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.
Well. Either Jon is feeling better, or he's about to off himself. Either way, progression from being mired in numbness. Daemon claps him on the shoulder. Attaboy.
"That's the spirit, son."
Or, rather, the High Valyrian equivalent of such a saying; more like You're building the fire correctly now. That word, tresy, hangs there at the end, in context with the part of grammar that says Daemon is addressing someone directly. And now Jon knows what it means, knows that Daemon is casually referring to him as kin.
Stuck here together. What a fucking time.
They'll move on tomorrow, and see what there is to see.
Feeling better — a touch mad perhaps, but better. Enough to actually rest when he manages to settle down, to let himself sleep for a handful of hours. Unfortunately, his turbulent mind can only stay silent for so long and soon recollections of sharp, cold blades piercing his skin startle him into immediate wakefulness.
Whether he gasped or screamed, he doesn't know, only that he's still whole and there are no assailants looming over him as he bleeds out in the snow.
Dark, except for the middling fire. Just enough warmth to get on with, just enough light to cast the two men around it into sketchy, gold-hued form. The stars overhead are in positions that Daemon doesn't recognize, and some flicker with hues of green and pink, as if they are strange alien suns warming distant worlds.
Grand-uncle has sat up on watch, and he's still there when Jon is yanked from sleep. Sitting there and sharpening one of his knives (not the dagger, not the sword, neither of which ever require sharpening, just the one he uses for food). He pauses to listen to the younger man, head tilted to catch any distinctive movement in his peripheral vision, but not turned enough to look directly at him.
Nearby, the dragons shift about, the sound of their breaths like the tide.
He didn't vomit upon waking; that's an improvement. Back in Winterfell, Sansa had discreetly placed a worn steel pan next to his bedside for him to use as needed, not questioning his turmoil but silently alleviating the necessity for him to make a dash for the chamberpot or scrub the floor. It was appreciated, though he never told her so.
Did she know? Did someone tell her that he died and was brought back to life? Did she think his night terrors were born of the horrors he saw at Hardhome, being too slow to save Rickon from Ramsay, or something else entirely? (Would he have told her the truth about who he is?)
Jon may never get the chance to ask her or thank her for her subtle kindness. They were so awful to one another as children and just when they were beginning to mend the chasm between them, he was brought here.
In truth, Sansa was the (faux) siblings he had missed the least while at the Wall. Now she's the one he misses the most.
"Sleep and I don't get on well as of late," he grouses, sitting up and running a hand over his face. "Have you yet to rest?"
Girls have a way about them when they finally become women, Daemon might say.
The metal sound of sharpening continues for a moment, Daemon resting there with his elbows on his knees, looking like an ordinary traveler. The light paints him in different colors, silver hair and violet eyes hidden in fire. Which is a bit poetic, all considered.
Eventually he says, "No, but Caraxes has slept."
And he feels marginally rested for it. Not all pairs are so closely entwined, and Daemon won't be able to actually answer any What the fuck's that about inquiries, but it is what it is.
Caraxes? Jon's dark eyes shift from his ancestor to the elongated dragon, the darkened purple hues in his own eyes that normally appear black catching on the firelight, illuminating the truth that was there for anyone who thought to look close enough to see. (None ever did.)
It makes no sense, that Daemon would feel rested because Caraxes dozed, but he opts against questioning it. He's a man who was brought back to life after bleeding out in the snow. Who was he to question a shared sense of restfulness between dragon and rider? Especially a dragon and rider who have a deeper connection than Jon will likely ever have to Rhaegal — not just because of Jon's inexperience, but how less refined his Targaryen blood is.
"I recall," he responds bitterly, sneering at unseen shadows in the distance, echoes of unpleasant recollections that have yet to fade from his groggy mind. "I recall when I would like nothing more than to forget."
To forget, to rest, to be without one thing or another haunting him in some way. He's tired.
There are a lot of people who would lose their shit laughing to hear Daemon Targaryen speak of evil men as if he's not the worst. But he doesn't see himself as one— if he was, he'd have done so much worse, so much sooner. He really would have been another Maegor. He could have been, he had the power to.
Well, anyway. If Jon were worse, he wouldn't mind what had happened to him; he would feel immortal, and revel in the power. His own fault he's upset by it all. Have you considered being the villain, Aerion?
The older man stops his sharpening, and puts the knife away. He stands, but only to shift over to him.
"I'm going to sit behind you," he says, "and I want you to lay down again."
"Not always," Jon remarks with an air of confident certainty that seems almost out of place with him.
He would have beat Ramsay Bolton to death had Sansa not stopped him. He had certainly wanted to. It had been satisfying to slam his fists into the face of the bastard who'd defiled and traumatized his sister cousin, who murdered innocent young Rickon, who had stolen his family's ancestral home from them and turned their own vassal lords against them.
Sansa had fed Ramsay to his own dogs. A poetic end if nothing else, but a part of Jon would have loved nothing more than to have done it himself.
Had he been bonded to Rhaegal at the time, he would have fed the false lordling to his dragon.
Jon's brows knit together in confusion as Daemon draws near. He doesn't move away, but he doesn't lie back down yet, either. "...why?"
It's a very mild reproach, but still. Sparks of confidence and serenity around all his moping. Pick a lane, kid. Or more constructively, focus on the good he has instead of the bad, if the bad is so miserable he can't even sleep. Daemon is a hypocrite, being a professional brooder himself, but Jon has the air of someone who'll sink down into the depths and never return if someone doesn't poke him with a stick about it.
Daemon settles behind him, unbothered by the younger man's confusion. He pats him on one shoulder.
"I'm going to rub your head. A whore in Lys taught me, but don't worry, nuha tresy, it's nothing sexual."
Let the record show that Jon's mind doesn't even think of concocting any sexual connotations for what Daemon's suggesting until his ancestor declares that it isn't sexual. Only then does his mind momentarily dip into the realm of possibilities for what that could mean, but only momentarily. And none of his briefly imagined scenarios feature silver features, but rather those that have been kissed by fire.
Those thoughts are quickly, firmly banished.
(There's a lot of shit Jon hasn't properly dealt with. A lot that was put on the back burner in favor of dealing with far more important things that went beyond the scope of his own personal turmoil.)
Jon does as he's told, lying back and resting his head in his great uncle-grandfather's lap. It's very much not sexual at all, but something far more foreign to him; familial — parental, even. For while Ned Stark claimed him as his own and had him brought up within Winterfell's walls, there hadn't always been the time (or space) to dote on him in the way he did his trueborn children. Especially once there were more than just Robb.
So many incidents of upset, from nightmares to skinned knees to the simple sadness that came with being 'othered' within a family that otherwise showed one another so much love, where Jon cried by his lonesome while Ned saw to his other children and Catelyn coldly ignored him.
Most people wouldn't have to clarify that familial physical contact isn't sexual, but Targaryens are not most people. The pools are different. And while Daemon thinks Jon might do with the release of getting off, he doesn't think he's the right one to facilitate it. Too much.
He smooths Jon's hair back, sorting out dark waves, getting any strays out of his face and feeling gently along the lines of the seams of his skull. This goes on for a minute or so before he starts to sweep patterns over his forehead and temples, pausing sometimes to press small circles into spots between his eyes or at the corners of them. The girl who did this for him became one of his regular favorites, and they hardly ever fucked; she would explain in a soft voice what she was doing, and why, patient in the face of his murmured questions. Those years after his father died and when Viserys began to pull away were brutal ones, for Daemon. Shut out of the remnants of his family, loathed by his wife, he found comfort where he could.
"There's a nerve that runs here," he says quietly as he carefully tugs at one of Jon's eyebrows, as though lifting it away from his skull. "It's why you get headaches when you frown."
Probably not. But it still feels good to have it manipulated. Relaxing.
Much like the dark, grayish purple of his eyes that's only visible in certain lights, there are silvery strands scattered throughout here and there that are normally hidden by the thickness of his stark locks and dismissed as the grays that accompanied stress by anyone who caught sight of them. Another hint towards the truth withheld from him that no one, including himself, never thought to take a closer look at.
Jon sighs, far more content than he thought himself capable of being. Was it what his ancestor was doing with his hands or simply the comfort of being welcomed wholeheartedly by a blood connection? He doesn't know and right now, doesn't care.
"I never got headaches until the cold Beyond the Wall," he finds himself saying, eyes remaining shut. "Never got sick, either. My brothers and sis— cousins all came down with touches of the typical ailments of childhood, but I never did. Lady Catelyn hated me for it. She hated me for a lot of things."
The younger man goes quiet for a moment, but for once eh's at ease enough to ponder aloud—
"Sometimes I wonder if she would have resented me less had she known. If he'd told her who I was from the start."
Would she have kept his secret or would she have sold him out to the Baratheons first chance she got in order to keep her Stark children safe from the legacy of Lyanna's Targaryen son?
Obsidian hair like dragonglass; one of Saera's bastard daughters had red hair, and Daemon called it dracarys to her squealed delight. When he and Laena returned to the Red Keep to present their baby daughters, he had lifted one of his toddler nephews up, looked at his brown hair, and declared him the spit of Rodrik Arryn, a man of endless integrity and loyalty to Jaehaerys, who had been a worthy and beloved husband for Daella.
Jon looks plenty Targaryen.
"Mm." Listening. Thoughtful. He murmurs, "I've never been ill."
Daemon is not aware of the legend of Targaryens being immune to diseases— formed after his time. Absurd, because plenty have been sickly, Viserys most prominent of all, but he's aware that his constitution is unique. Perhaps Jon has some of it.
"She should have been your mother."
No wonder it hurts still.
"What would you have done, in your Stark father's place?"
"I wanted her to be," he finds himself admitting. "I wished for it, when I was a boy. I saw how she was with the others and I wanted that, but I grew to resent her for her cruelty, even if I understood why she felt the need to be awful towards me."
He says it like a confession being spoken to a face carved into the white wood of a heart tree, like a secret shame he's never spoken aloud. Something he feels immensely guilty for, given the woman's fate. As horrible as Catelyn Stark had been to him, she hadn't deserved to die the way that she did, to lose Robb and never see her daughters again. It wasn't her fault that she never knew the truth Ned had shared with no one.
"One of the perks of leaving for the wall was being free of her hatred for me. But the curse of being a bastard does not lift when one leaves home. It goes with you. Followed me all the way to the Wall. She was able to scorn me from afar by hating me through the men who were supposed to be my sworn Brothers."
Bitter. So much bitterness, so much that he told himself he had no right to feel, as it was simply the way of the world for bastards.
But he wasn't a bastard. Jon Snow as a construct, a lie. A deception meant to protect him from the harm what would have come to him, not welcome torment.
"I would—" He tries to answer, but upon opening his eyes to take in the sight of the ancestor whose Valyrian features were mirrored in the father that was slain before he was born, he finds himself suddenly choked up by the prospect of doing things differently, and his what-ifs veer in an entirely different direction. "I should have been raised by my parents. My real parents."
Jon's vision swims, Daemon's features blurring against the sudden flood of tears as the seal he'd placed on sadness he'd told himself he had no right to feel when Ned Stark had been the only parent he'd ever known breaks.
Daemon has been accused, many times, of being a poor listener; some in his social circle (such as it was) would chuckle and say he learned to listen when he became a father. The truth is he's always been an excellent listener— clever, sneaky, attentive, while pretending not to be, because to be perceived as a dutiful audience was to invite lecture. Anyone who knew him well could figure that out, given his ability to remember detail and craft plans.
He let his daughters know he was listening. This took some practice, and he was not always successful at seeming anything but detached, but he got better at it over the years. Not the best father, but not the worst. He allows Jon to know he's listening, now. To have the space he needs to speak, and, hopefully, a feeling of enough safety to do so unimpeded. He continues to stroke his descendant's forehead and temples, not straying lower to make him feel muffled.
The pain must be crippling, for a man to weep.
Hands move lower, pressing flat over Jon's chest to hold him. There's a pang of kneejerk instinct in him to dislike this sort of display out of him, but it fades. He knows those thoughts are useless, things on the other side of the same coin that Rhaenyra was paid, standing iron-stiff at her mother's funeral and whispering to him I will never be a son. None of them are safe from smothering tendrils of respectability, and even he must shove them off, from time to time.
"My boy, my boy. You are a good son."
Murmured in a comforting tone. He knows Jon doesn't understand, but he can't quite express it the same in Westerosi common. Boy and son could be the same, but he compounds them just for Jon, the Valyrian language allowing him to. Ice-blood, wolf-child, fire-son.
Jon has held Ned Stark high up on a pedestal for so long that voicing any sort of complaint or criticism towards the choices he made, especially when those choices kept him alive and safe, feels traitorous. It feels wrong to be frustrated by the lies that were told, but he can't help but recall moments from his youth when he was yelled at and ordered to never bring it up again when he would ask questions about his mother. Ordered out of fear, yes, but he'd been a child.
A child who had no idea who he really was.
An adult who would have never known had it not been for a passing footnote in a High Septon's diary and Bran's ability to look back through events that had already played out. If not for the series of events that sent Sam to Old Town and put Bran on the path to becoming the Three-Eyed Crow, chance are he would have never known.
One of his hands comes up to grip one of Daemon's. He doesn't understand a thing his ancestor is saying in those dulcet tones, but it's enough. Far more than has been offered to him thus far.
(Even Ygritte would have told him to get over it.)
"A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing," he finds himself saying as he reigns in the sudden swell of emotion. "Maester Aemon told me that. I didn't understand then, but I do now."
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hieroglyphics2023-02-02 11:18 pm
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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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
"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.
no subject
"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.)
no subject
"That's the spirit, son."
Or, rather, the High Valyrian equivalent of such a saying; more like You're building the fire correctly now. That word, tresy, hangs there at the end, in context with the part of grammar that says Daemon is addressing someone directly. And now Jon knows what it means, knows that Daemon is casually referring to him as kin.
Stuck here together. What a fucking time.
They'll move on tomorrow, and see what there is to see.
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Whether he gasped or screamed, he doesn't know, only that he's still whole and there are no assailants looming over him as he bleeds out in the snow.
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Grand-uncle has sat up on watch, and he's still there when Jon is yanked from sleep. Sitting there and sharpening one of his knives (not the dagger, not the sword, neither of which ever require sharpening, just the one he uses for food). He pauses to listen to the younger man, head tilted to catch any distinctive movement in his peripheral vision, but not turned enough to look directly at him.
Nearby, the dragons shift about, the sound of their breaths like the tide.
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Did she know? Did someone tell her that he died and was brought back to life? Did she think his night terrors were born of the horrors he saw at Hardhome, being too slow to save Rickon from Ramsay, or something else entirely? (Would he have told her the truth about who he is?)
Jon may never get the chance to ask her or thank her for her subtle kindness. They were so awful to one another as children and just when they were beginning to mend the chasm between them, he was brought here.
In truth, Sansa was the (faux) siblings he had missed the least while at the Wall. Now she's the one he misses the most.
"Sleep and I don't get on well as of late," he grouses, sitting up and running a hand over his face. "Have you yet to rest?"
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The metal sound of sharpening continues for a moment, Daemon resting there with his elbows on his knees, looking like an ordinary traveler. The light paints him in different colors, silver hair and violet eyes hidden in fire. Which is a bit poetic, all considered.
Eventually he says, "No, but Caraxes has slept."
And he feels marginally rested for it. Not all pairs are so closely entwined, and Daemon won't be able to actually answer any What the fuck's that about inquiries, but it is what it is.
"Do you dream?"
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It makes no sense, that Daemon would feel rested because Caraxes dozed, but he opts against questioning it. He's a man who was brought back to life after bleeding out in the snow. Who was he to question a shared sense of restfulness between dragon and rider? Especially a dragon and rider who have a deeper connection than Jon will likely ever have to Rhaegal — not just because of Jon's inexperience, but how less refined his Targaryen blood is.
"I recall," he responds bitterly, sneering at unseen shadows in the distance, echoes of unpleasant recollections that have yet to fade from his groggy mind. "I recall when I would like nothing more than to forget."
To forget, to rest, to be without one thing or another haunting him in some way. He's tired.
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There are a lot of people who would lose their shit laughing to hear Daemon Targaryen speak of evil men as if he's not the worst. But he doesn't see himself as one— if he was, he'd have done so much worse, so much sooner. He really would have been another Maegor. He could have been, he had the power to.
Well, anyway. If Jon were worse, he wouldn't mind what had happened to him; he would feel immortal, and revel in the power. His own fault he's upset by it all. Have you considered being the villain, Aerion?
The older man stops his sharpening, and puts the knife away. He stands, but only to shift over to him.
"I'm going to sit behind you," he says, "and I want you to lay down again."
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He would have beat Ramsay Bolton to death had Sansa not stopped him. He had certainly wanted to. It had been satisfying to slam his fists into the face of the bastard who'd defiled and traumatized his
sistercousin, who murdered innocent young Rickon, who had stolen his family's ancestral home from them and turned their own vassal lords against them.Sansa had fed Ramsay to his own dogs. A poetic end if nothing else, but a part of Jon would have loved nothing more than to have done it himself.
Had he been bonded to Rhaegal at the time, he would have fed the false lordling to his dragon.
Jon's brows knit together in confusion as Daemon draws near. He doesn't move away, but he doesn't lie back down yet, either. "...why?"
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It's a very mild reproach, but still. Sparks of confidence and serenity around all his moping. Pick a lane, kid. Or more constructively, focus on the good he has instead of the bad, if the bad is so miserable he can't even sleep. Daemon is a hypocrite, being a professional brooder himself, but Jon has the air of someone who'll sink down into the depths and never return if someone doesn't poke him with a stick about it.
Daemon settles behind him, unbothered by the younger man's confusion. He pats him on one shoulder.
"I'm going to rub your head. A whore in Lys taught me, but don't worry, nuha tresy, it's nothing sexual."
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Those thoughts are quickly, firmly banished.
(There's a lot of shit Jon hasn't properly dealt with. A lot that was put on the back burner in favor of dealing with far more important things that went beyond the scope of his own personal turmoil.)
Jon does as he's told, lying back and resting his head in his great uncle-grandfather's lap. It's very much not sexual at all, but something far more foreign to him; familial — parental, even. For while Ned Stark claimed him as his own and had him brought up within Winterfell's walls, there hadn't always been the time (or space) to dote on him in the way he did his trueborn children. Especially once there were more than just Robb.
So many incidents of upset, from nightmares to skinned knees to the simple sadness that came with being 'othered' within a family that otherwise showed one another so much love, where Jon cried by his lonesome while Ned saw to his other children and Catelyn coldly ignored him.
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He smooths Jon's hair back, sorting out dark waves, getting any strays out of his face and feeling gently along the lines of the seams of his skull. This goes on for a minute or so before he starts to sweep patterns over his forehead and temples, pausing sometimes to press small circles into spots between his eyes or at the corners of them. The girl who did this for him became one of his regular favorites, and they hardly ever fucked; she would explain in a soft voice what she was doing, and why, patient in the face of his murmured questions. Those years after his father died and when Viserys began to pull away were brutal ones, for Daemon. Shut out of the remnants of his family, loathed by his wife, he found comfort where he could.
"There's a nerve that runs here," he says quietly as he carefully tugs at one of Jon's eyebrows, as though lifting it away from his skull. "It's why you get headaches when you frown."
Probably not. But it still feels good to have it manipulated. Relaxing.
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Jon sighs, far more content than he thought himself capable of being. Was it what his ancestor was doing with his hands or simply the comfort of being welcomed wholeheartedly by a blood connection? He doesn't know and right now, doesn't care.
"I never got headaches until the cold Beyond the Wall," he finds himself saying, eyes remaining shut. "Never got sick, either. My brothers and sis— cousins all came down with touches of the typical ailments of childhood, but I never did. Lady Catelyn hated me for it. She hated me for a lot of things."
The younger man goes quiet for a moment, but for once eh's at ease enough to ponder aloud—
"Sometimes I wonder if she would have resented me less had she known. If he'd told her who I was from the start."
Would she have kept his secret or would she have sold him out to the Baratheons first chance she got in order to keep her Stark children safe from the legacy of Lyanna's Targaryen son?
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Jon looks plenty Targaryen.
"Mm." Listening. Thoughtful. He murmurs, "I've never been ill."
Daemon is not aware of the legend of Targaryens being immune to diseases— formed after his time. Absurd, because plenty have been sickly, Viserys most prominent of all, but he's aware that his constitution is unique. Perhaps Jon has some of it.
"She should have been your mother."
No wonder it hurts still.
"What would you have done, in your Stark father's place?"
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He says it like a confession being spoken to a face carved into the white wood of a heart tree, like a secret shame he's never spoken aloud. Something he feels immensely guilty for, given the woman's fate. As horrible as Catelyn Stark had been to him, she hadn't deserved to die the way that she did, to lose Robb and never see her daughters again. It wasn't her fault that she never knew the truth Ned had shared with no one.
"One of the perks of leaving for the wall was being free of her hatred for me. But the curse of being a bastard does not lift when one leaves home. It goes with you. Followed me all the way to the Wall. She was able to scorn me from afar by hating me through the men who were supposed to be my sworn Brothers."
Bitter. So much bitterness, so much that he told himself he had no right to feel, as it was simply the way of the world for bastards.
But he wasn't a bastard. Jon Snow as a construct, a lie. A deception meant to protect him from the harm what would have come to him, not welcome torment.
"I would—" He tries to answer, but upon opening his eyes to take in the sight of the ancestor whose Valyrian features were mirrored in the father that was slain before he was born, he finds himself suddenly choked up by the prospect of doing things differently, and his what-ifs veer in an entirely different direction. "I should have been raised by my parents. My real parents."
Jon's vision swims, Daemon's features blurring against the sudden flood of tears as the seal he'd placed on sadness he'd told himself he had no right to feel when Ned Stark had been the only parent he'd ever known breaks.
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He let his daughters know he was listening. This took some practice, and he was not always successful at seeming anything but detached, but he got better at it over the years. Not the best father, but not the worst. He allows Jon to know he's listening, now. To have the space he needs to speak, and, hopefully, a feeling of enough safety to do so unimpeded. He continues to stroke his descendant's forehead and temples, not straying lower to make him feel muffled.
The pain must be crippling, for a man to weep.
Hands move lower, pressing flat over Jon's chest to hold him. There's a pang of kneejerk instinct in him to dislike this sort of display out of him, but it fades. He knows those thoughts are useless, things on the other side of the same coin that Rhaenyra was paid, standing iron-stiff at her mother's funeral and whispering to him I will never be a son. None of them are safe from smothering tendrils of respectability, and even he must shove them off, from time to time.
"My boy, my boy. You are a good son."
Murmured in a comforting tone. He knows Jon doesn't understand, but he can't quite express it the same in Westerosi common. Boy and son could be the same, but he compounds them just for Jon, the Valyrian language allowing him to. Ice-blood, wolf-child, fire-son.
"They wanted to know you. They did."
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A child who had no idea who he really was.
An adult who would have never known had it not been for a passing footnote in a High Septon's diary and Bran's ability to look back through events that had already played out. If not for the series of events that sent Sam to Old Town and put Bran on the path to becoming the Three-Eyed Crow, chance are he would have never known.
One of his hands comes up to grip one of Daemon's. He doesn't understand a thing his ancestor is saying in those dulcet tones, but it's enough. Far more than has been offered to him thus far.
(Even Ygritte would have told him to get over it.)
"A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing," he finds himself saying as he reigns in the sudden swell of emotion. "Maester Aemon told me that. I didn't understand then, but I do now."
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