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.
Daemon doesn't think anything of getting his hands dirty setting things up as he listens, and as they talk; Caraxes lights a makeshift torch and Daemon builds a fire, in case he has to cauterize anything or boil water. He removes his tunic so he can push his sleeves up and clean his hands before he gets to Jon with a cloth from his pack, holding it there, observing the other man.
"Will seeing my scars make you feel less dire about it all?"
A little humor. C'mon, lighten up, they don't look too bad, despite the grim nature of them. Daemon does not point out that he experienced his own death before showing up in this place— it is not, he's sure, the same thing. He will not be returning to Westeros, or anywhere else in their known world.
"Sit down so I can clean this and stitch it. Bad place to get gangrene in, enormous trouble to amputate a torso, even a torso that's come back to life."
Later, Jon will wonder if his ability to be present here while still technically alive (again) is tied to his resurrection. If being brought back once before has left some sort of permanent pathway bathed in R'hllor's light to lead him back to a plane which others could no longer go.
But that's later, and this is now. A now composed of an irritated huff as Jon sits down on a felled, half-buried log so his uncle-grandsire can better tend to his latest wound. Pointedly, he ignores further talk of scars being brought back to life.
"My brother is better at it — or my cousin, rather. Warging."
Daemon isn't the worst field medic. A resounding fine at it, which is miles better than nothing, but still lacking a proper healer's knack. The wound would be settled quicker via cauterization, but the scar would be grotesque and heating up a sword via dragon would be more dramatic than he thinks Jon needs to endure. Stitches it is. Daemon's sutures are uneven, but his hands are steady, and the work will hold.
"Did you practice together?"
Or is this going to be another sad part of a sad story.
He's far better than the clumsy hands guided by a blind maester that stitched up a bulk of his wounds at Castle Black. Better than whatever Melisandre did to his corpse during that interim of lifelessness, as is evident by how poorly those jagged, puckered marks have healed.
"No, he learned... from someone, I don't know the name, and I just sort of figured it out on my own. Bran can warg into any beast of his choosing. I can only do it with Rhaegal and my direwolf, Ghost — they let me. Others don't. Bran doesn't need them to let him."
Which is... disturbing, if he thinks too hard about it, but Jon doesn't want to think ill of his crippled younger brother cousin. The boy's already been through the ringer. He doesn't need Jon looking at him like he's actually grown a third eye for being a powerful warg and greenseer.
Half neat. The other half is a hope that this Bran dies before he learns if he can warg into other people. Or just soon, regardless. That's a power worth taking out of the world, especially if a man has it. Daemon knows too much about men, even the ones who seem harmless.
Of course, he does not offer any of this aloud. Just continues to patch Jon up.
Bran has the potential to be a very dangerous power player — not just in the upcoming war for the dawn or the game of thrones, but in general. He could use his ability to see things to inflict damage upon and control Westeros in ways never before seen. In ways that would have those who lived through the tyrannical reign of Aerys II wishing for the Mad King's return.
Jon doesn't like to acknowledge that potential, but he would be lying if he said he never stopped to consider it. To think about the horrifying what if that he believes would be something to look out for were this all-seeing, powerful warg anyone but Bran. He doesn't think Bran has it in him. (He hopes he doesn't.)
"Enjoyed—?" He holds an arm up so that Daemon can properly tend to the wound. "I've enjoyed plenty. Like flying. I enjoy that. Experiencing it from the dragon's point of view is like nothing else in this world."
At least the Targaryens never demanded control of anyone's mind, Daemon might say. Being devoured by a dragon is a less terrifying fate than staying awake to watch yourself walk off a cliff. He files the name away. Something to preemptively deal with if he ever hears it, here.
Jon will probably have to lay back. Daemon's hands are warm, dry; he runs hotter than a normal person, but not by much. Slightly more than messianic princesses— Daenerys may be immune, and magic, but her blood is still far less concentrated than Daemon's.
"Mm."
That, he doesn't doubt. But that one syllable still sounds like he's laughing.
"So you mean to say, before the dragon, not really."
If Jon knew the truth — the real truth — about the way Bran went about warging, he would be horrified. Seizing control of the minds of the unwilling, from animals to people without so much as a care for what becomes of them in the aftermath or as a result of the actions committed while in control of their minds. What happened to Hodor...
It's good that he doesn't know, that he doesn't have to add looking at his brother like a potential problem on top of everything else.
Daemon, after all, does have a point. Happiness and Jon haven't really gone hand in hand.
Jon lies back, staring up at the sky as his ancestor sees to his wounds. "Before the dragon, I had no idea who I was. Safe in the lie of being a bastard, but miserable in the role I was set up to play in order to stay safe. I did what I thought was expected of me, what I was able to accomplish as a living mar upon my father's honor. But he wasn't my father and I was never a bastard. There was a reason I always felt out of place, but that wasn't it."
"You should have been a boon to your father's honor," he says mildly. "Whether or not any of it was true. Not enough men look after even their legitimate children."
Daemon was too careful to ever produce any bastards, eternally wary of bestowing the ability to command dragons onto just anyone. A real and present danger, in a world still brewing with them. (Funny. If he'd had a few to spare, he could have gathered them up during the war. Bested by responsibility.)
It's a laughable position for Daemon to have, but then, he adopted his nephews as his step-sons when the whole of the realm knew they were bastards. He loved them, raised them like his own, and allowed them to be betrothed to his daughters, whose pedigree was unassailable. A scandal of compassion and defiance in equal measure.
"It's like that for most of us. No matter how we were raised." He presses around the stitched wound, checking his handiwork, and observing Jon's reaction for any unexpected internal injuries. "The dragons make us real."
It was cruel and unfair to hold a child to such standards, nevermind one who had unknowingly been the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. Ned Stark had made sure that Jon knew he was loved and wanted, but no amount of acknowledgement could fully spare him from the stigma that came with being a bastard.
Jon doesn't flinch or groan or give any sort of sign that he's in any pain. Even if he were, his personal pain scale is now warped beyond repair; nothing will ever compare to a dozen pair of knives slicing through his skin.
"Do they?" He asks instead of the dragons, noting that he can feel Rhaegal's protective gaze on him in spite of being unable to see him in the position he's currently in. "I wouldn't know. I don't think Daenerys knew, either. The knowledge was lost. She didn't even know you could put a saddle on a dragon."
A saddle that would have prevented Jon from accidentally impaling himself on dragonback mid-flight.
"A shame," he says, grave. "You've never enjoyed anything, and you've never seen a horse before."
The knowledge was lost.
Maybe people just get dumber, in two hundred years. Maybe they don't saddle horses, and this exasperated dunk won't land, because everyone actually just clings desperately to one side of the horse with their feet scraping across the ground. Maybe this is actually the crux of why Jon is miserable.
He pats his nephew-grandson on the thigh.
"You'll do. Come on and clean up, we'll camp here tonight."
Though Daemon isn't in a hurry to rejoin society, if one exists here, it'd be foolish not to at least investigate the nearby settlement. And it's clear he'll need to stay with Jon and Rhaegal regardless— bloody useless, the pair of them, Targaryen instincts alone allowing them to accidentally outwit disaster. He tells himself this is why, easily, and ignores how caved in his chest feels without his family.
"I've seen a hor—" The se part of that comes out as more of a hiss as Jon moves in a way that pulls unpleasantly at the wound.
He's sits up more carefully this time, a hand pressed to his side as he rises fully to his feet and does his best to pull the tunic back on without undoing his uncle-grandfather's stitches. (Yes, he cares more about not ruining the effort Daemon put in to caring for him than he does for actually caring for himself. Getting injured just doesn't carry the same poignance it once did after you've died.)
Tunic and leathers back on, Jon returns to Rhaegal's side. Not to climb back on and go for another warging joyride, but to smooth his hands soothingly over the dragon's jaw and neck as if to say I'm fine, see?
"Daenerys never put a saddle on Drogon," he tells Daemon. "The first time I rode Rhaegal, I asked her what I was supposed to hold on to. She said whatever you can. I don't think she ever thought to saddle any of them, which is a bit ironic, seeing as she married a Dothraki horselord."
Daemon, whose hands are bloody enough to warrant heading down to the water's edge, raises them in exasperation to hear Jon go on about it. What a pair of loons. They deserve each other.
Caraxes slinks around like a living perimeter marker as they make camp. Daemon eventually tells him to knock it off and settle down, and the great wyrm does, venting smoke from his bellows in a way that gives the impression of laughter. A pity Jon doesn't understand more High Valyrian, he might find a single spark of amusement over hearing Daemon accuse a dragon of being a fidgety prick.
Old married couple, really.
Later, around the fire:
"Drogon is a funny name for a dragon," he says, working sticks through fish from the lake. "In Westerosi common. In High Valyrian, there's a part of speech, 'ogon', which is assigned to words of harsh movement. Fighting, grasping, clawing. And, of course, 'dragon' sounds nothing like it. Zaldrizes. And the word for 'dragonfire', of course, has nothing to do with 'dragon' at all."
Filling the air. If he has to hear more about how Jon was too cowed by a horse princess to suggest a saddle, he might strangle him.
The language discourse is a bit lost on Jon, though there's irony to be found in a Targaryen knowing more words in the Old Tongue of the Free Folk than he does the High Valyrian of his father's ancestors.
"He's named for her husband," he tells him. "Khal Drogo. He died and she hatched the dragon eggs he had gifted her with upon his funeral pyre. The other two, she named for her dead brothers. Rhaegal for Rhaegar, my father, and Viserion for Viserys."
The latter remains the only one of Daenerys's dragons to be without a rider. Jon wonders if there are any others out there with traces of Old Valyria in them that could mount him or if the third dragon is forever doomed to trail in the wake of his brothers and their riders, which seems sadder to him now than it did before he came here and met his ancestor.
"Zaldrizes," he attempts to repeat, but does so... badly with that heavy Northern accent of his, to say the least.
Khal Drogo. Daemon and Laena met many Dothraki in their travels, soared over to visit their great market city. He imagines one of his aunts or his daughters sold to them, and it rankles him a bit, but he says nothing. He doesn't dislike them — they are traditionalists, dug deep into their culture, and he respects it — but a Targaryen is a Targaryen.
"I also had a brother called Viserys," he muses. "And a son."
Damn, he really shouldn't be on about any of that.
"Zaldrizes for dragon, zokla for wolf." He looks at Jon. "Tresy for son, or nephew. Kepa for father, grandfather, and uncle. The words change for tenses or how they're used, but indication of who's who is made through context. We don't differentiate so much, linguistically."
That actually gets a laugh out of Jon, the corner of his mouth quirking to one side with a peek of teeth, accompanied by a warm chuckle. He would have balked at such a thing not too long ago, but he can no longer throw stones at those who mingle carnally with their kin, given his lineage. And it is quite funny, not needing to learn how to differentiate between usages given how intertwined the Targaryen bloodline is.
Okay, more than just a warm chuckle of a laugh.
After a moment, he fully cracks and laughs outright, brightly, hanging his head as he does so.
It's all so hilarious all of a sudden. The truth of who he is, that he managed to rise again, that he got impaled on the back of his own fucking dragon because Daenerys made him think the way to ride a dragon was without a godsdamned saddle— All of it, especially being here carrying on with an ancestor who is both his grandfather and uncle several times over who just stitched up said impalement wound.
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hieroglyphics2023-02-02 11:18 pm
no subject
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.
no subject
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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Daemon doesn't think anything of getting his hands dirty setting things up as he listens, and as they talk; Caraxes lights a makeshift torch and Daemon builds a fire, in case he has to cauterize anything or boil water. He removes his tunic so he can push his sleeves up and clean his hands before he gets to Jon with a cloth from his pack, holding it there, observing the other man.
"Will seeing my scars make you feel less dire about it all?"
A little humor. C'mon, lighten up, they don't look too bad, despite the grim nature of them. Daemon does not point out that he experienced his own death before showing up in this place— it is not, he's sure, the same thing. He will not be returning to Westeros, or anywhere else in their known world.
"Sit down so I can clean this and stitch it. Bad place to get gangrene in, enormous trouble to amputate a torso, even a torso that's come back to life."
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But that's later, and this is now. A now composed of an irritated huff as Jon sits down on a felled, half-buried log so his uncle-grandsire can better tend to his latest wound. Pointedly, he ignores further talk of scars being brought back to life.
"My brother is better at it — or my cousin, rather. Warging."
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"Did you practice together?"
Or is this going to be another sad part of a sad story.
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"No, he learned... from someone, I don't know the name, and I just sort of figured it out on my own. Bran can warg into any beast of his choosing. I can only do it with Rhaegal and my direwolf, Ghost — they let me. Others don't. Bran doesn't need them to let him."
Which is... disturbing, if he thinks too hard about it, but Jon doesn't want to think ill of his crippled younger
brothercousin. The boy's already been through the ringer. He doesn't need Jon looking at him like he's actually grown a third eye for being a powerful warg and greenseer.no subject
Half neat. The other half is a hope that this Bran dies before he learns if he can warg into other people. Or just soon, regardless. That's a power worth taking out of the world, especially if a man has it. Daemon knows too much about men, even the ones who seem harmless.
Of course, he does not offer any of this aloud. Just continues to patch Jon up.
"Have you ever enjoyed anything?" he asks dryly.
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Jon doesn't like to acknowledge that potential, but he would be lying if he said he never stopped to consider it. To think about the horrifying what if that he believes would be something to look out for were this all-seeing, powerful warg anyone but Bran. He doesn't think Bran has it in him. (He hopes he doesn't.)
"Enjoyed—?" He holds an arm up so that Daemon can properly tend to the wound. "I've enjoyed plenty. Like flying. I enjoy that. Experiencing it from the dragon's point of view is like nothing else in this world."
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Jon will probably have to lay back. Daemon's hands are warm, dry; he runs hotter than a normal person, but not by much. Slightly more than messianic princesses— Daenerys may be immune, and magic, but her blood is still far less concentrated than Daemon's.
"Mm."
That, he doesn't doubt. But that one syllable still sounds like he's laughing.
"So you mean to say, before the dragon, not really."
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It's good that he doesn't know, that he doesn't have to add looking at his brother like a potential problem on top of everything else.
Daemon, after all, does have a point. Happiness and Jon haven't really gone hand in hand.
Jon lies back, staring up at the sky as his ancestor sees to his wounds. "Before the dragon, I had no idea who I was. Safe in the lie of being a bastard, but miserable in the role I was set up to play in order to stay safe. I did what I thought was expected of me, what I was able to accomplish as a living mar upon my father's honor. But he wasn't my father and I was never a bastard. There was a reason I always felt out of place, but that wasn't it."
no subject
Daemon was too careful to ever produce any bastards, eternally wary of bestowing the ability to command dragons onto just anyone. A real and present danger, in a world still brewing with them. (Funny. If he'd had a few to spare, he could have gathered them up during the war. Bested by responsibility.)
It's a laughable position for Daemon to have, but then, he adopted his nephews as his step-sons when the whole of the realm knew they were bastards. He loved them, raised them like his own, and allowed them to be betrothed to his daughters, whose pedigree was unassailable. A scandal of compassion and defiance in equal measure.
"It's like that for most of us. No matter how we were raised." He presses around the stitched wound, checking his handiwork, and observing Jon's reaction for any unexpected internal injuries. "The dragons make us real."
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Jon doesn't flinch or groan or give any sort of sign that he's in any pain. Even if he were, his personal pain scale is now warped beyond repair; nothing will ever compare to a dozen pair of knives slicing through his skin.
"Do they?" He asks instead of the dragons, noting that he can feel Rhaegal's protective gaze on him in spite of being unable to see him in the position he's currently in. "I wouldn't know. I don't think Daenerys knew, either. The knowledge was lost. She didn't even know you could put a saddle on a dragon."
A saddle that would have prevented Jon from accidentally impaling himself on dragonback mid-flight.
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The knowledge was lost.
Maybe people just get dumber, in two hundred years. Maybe they don't saddle horses, and this exasperated dunk won't land, because everyone actually just clings desperately to one side of the horse with their feet scraping across the ground. Maybe this is actually the crux of why Jon is miserable.
He pats his nephew-grandson on the thigh.
"You'll do. Come on and clean up, we'll camp here tonight."
Though Daemon isn't in a hurry to rejoin society, if one exists here, it'd be foolish not to at least investigate the nearby settlement. And it's clear he'll need to stay with Jon and Rhaegal regardless— bloody useless, the pair of them, Targaryen instincts alone allowing them to accidentally outwit disaster. He tells himself this is why, easily, and ignores how caved in his chest feels without his family.
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He's sits up more carefully this time, a hand pressed to his side as he rises fully to his feet and does his best to pull the tunic back on without undoing his uncle-grandfather's stitches. (Yes, he cares more about not ruining the effort Daemon put in to caring for him than he does for actually caring for himself. Getting injured just doesn't carry the same poignance it once did after you've died.)
Tunic and leathers back on, Jon returns to Rhaegal's side. Not to climb back on and go for another warging joyride, but to smooth his hands soothingly over the dragon's jaw and neck as if to say I'm fine, see?
"Daenerys never put a saddle on Drogon," he tells Daemon. "The first time I rode Rhaegal, I asked her what I was supposed to hold on to. She said whatever you can. I don't think she ever thought to saddle any of them, which is a bit ironic, seeing as she married a Dothraki horselord."
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Caraxes slinks around like a living perimeter marker as they make camp. Daemon eventually tells him to knock it off and settle down, and the great wyrm does, venting smoke from his bellows in a way that gives the impression of laughter. A pity Jon doesn't understand more High Valyrian, he might find a single spark of amusement over hearing Daemon accuse a dragon of being a fidgety prick.
Old married couple, really.
Later, around the fire:
"Drogon is a funny name for a dragon," he says, working sticks through fish from the lake. "In Westerosi common. In High Valyrian, there's a part of speech, 'ogon', which is assigned to words of harsh movement. Fighting, grasping, clawing. And, of course, 'dragon' sounds nothing like it. Zaldrizes. And the word for 'dragonfire', of course, has nothing to do with 'dragon' at all."
Filling the air. If he has to hear more about how Jon was too cowed by a horse princess to suggest a saddle, he might strangle him.
Besides—
"You'll have to learn."
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"He's named for her husband," he tells him. "Khal Drogo. He died and she hatched the dragon eggs he had gifted her with upon his funeral pyre. The other two, she named for her dead brothers. Rhaegal for Rhaegar, my father, and Viserion for Viserys."
The latter remains the only one of Daenerys's dragons to be without a rider. Jon wonders if there are any others out there with traces of Old Valyria in them that could mount him or if the third dragon is forever doomed to trail in the wake of his brothers and their riders, which seems sadder to him now than it did before he came here and met his ancestor.
"Zaldrizes," he attempts to repeat, but does so... badly with that heavy Northern accent of his, to say the least.
Learn, indeed.
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"I also had a brother called Viserys," he muses. "And a son."
Damn, he really shouldn't be on about any of that.
"Zaldrizes for dragon, zokla for wolf." He looks at Jon. "Tresy for son, or nephew. Kepa for father, grandfather, and uncle. The words change for tenses or how they're used, but indication of who's who is made through context. We don't differentiate so much, linguistically."
A lopsided smile at that.
"There's not always a reason to, anyway."
We've got incest jokes.
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That actually gets a laugh out of Jon, the corner of his mouth quirking to one side with a peek of teeth, accompanied by a warm chuckle. He would have balked at such a thing not too long ago, but he can no longer throw stones at those who mingle carnally with their kin, given his lineage. And it is quite funny, not needing to learn how to differentiate between usages given how intertwined the Targaryen bloodline is.
Okay, more than just a warm chuckle of a laugh.
After a moment, he fully cracks and laughs outright, brightly, hanging his head as he does so.
It's all so hilarious all of a sudden. The truth of who he is, that he managed to rise again, that he got impaled on the back of his own fucking dragon because Daenerys made him think the way to ride a dragon was without a godsdamned saddle— All of it, especially being here carrying on with an ancestor who is both his grandfather and uncle several times over who just stitched up said impalement wound.
(There are a lot of things wrong with Jon.)
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