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."
He squeezes Jon's hand in return, steadying. A wonder, to think of someone like this during the battle for his ill-fated wife and queen. Not a dragonseed, but someone shuffled loose of the northmen from an affair. Perhaps even a secretly legitimized affair— most would reject the idea, of course, but Daemon would never balk at a Targaryen woman taking more husbands.
A proper loyal warrior, just waiting to be gifted a dragon. Vermithor, perhaps. Someone with a steady hand. Hm. Daydreams. Those battles are over, for Daemon. Failed and dead.
"Blood wants for blood," he murmurs. "It is different for us. One way or another."
A Targaryen apart is a Targaryen made miserable. Daemon knows it, has struggled with it a dozen different ways. Poor Jon seems to have had no options to work with at all aside from a girl making her own way. (And he's still curious, despite everyone's braindead lack of thought about saddles.)
"This place is a strange one. Not the Fires I expected, in death. But our people still await us once we pass this hurdle. We will come home."
An echo, a simple explanation for something so complicated that he never had a name for. Something he always attributed to being othered as a bastard — but that wasn't entirely why he felt so empty and lost, was it? Seven Hells, was that why he found being in the Night's Watch so suddenly fulfilling in ways life at Winterfell hadn't been, because for the first time in his life, he was around another Targaryen?
Things had changed after Maester Aemon passed when he returned from Hardhome. He assumed it was the shifting tides of power at Castle Black and the way others disagreed with his decision to offer the Free Folk sanctuary south of the Wall after their settlements were overrun with White Walkers, but it wasn't just that, was it? It was the absence of family. Of blood.
Is that why he felt so at ease in Daenerys's presence when she appeared to unnerve others? Why trusting her was so easy? Why she didn't seem all that compelled to question the bond he formed with one of her draconic sons and trusted that he would do right by Rhaegal without question when she barely knew him?
"The fires of Old Valyria?" A guess. Jon knows nothing of his father's culture, having been raised solely within the confines of strict Northern customs. "I wonder if that's what I'm destined for when death finally takes me. Fire instead of forests of weirwood trees."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nowhere) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hieroglyphics2023-02-02 11:18 pm
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
A proper loyal warrior, just waiting to be gifted a dragon. Vermithor, perhaps. Someone with a steady hand. Hm. Daydreams. Those battles are over, for Daemon. Failed and dead.
"Blood wants for blood," he murmurs. "It is different for us. One way or another."
A Targaryen apart is a Targaryen made miserable. Daemon knows it, has struggled with it a dozen different ways. Poor Jon seems to have had no options to work with at all aside from a girl making her own way. (And he's still curious, despite everyone's braindead lack of thought about saddles.)
"This place is a strange one. Not the Fires I expected, in death. But our people still await us once we pass this hurdle. We will come home."
no subject
An echo, a simple explanation for something so complicated that he never had a name for. Something he always attributed to being othered as a bastard — but that wasn't entirely why he felt so empty and lost, was it? Seven Hells, was that why he found being in the Night's Watch so suddenly fulfilling in ways life at Winterfell hadn't been, because for the first time in his life, he was around another Targaryen?
Things had changed after Maester Aemon passed when he returned from Hardhome. He assumed it was the shifting tides of power at Castle Black and the way others disagreed with his decision to offer the Free Folk sanctuary south of the Wall after their settlements were overrun with White Walkers, but it wasn't just that, was it? It was the absence of family. Of blood.
Is that why he felt so at ease in Daenerys's presence when she appeared to unnerve others? Why trusting her was so easy? Why she didn't seem all that compelled to question the bond he formed with one of her draconic sons and trusted that he would do right by Rhaegal without question when she barely knew him?
"The fires of Old Valyria?" A guess. Jon knows nothing of his father's culture, having been raised solely within the confines of strict Northern customs. "I wonder if that's what I'm destined for when death finally takes me. Fire instead of forests of weirwood trees."