Freehold roots would have decayed had House Targaryen settled there instead of on the island. They cannot settle. They are not meant for the world any longer.
"Do you ride, or merely let him go like a kite? We should take them out, get them used to each other."
Caraxes stirs more obviously now, and deep red glints from between trees. He doesn't want to scare Rhaegal and inspire a bad reaction, but he's curious.
You don't know the half of it, Great Uncle-Grandpa.
House Baratheon has been the cause of so much misery. Robert was both responsible for the death of Jon's parents and the reason why he was lied to all his life. His obsession with Lyanna Stark drove her to wed Rhaegar in secret and give birth in a secluded location where the was no maester to prevent her from bleeding out, all while using a false narrative he applied to a situation he hadn't bothered to properly investigate to give him reason to kill his cousin on the Trident.
If Robert had known who Jon really was, he would have him killed.
"A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing," Jon says, echoing the words Maester Aemon spoke to him all those years ago. Words that now rang truer than ever. "Aye, there is no comfort, but at least I know now who I am. Why I always felt so out of place."
Why Ned Stark refused to speak of his mother or the circumstances of his birth. The man had risked everything to both keep him safe and make sure that he was loved.
"A kite? A dragon is not a toy."
Even with as new as he is to dragon riding, even he understands that with great power comes great responsibility that bonding with a dragon is not something to be taken lightly, that the power that comes with it should not be abused.
A bark of laughter. Daemon is the most accomplished expert on dragons the world has seen outside denizens of the Freehold itself, and he's getting a reprimand from a boy who was just running alongside his like a child after a horse.
He strides away from Jon and Rhaegal, towards the manifesting beast. Head first, then neck, neck, even more neck, and Caraxes is massive, having grown steadily since Prince Aemon's time, thanks to Daemon's refusal to chain him. The Blood Wyrm keeps his distance, slipping downhill over snapping trees and disturbed rocks, none of which seems to bother Daemon.
"Come and prove it, Northman!" he calls, shouted over his shoulder without stopping.
Catching a tide of a minor landslide, Daemon manages to grab the side of Caraxes' kit when they connect— a war harness, still impressive despite being so worn-in. The House Targaryen crest on the front is as fine as any king's shield, polished deep red and black with spots of bronze from exposure. Quick on the ground, Daemon doesn't have much time to get all the way astride the dragon before he's heading for a far steeper slope from which to launch, but he's an old hand at this. And an old hand, but still spry enough, for a man of nearly fifty.
Vroom vroom, Jon!!
rewrote this tag for better wording at an hour not 3AM
Jon is beginning to understand that for whatever reason, Targaryens (Valyrians?) are simply built different.
Not just the feat that he's witnessing now with a man old enough to be his grandsire by Westerosi standards casually swinging himself up into a dragon's saddle in midair, but tales of other Targaryens he heard through poems and songs, not to mention his aunt.
Daenerys was known as The Unburnt, and the forces she brought with her from Essos had spoken of her hatching her dragon eggs in her Dothraki husband's funeral pyre and walked through and inferno that claimed the lives of many powerful horselords. All without being scorched, not a single flame left marks upon her.
Which left him. Unremarkable Jon Snow, former bastard, former corpse, current knower of absolutely nothing.
Like why Dany never bothered to fit any of her dragons with saddles, as clearly saddling a dragon was possible. Even with only mounting Drogon, it made no sense to simply hold on and hope for the best. The spikes on Rhaegal's back had cut into his fingers the first time he took flight, and it was a feat in and of itself for someone so woefully unexperienced as he was to not topple off the dragon's back into the sea.
He's made a point to keep a pair of gloves on his person at all times since and is thankfully already donning them now, allowing him to rush over to Rhaegal and shimmy up the dragon's side. Lacking the finesse (AND SADDLE) to seat himself as swiftly as Daemon does, it takes him a moment to get situated before the green dragon spreads his his wings and lifts up into the air.
A valiant effort is made to catch up to Caraxes, but it's clear that Jon has had no formal instruction in how to do any of this. Rhaegal is young and agile, but his rider is inexperienced and prior to laying claim to the last remaining Targaryen outside of his mother, he had spent the majority of his time either chained up or trailing obediently in Drogon's wake.
It is perhaps unkind of him, to see that Rhaegal has no saddle and insist Jon get on and prove himself anyway, but he needs to assess the situation in full. And he needs a moment to clear his head with all these surreal implications so soon after walking willfully to his death, having given up on a future for any survivors of Valyria, to say nothing of his house. He gave his life to the Fourteen Fires and asked for the survival of his children. Too late, for his stepsons, but if the rest can go on and live in a world that doesn't want Targaryens anymore, better then to be without without him—
Caraxes manages a lift off of limited leverage, beating his winds enough to turn rocks to gravel beneath him, going up, and up, his unusual body long and straight like a blood red spear being launched into the sky. He works harder than usual to do it, either aware that he needs to give the younger dragon behind them a current to follow, or because he, too, is feeling a strange way after death. Dragons are as smart as men, or even more, merely thinking differently. Daemon knows that Caraxes has as much interiority as he does, even if he doesn't speak the same way.
Past the trees and cliffs, past distant peaks, higher and higher until Caraxes can bank around and begin to get a feel for Rhaegal. Jon is a dark patch against deep green scales, like Daemon knows he's just a flash of silver from a distance. Nothing fancy, he intuits to his dragon; he doesn't want the odd northman to have a tumble. They could probably grab him, but still.
The spikes on Rhaegal's back are sleek and while sharp, without ridges. It's difficult to get a firm grip without slicing your hands open, even while wearing gloves, so he's mainly holding on with his thighs. Holding steadfast like riding a horse bareback while it runs at a full-tilt gallop, only faster and far more dangerous.
How Daenerys so effortlessly stayed atop Drogon is a mystery.
Used to following, Rhaegal trails in Caraxes' wake without any coaxing needed from Jon. It's farther up than Jon's dared to go, and while there is a small Ned Stark sounding voice in his head reminding him of the danger, the thrill is much more appealing.
If Jon's as Targaryen as he says he is, he should at least want to be doing all this damn fool nonsense without proper equipment. The first dragonlords had to figure it all out somehow, no mount was hatched fully formed with a saddle and harness. Daemon turns in his seat to observe him, and Rhaegal's behavior. For a moment it threatens to make something in him twist sharply — he has flown with so many lovers, taught so many children, gone now in ways ever more nightmarish than the last — but he puts it away.
Flying, being one with Caraxes, letting his mind focus only on the technical progress of auditing another's performance and drifting away with the elation of experience something far beyond human.
Caraxes warbles back and forth, making sounds, communicating with the younger dragon in a way only the two creatures understand. He dips down sharply and twists, putting Daemon briefly upside down, to swoop back around to fly alongside Rhaegal instead of leading. Getting to know him. Seeing how steady, or not, he is.
Daemon keeps his eyes on Jon. Even if he doesn't slide off, he might pass out from the way the oxygen changes at certain heights, shocking cold air into lungs while stealing breath. Always best to be attentive.
Rheagal's behavior takes an odd turn as the dragon twists in the sky in his elder's wake, Jon's hands gripping the spikes so tightly that they cut into his palms and he bleeds through his gloves. He saves himself from both sliding off into the sky and passing out by protecting himself with a harshly learned instinct, one born of a dozen cold blades piercing his flesh as his consciousness threatened to fade away forever.
Jon's expression goes blank, dark eyes glossing over and turning an iris-less, pupil-less white. Instead of ceasing the motion altogether, an equally white-eyed Rhaegal does it again— and a third time, twisting around joyfully and swooping up into the clouds and back down again.
He does enjoy it. So much that even in guarding himself, he cannot help but experience the rush of flying about in mid-air like this firsthand.
Daemon is good at this, but he doesn't have superhuman sight; he can't see what Jon is going besides the impression of him hanging on. It's Caraxes who alerts him to a significant change— something off, though his dragon doesn't panic, merely adjusts his flight pattern to observe. If Caraxes communicated like humans did, he might say Rhaegal has stopped communicating with me, but as it is, Daemon is left to watch and consider what it might be that's given Caraxes pause.
Body language, he thinks after a while. The green dragon is clearly having a thrilling time, and Jon is fine, apparently, not limp, not knocked off. But the subtle movements that denote a dragon's thought patterns, all parts of the beast shifting and moving as it manages so many more systems than a man's while in flight, are smoothed over.
Interesting.
It brings to mind the way he didn't understand why Rhaegal hadn't sensed Caraxes, when he'd been scouting. Could this be related?
Let's find out, he urges Caraxes, and the red dragon engages again, swooping after the juvenile to dive past him, easy and playful like he would have done with Moondancer.
The one and only time Jon had managed to 'coexist,' so to speak, with a being he'd warged into, it was as he lay bleeding in the snow. When instincts he hadn't known he possessed had him reaching out blindly for Ghost's mind and sliding in alongside it to rest while his body bled out in the snow. Ghost had been in complete control while his corpse lay lifeless, Jon's consciousness nothing more than a hum in the back of the direwolf's mind that kept him close to his body's side until he was able to return to it.
He hasn't been able to do that since. Perhaps it was a one-off trick, perhaps it's because he was so weak and wounded and inexperienced that he'd done the warging wrong, or perhaps the dark nothingness that he'd experienced in 'death' had blotted the how to of it all from his thoughts entirely.
Whatever it is, whenever he does warg into Ghost or Rhaegal, it's by way of taking complete control.
Sensing that Rhaegal would like the reigns back, however, Jon slips back into his own mind with a jolt.
Not smart, doing that on dragonback, as Jon lurches as he returns to himself, leaning back and immediately regretting it, darting forwards so fast that one of Rhaegal's neck spikes pierces the leathers of his tunic.
A dragon will always be better at sensing patterns in the wind than a man looking through one's eyes, no matter how magical— a strong current comes to them, and Caraxes adjusts easily; Daemon is still trying to pay attention to Jon best he can. He shifts his weight, not moving entirely put preparing himself to have to dive if need be. Feeling no anxiety about it, merely keen awareness. Shit happens, when people are learning to fly on dragonback. One has to be easily adaptable.
Something else shifts. He doesn't know what. He feels Caraxes make a low grating sound, one that Rhaegal will surely actually hear, and has no way of knowing what's being communicated. (Probably just a You good, kid?)
The Blood Wyrm dips down on the younger dragon's right, and Daemon looks up as they go, catching sight of Jon. Even at the odd half upside-down angle, it's hard to miss the way the odd northman seems to be fumbling, now. Caraxes evens out below Rhaegal to one side, and Daemon whistles, an ear-splicing sharp noise, audible from dragon to dragon.
Blood shines like an eerie glaze painted over a blackened vase on his glove when he peels it away from where it was pressed firmly against the tear in his leathers. The part of him that's survived much, much worse and lived (again) to tell tales off it wants to shrug the injury off and keep going; wants to feel the pain coursing through him like a lightning strike as he's lurched about to remind him of how very much alive he (once more) is.
Unfortunately for that side of him, there's still too much of the impression Ned Stark left upon him for Jon to go full tilt reckless.
"I ought to land!" He shouts, not knowing if he'll be heard, pointing at the ground to indicate yes, down.
Rhaegal lets out a whinny-like noise in tandem, as if voicing his own agreement.
Daemon figures he'll be at least a bit worse for wear, scrabbling against scales and spines, but how bad remains to be seen. He's assuming not very, given the lack of panic from the dragon— they tend not to like their riders being in mortal peril, and are wont to protect them if they sense injury, which they're very good at doing. Little does Daemon know, however, that Rhaegal's senses concerning Jon may be slightly miscalibrated thanks to various incidents.
In any event, he nods his agreement, and waves them on. Go, land. The older pair will spot them, and join shortly. Caraxes communicates to the younger dragon where to go, having scouted plenty already. There are less rocky areas down below, glades and large ponds. Easier for human feet to navigate in case someone needs aid.
Daemon and Caraxes circle above Rhaegal as they land, and are quick to touch down once the green dragon has come to a stop. Caraxes is lighter about it than one might think, easily hunkering down to let Daemon slip off. He lets himself fall half of the way, and his knees only remind him of his age a bit when he straightens up from the crouch.
"Well, boy," he calls out as he approaches. "How bad is it?"
A single dragon spike piercing his skin is nothing compared to over a dozen cold, sharp blades tearing into him and leaving jagged lines all over his torso like some sort of macabre set of badges he never asked for. (Sometimes, the mere thought of ruling the Seven Kingdoms makes him laugh when not even the Night's Watch could handle a modicum of progressive reform from him when he was Lord Commander. How would the continent react to changes he'd make as King? No, thank you. Let Daenerys fight that battle.)
Jon slides off Rhaegal. Any other man's knees might've buckled upon hitting the ground, but Jon's response to injury is no longer on par with other men.
"Just some blood," he says, as if he hasn't left a smear of it upon the dragon's back.
Dragons are rough. Comes with the territory. Daemon ends up scraped or gored now and again as well, through no fault of either rider nor beast— if something skewered through Jon's gear to bloody him, it would have been potentially dire with no buffer. Concerning, then, that he's used to just hopping on with no saddle. He approaches, one hand raising in deference to Rhaegal, you will not eat me for approaching your rider, everything is fine, and then clasps his other on Jon's shoulder.
"Bleeding a bit." Wry. C'mon, you fucking idiot. "We'll see to that, while you tell me about why you never thought to put so much as a horse blanket on his back first."
They can make 'camp' on the edge of the pond. An old firepit is nearby, long cold and unused, but there's little problem getting a fire going, with two dragons. Daemon lets Jon undo his tops while he goes to pull supplies out of a bag on Caraxes' harness.
A conversation takes place as they make camp, a conversation that is the only reason Jon is even willing to remove his leathers, even if he is hesitating with the remaining button. The evidence of the truth he speaks is evident on his form, impossible to hide while his chest is bare. It's a gnarly sight and Jon can barely stand looking at them himself, the horror of his murder surfacing unbidden any time he dares to take a peak at the jagged, protruding marks that did not heal correctly while left open and without stitchings while his corpse lay dormant in Castle Black while Davos sought out the Red Woman, while they waited for her magic to take root.
Back to his ancestor, Jon takes a deep, steading breath and pops the last button free of its loop, shrugging out of his last remaining layer.
He doesn't turn around, just presses his hand to the newest gash in his collection, fixates on a spot in the distance, and dissociates — not because it hurts (it doesn't, pain is not the same in the aftermath of death) but because he's a touch fucked up in an aftermath of something everyone was keen on forgetting.
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hieroglyphics2023-02-02 11:18 pm
no subject
He’d contest being the princely title he was born with and the fact that he’s heir to the Iron Throne if people knew about it. All his life he wanted to be someone and now after dying and seeing the worst that both the living and dead have to offer, he would give anything to just be plain Jon Snow again. A montherless bastard with no set destiny before him.
The people need him to be the King in the North; he hopes to the Old Gods that they won’t need him to be King of Westeros, too. He prays that Daenerys will take the throne without the truth ever coming out.
“My apologies, but I don’t speak Valyrian. I only know a couple of words and they’re all commands that Rhaegal understands.”
Ones that Daenerys made sure he knew: fly, land, stop, back, and of course, fire.
no subject
What in the fuck. (Internal sigh. Some godsdamned people.)
When Daemon has regained from his pause, perhaps of shock, he moves closer, giving this northern 'King' (suspicious now) a close look. His body language will not radiate any kind of threat to Rhaegal, though in the distance, there's an odd sound of— trees branches snapping?
"You are a Targaryen."
A confident, low-voiced assertion. Daemon has seen the result of unblooded men claiming dragons (death, disaster), and he has seen the spark in dragonseeds. This is the latter, and no Velaryon or Celtigar. Dragonfire burns plainly, no matter how distant. And while it could just be Daemon's biases speaking, there's also the matter of the fucking dragon.
"How do you commune with our gods? How do you bond closer with your mount? They hear the language of Valyria in their bones."
no subject
Something, perhaps an unseeing magic that coats this foreign landscape, prevents Jon from outright lying. He wants to deny it, but he can't. He's never had to deny it. No one's had reason to assume. He's always just been Ned Stark's bastard son, why would anyone stop and consider the possibility that he was actually Rhaegar's legitimate son?
"I grew up in Winterfell," he says — more like snaps — instead. "Why would I commune with any gods but the Old Gods of stream, forest, and stone?"
no subject
Daemon gives him a flat look. Winterfell indeed, what a bitey wolf.
"The Old Gods have no dominion over the blood of the dragon."
He isn't nearly as disrespectful about the gods of the northmen as he is about the Faith of the Seven; he has no interest in their spirits, but he respects the instinct towards tradition. Their old ways and steadiness have served them well, and they've not weaponized it. No septs or faith militant for the gods of stream, forest, or stone. And yet even with all these points in their favor, the Old Gods are still not in a position of power over a Targaryen. Dragonlords inhabit a space between gods and men, and cannot be expected to scrape and bow and shuffle about like other mortals.
Rhaegal's shifting does not go unnoticed, and Daemon regards him with a calm gaze. Lykiri, lykiri. A juvenile still, and it's difficult to tell how much time, if any, it's spent chained up. Fairly domesticated, by his body language, so perhaps some. But not until he had grown past the size that the keepers at the Pit would have started weighting him, the prince suspects. After a long moment, his violet gaze ticks back to the dragonseed.
"What's your name, King-in-the-North?"
no subject
Saying it aloud, although terrifying, feels utterly freeing in a way he hadn't expected. Jon has been sitting on the knowledge of his true paternity for some time now, having sworn both Bran and Sam to secrecy. No one knows. He doesn't dare speak of it; it's not the time to dredge up such revelations when there are far more important things to focus on, especially when he has absolutely no interest in ascending to a higher throne than the one he's presently seated upon.
(Which is more like a bench at a fancy picnic table that sits the front of the Great Hall than it is a throne... #Northerners)
Jon knows that both Rhaegal and Viserion were chained up for a time beneath the Great Pyramid of Meereen, but he doesn't know for how long. As for how domesticated the beast is... That is purely the result of Daenerys raising her dragons as if they were her own sons. Mother of Dragons is an apt title in many ways.
"Jon Snow," he answers easily, but since the truth is already out there and there's something else he hasn't dared say aloud since the day he repeated it after Bran told him what it was— "is who I am known as, but the name you are likely looking for is Aerion Targaryen."
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"Your whole upbringing must have been an abysmal arse-ache," is what Daemon says eventually.
In both of these threads: behold, Daemon taking nothing at all about the Song of Ice and Fire (for which his entire bloodline is boiled down to) seriously. Perhaps this will go over better with good lad Jon than with Ser Jaime the Andal, being northern. Or perhaps Daemon will bat 0/2 and he'll be a stick in the mud.
"Jon you shall be, Aerion, if that's what you're known as. And you'll now know me as Daemon."
That's all, no king-consort, no prince, no protector of the realm as the queen's sword. The air of a man who's heard that jinx about calling oneself a king. He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, then, indicating a slippery-suspicious-sliding rock sound a heartbeat before it happens. Despite this, nothing appears; the terrain stays as it is.
"And that is Caraxes."
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His
fatheruncle had implied before he went to the Wall that he would tell him the truth soon. Jon wonders if the 'truth' that Ned had to offer would have been another fabrication designed to placate his curiosity or the actual truth in hopes that he would remain true to his vows and be another 'useless' Targaryen at the Wall like Maester Aemon had.(And oh, how it genuinely hurts to know that Maester Aemon was his great-great uncle. That he'd been around family the whole time and hadn't known. That the old man had taken his last breath thinking that he and the great-niece he'd never met were the last of his kind when Jon had been around him the whole bloody time and neither of them knew.)
Jon's eyes dart in the direct indicated, but he doesn't see anything. There's an awareness at the back of his mind that he's only just been clued into that tells him something is there, but what, he can't say. Caraxes? Was that a horse or a boat or was he the type to name a gilded carriage or—
"Caraxes," he echoes, looking over his shoulder at Rheagal, then back at Daemon. "Wasn't that the name of the fabled Blood Wyrm?"
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Like a magic eye trick, something beyond the treeline shifts, but it doesn't yet materialize. Daemon laughs at his dragon in the privacy of his own mind, and gets a smug feeling in return. Show off.
“It was indeed,” he says wryly. “Uncle Aemon's, and then mine, and then we hit the water, I know.”
Not before Caraxes had torn out Vhagar's throat— killed her when nothing else alive in the world could have. Nothing, no one, not even Meleys, could have taken out the last of the conquering greats. Only age would have come for Vhagar, if not for Caraxes, and though Daemon loved the old queen in his own way, there is vicious, perfect pride at the fact that his dragon had fought her and won. Caraxes had crawled to shore, while Vhagar sank, carrying with her his wretched nephew and Visenya's sword skewered through his skull.
Daemon and his Blood Wyrm are dead.
It doesn't matter, here. Apparently. Very odd, but oh well. Life before had been odd, also.
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He doesn't know what this is, but he's most certain it isn't death.
Death had been darkness devoid of sound, a hollow nothingness like no other that still shook him to his core each time he thought back upon it. He knows now that he'd disappeared into the back of Ghost's mind and that doing so had kept his consciousness intact while Melisandre worked to revive his mortally wounded body, but had been too weak and too untrained to fully surface.
So there was only the dark nothingness until he was jolted back into the world of the living.
A living world that hasn't felt real since he returned to it.
Which probably explains why he's content to disassociate from the bulk of it and lie to himself about a happy childhood running through Winterfell's halls while ignoring all the times Catelyn Stark said horrible, vicious things to his face. How everyone, especially his stepmother, had held him accountable for his father's supposedly dishonorable misgivings. Treated cruelly by Sansa until she had no one else left, seen as lower than the criminals sent to the Wall by his sworn brothers for being a bastard and tarnishing Ned Stark's reputation.
The same sworn brothers that had assassinated him, the evidence of his brutal slaying still marring his torso beneath the leathers and furs.
What would they say if they knew who he really was? Would Catelyn apologize, would the brothers think twice before taunting him?
He can't say.
He hasn't given it much thought. (See: Disassociating.)
"My uncle's name was also Aemon," Jon says sadly, giving voice to one of the few things he has thought long and hard about. "A great uncle of sorts who did not know know he was my great uncle and at the time, neither did I. He was Maester of Castle Black. Lived past his hundredth nameday and went peacefully in his sleep. He never knew."
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It doesn't matter. He knew it was over when Viserys wed a Hightower.
"You are one of the last survivors of an apocalypse," Daemon says after a while. "It's worth being proud of. But there's no comfort to be found."
Sinful foreigners who command demons. They were never going to thrive in Westeros, nor anywhere else; the Essosi tradition of being proud of their Valyrian Freehold roots would have decayed had House Targaryen settled there instead of on the island. They cannot settle. They are not meant for the world any longer.
"Do you ride, or merely let him go like a kite? We should take them out, get them used to each other."
Caraxes stirs more obviously now, and deep red glints from between trees. He doesn't want to scare Rhaegal and inspire a bad reaction, but he's curious.
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House Baratheon has been the cause of so much misery. Robert was both responsible for the death of Jon's parents and the reason why he was lied to all his life. His obsession with Lyanna Stark drove her to wed Rhaegar in secret and give birth in a secluded location where the was no maester to prevent her from bleeding out, all while using a false narrative he applied to a situation he hadn't bothered to properly investigate to give him reason to kill his cousin on the Trident.
If Robert had known who Jon really was, he would have him killed.
"A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing," Jon says, echoing the words Maester Aemon spoke to him all those years ago. Words that now rang truer than ever. "Aye, there is no comfort, but at least I know now who I am. Why I always felt so out of place."
Why Ned Stark refused to speak of his mother or the circumstances of his birth. The man had risked everything to both keep him safe and make sure that he was loved.
"A kite? A dragon is not a toy."
Even with as new as he is to dragon riding, even he understands
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He strides away from Jon and Rhaegal, towards the manifesting beast. Head first, then neck, neck, even more neck, and Caraxes is massive, having grown steadily since Prince Aemon's time, thanks to Daemon's refusal to chain him. The Blood Wyrm keeps his distance, slipping downhill over snapping trees and disturbed rocks, none of which seems to bother Daemon.
"Come and prove it, Northman!" he calls, shouted over his shoulder without stopping.
Catching a tide of a minor landslide, Daemon manages to grab the side of Caraxes' kit when they connect— a war harness, still impressive despite being so worn-in. The House Targaryen crest on the front is as fine as any king's shield, polished deep red and black with spots of bronze from exposure. Quick on the ground, Daemon doesn't have much time to get all the way astride the dragon before he's heading for a far steeper slope from which to launch, but he's an old hand at this. And an old hand, but still spry enough, for a man of nearly fifty.
Vroom vroom, Jon!!
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Not just the feat that he's witnessing now with a man old enough to be his grandsire by Westerosi standards casually swinging himself up into a dragon's saddle in midair, but tales of other Targaryens he heard through poems and songs, not to mention his aunt.
Daenerys was known as The Unburnt, and the forces she brought with her from Essos had spoken of her hatching her dragon eggs in her Dothraki husband's funeral pyre and walked through and inferno that claimed the lives of many powerful horselords. All without being scorched, not a single flame left marks upon her.
Which left him. Unremarkable Jon Snow, former bastard, former corpse, current knower of absolutely nothing.
Like why Dany never bothered to fit any of her dragons with saddles, as clearly saddling a dragon was possible. Even with only mounting Drogon, it made no sense to simply hold on and hope for the best. The spikes on Rhaegal's back had cut into his fingers the first time he took flight, and it was a feat in and of itself for someone so woefully unexperienced as he was to not topple off the dragon's back into the sea.
He's made a point to keep a pair of gloves on his person at all times since and is thankfully already donning them now, allowing him to rush over to Rhaegal and shimmy up the dragon's side. Lacking the finesse (AND SADDLE) to seat himself as swiftly as Daemon does, it takes him a moment to get situated before the green dragon spreads his his wings and lifts up into the air.
A valiant effort is made to catch up to Caraxes, but it's clear that Jon has had no formal instruction in how to do any of this. Rhaegal is young and agile, but his rider is inexperienced and prior to laying claim to the last remaining Targaryen outside of his mother, he had spent the majority of his time either chained up or trailing obediently in Drogon's wake.
Newbies. Both of them.
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Caraxes manages a lift off of limited leverage, beating his winds enough to turn rocks to gravel beneath him, going up, and up, his unusual body long and straight like a blood red spear being launched into the sky. He works harder than usual to do it, either aware that he needs to give the younger dragon behind them a current to follow, or because he, too, is feeling a strange way after death. Dragons are as smart as men, or even more, merely thinking differently. Daemon knows that Caraxes has as much interiority as he does, even if he doesn't speak the same way.
Past the trees and cliffs, past distant peaks, higher and higher until Caraxes can bank around and begin to get a feel for Rhaegal. Jon is a dark patch against deep green scales, like Daemon knows he's just a flash of silver from a distance. Nothing fancy, he intuits to his dragon; he doesn't want the odd northman to have a tumble. They could probably grab him, but still.
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How Daenerys so effortlessly stayed atop Drogon is a mystery.
Used to following, Rhaegal trails in Caraxes' wake without any coaxing needed from Jon. It's farther up than Jon's dared to go, and while there is a small Ned Stark sounding voice in his head reminding him of the danger, the thrill is much more appealing.
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Flying, being one with Caraxes, letting his mind focus only on the technical progress of auditing another's performance and drifting away with the elation of experience something far beyond human.
Caraxes warbles back and forth, making sounds, communicating with the younger dragon in a way only the two creatures understand. He dips down sharply and twists, putting Daemon briefly upside down, to swoop back around to fly alongside Rhaegal instead of leading. Getting to know him. Seeing how steady, or not, he is.
Daemon keeps his eyes on Jon. Even if he doesn't slide off, he might pass out from the way the oxygen changes at certain heights, shocking cold air into lungs while stealing breath. Always best to be attentive.
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Jon's expression goes blank, dark eyes glossing over and turning an iris-less, pupil-less white. Instead of ceasing the motion altogether, an equally white-eyed Rhaegal does it again— and a third time, twisting around joyfully and swooping up into the clouds and back down again.
He does enjoy it. So much that even in guarding himself, he cannot help but experience the rush of flying about in mid-air like this firsthand.
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Body language, he thinks after a while. The green dragon is clearly having a thrilling time, and Jon is fine, apparently, not limp, not knocked off. But the subtle movements that denote a dragon's thought patterns, all parts of the beast shifting and moving as it manages so many more systems than a man's while in flight, are smoothed over.
Interesting.
It brings to mind the way he didn't understand why Rhaegal hadn't sensed Caraxes, when he'd been scouting. Could this be related?
Let's find out, he urges Caraxes, and the red dragon engages again, swooping after the juvenile to dive past him, easy and playful like he would have done with Moondancer.
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The one and only time Jon had managed to 'coexist,' so to speak, with a being he'd warged into, it was as he lay bleeding in the snow. When instincts he hadn't known he possessed had him reaching out blindly for Ghost's mind and sliding in alongside it to rest while his body bled out in the snow. Ghost had been in complete control while his corpse lay lifeless, Jon's consciousness nothing more than a hum in the back of the direwolf's mind that kept him close to his body's side until he was able to return to it.
He hasn't been able to do that since. Perhaps it was a one-off trick, perhaps it's because he was so weak and wounded and inexperienced that he'd done the warging wrong, or perhaps the dark nothingness that he'd experienced in 'death' had blotted the how to of it all from his thoughts entirely.
Whatever it is, whenever he does warg into Ghost or Rhaegal, it's by way of taking complete control.
Sensing that Rhaegal would like the reigns back, however, Jon slips back into his own mind with a jolt.
Not smart, doing that on dragonback, as Jon lurches as he returns to himself, leaning back and immediately regretting it, darting forwards so fast that one of Rhaegal's neck spikes pierces the leathers of his tunic.
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Something else shifts. He doesn't know what. He feels Caraxes make a low grating sound, one that Rhaegal will surely actually hear, and has no way of knowing what's being communicated. (Probably just a You good, kid?)
The Blood Wyrm dips down on the younger dragon's right, and Daemon looks up as they go, catching sight of Jon. Even at the odd half upside-down angle, it's hard to miss the way the odd northman seems to be fumbling, now. Caraxes evens out below Rhaegal to one side, and Daemon whistles, an ear-splicing sharp noise, audible from dragon to dragon.
Checking in. Do they need to go down?
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Unfortunately for that side of him, there's still too much of the impression Ned Stark left upon him for Jon to go full tilt reckless.
"I ought to land!" He shouts, not knowing if he'll be heard, pointing at the ground to indicate yes, down.
Rhaegal lets out a whinny-like noise in tandem, as if voicing his own agreement.
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In any event, he nods his agreement, and waves them on. Go, land. The older pair will spot them, and join shortly. Caraxes communicates to the younger dragon where to go, having scouted plenty already. There are less rocky areas down below, glades and large ponds. Easier for human feet to navigate in case someone needs aid.
Daemon and Caraxes circle above Rhaegal as they land, and are quick to touch down once the green dragon has come to a stop. Caraxes is lighter about it than one might think, easily hunkering down to let Daemon slip off. He lets himself fall half of the way, and his knees only remind him of his age a bit when he straightens up from the crouch.
"Well, boy," he calls out as he approaches. "How bad is it?"
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Jon slides off Rhaegal. Any other man's knees might've buckled upon hitting the ground, but Jon's response to injury is no longer on par with other men.
"Just some blood," he says, as if he hasn't left a smear of it upon the dragon's back.
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Dragons are rough. Comes with the territory. Daemon ends up scraped or gored now and again as well, through no fault of either rider nor beast— if something skewered through Jon's gear to bloody him, it would have been potentially dire with no buffer. Concerning, then, that he's used to just hopping on with no saddle. He approaches, one hand raising in deference to Rhaegal, you will not eat me for approaching your rider, everything is fine, and then clasps his other on Jon's shoulder.
"Bleeding a bit." Wry. C'mon, you fucking idiot. "We'll see to that, while you tell me about why you never thought to put so much as a horse blanket on his back first."
They can make 'camp' on the edge of the pond. An old firepit is nearby, long cold and unused, but there's little problem getting a fire going, with two dragons. Daemon lets Jon undo his tops while he goes to pull supplies out of a bag on Caraxes' harness.
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Back to his ancestor, Jon takes a deep, steading breath and pops the last button free of its loop, shrugging out of his last remaining layer.
He doesn't turn around, just presses his hand to the newest gash in his collection, fixates on a spot in the distance, and dissociates — not because it hurts (it doesn't, pain is not the same in the aftermath of death) but because he's a touch fucked up in an aftermath of something everyone was keen on forgetting.
(He wishes he could forget.)
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