Chapter Text
i think there's been a glitch
five seconds later i'm fastening myself to you with a stitch
and i'm not even sorry
nights are so starry
blood moonlit
it must be counterfeit
i think there's been a glitch
glitch, taylor swift
In the gentle place between sleep and wakefulness, Rhaenyra felt no pain. She was warm and comfortable and rocking gently side to side as though a babe in arms once again. She did not rush to consciousness until she became aware of its lack. She opened her eyes and saw above her dark wooden beams. She blinked sluggishly as the smell of salt and the sound of seabirds stepped into her awareness. She sat up and felt a chill skim over her skin as the blankets slipped down letting the air at her shoulders. She realised then she was in bed fully clothed, in a shoulderless red dress as though she had simply crawled amongst the blankets in the middle of the day. She was on a boat, that much she knew. Though amongst which sea and between which ports, she could not say.
It was familiar, though she did not know why that was either.
Across the small but well-appointed private cabin, a very familiar coat lay across a wooden chair, black and embroidered in gold all over with a high red velvet collar and four golden clasps down the centre to hold it closed. She shoved the blankets off of herself altogether and stood with a small stumble. Her balance must be off as the ship had not wavered. She reached out for the coat and saw her own hands come into her line of sight properly for the first time. She dropped the thick fabric and stared at her hands. The skin upon them was clear and unscarred, several of the fingers adorned with rings she had not seen since she was perhaps ten and eight or nine. Her hands flew to her face, and she could find not one line or wrinkle there at all, and then to her belly, flat beneath her dress as it hadn’t been since before she’d borne her children.
Her heart began to pound, her breath to stutter in her lungs, as she spun to take in the room once more. This ship belonged to her father, she was sure of it. She dragged on the coat without fastening it and stumbled out of the cabin, blinking sharply into the bright morning light.
“Princess! Are you feeling better?” Goosebumps erupted over her skin and she turned to see Ser Criston Cole approaching with apparently-genuine concern on his face.
It was as though she were being spoken to by a ghost, and the rage at his betrayals came quick and white hot. But before she could throw him from the side of the boat for whatever scheme it was he was inflicting upon her now, the sound of a semi-distant dragon’s cry caught both of their attention. They turned in search of a glimpse of the beast only for Cole to shout to all aboard to take cover.
Rhaenyra did not, not that any of them noticed, busy as they were cowering for their lives. The dragon cried out again, this time much closer, and her stomach clenched with another sense of familiarity.
Caraxes appeared out of the clouds as he always seemed to, absent one moment and here the next, screeching as he blew past them. The end of his long tail struck the crow's nest and shook the boat sending her tumbling to the ground.
“Princess! Get the maester!” Cole ordered, and as she stared after Caraxes - meaning, Daemon was here - the memory assailed her all at once.
This was the morning she had cut short her tour of the seven kingdoms in search of a suitor. The morning that Daemon returned victorious from the stepstones as King of the Narrow Sea and surrendered his crown to her father. The morning before he would take her out into the city to show her the pleasures she could still find even if she were chained in a marriage not of her choosing, and abandoned her half-naked and alone in a brothel on the street of silk.
It was impossible.
The last she could recall saw Sunfyre’s teeth—
She shuddered and forced her eyes back to Caraxes in the distance. Had it all been a terrible strange dream? She swallowed hard, not altogether comforted by the theory. Her father’s words of the prophecies dreamt by Aegon I swam in her mind and she gripped the side of the boat to remain upright and straight-faced.
By the time she made it back into the red keep, expecting events to follow as they did in her memory - Daemon strutting through the great hall with the crown of the narrow sea atop his head, then surrendered to his brother for the open promise that Viserys would later deny him - her heart had still yet to slow.
It was then that she heard the shouting.
Daemon. Demanding— her own name caught her attention, and she sped up to an un-dignified run towards the Great Hall where the shouting was coming from.
“—without delay or I will cut through every man here who denies me her! WHERE IS RHAENYRA?”
Her father - her father! Alive! - was barking orders for calm, for Daemon to stand down, while the gathered witnesses of the court murmured at the scandal unfolding before them.
Rhaenyra nearly tripped over her own feet running into the throne room, and she could not entirely take in the scene before her: the stares from the gathered courtiers, her father’s confused frown and Daemon… Daemon’s stare, furious and then flayed alive as he turned in her direction.
He launched towards her with the stride of a predator, and though she felt as though her knees could crumble beneath her, she forced herself to keep moving forwards and they collided in the middle. He caught her and pulled her so tightly against him she could scarcely breathe, but in response she merely threw her arms around his neck and held him yet tighter to her.
“Iksā glaesa?” He mumbled into her neck, You are alive?, “Ñuha ābrazȳrys, iksi glaesa.” He sounded light-headed with relief and amazement. My wife, we are alive.
“Kessa iksi, valzȳrys,” she murmured back, Yes we are, husband.
“Skorkydoso kostagon bisa sagon?” He asked, leaning back only far enough that they could take in one another’s faces for the first time in too long. How can this be?
“Iā ēdrurys.” She said, hands pressed to his cheeks as his were to hers, “Istis sagon”.
A dream. It must be.
“ENOUGH!” King Viserys bellowed from the throne, casting silence down in the wake of his shout.
Daemon turned them both towards her father, head snapping up as though he had forgotten his brother’s presence entirely. Rhaenyra knew she had.
“Everyone out!”
The gathered courtiers, unused to such a display of rage from the King, rushed for the doors Daemon and Rhaenyra stood in front of, and Daemon picked her all the way up off of the ground to move them both out of the way. For a long, sweeping moment, they were hidden from the eyes of Viserys and Otto and the Kingsguard.
“You are speaking of a dream as the Conqueror had,” He said, voice low and quick, “Tell me what you saw.”
“Today you will offer my father your crown and then take me beyond the keep,” she told him, his actions this night long forgiven, “Your proposal to my father tomorrow will fail and we will be separated. We will not see one another for many years after we each marry the Valeryon children, and after their deaths, we will finally be wed. Our children—” she heard her voice tremble, and swallowed hard to level it, “So many of our children will die at the hands of the usurper and,” her voice cracked, “and you —”
Here, Daemon stopped her, his purple eyes blazing with rage and anguish, apparently unconcerned by his own demise. “And you,” he finished for her, “In our home, he will murder you, my Queen.”
“You saw it as I did.” She breathed, and he tipped his face to lean his forehead to hers. “What do we do?” She asked him, so overcome with shock and confusion that for the first time in a long time she truly did not know, and he raised his head to press his lips to her forehead instead.
“We make Viserys listen,” He said with certainty which smouldered with rage as the crowd thinned around them at last, “And then we kill Hightower.”
She did not ask him to which Hightower he referred. This version of Alicent may be less guilty than the woman who had caused the loss of her precious Visenya, but she was by no means innocent.
The heavy wooden door slammed behind them, leaving them accompanied only by the kingsguard at last.
“You will explain yourselves at once,” Viserys ordered, “And take! Your hands! Off of my child!”
They separated to turn to face the King but kept their hands joined between them.
“I know you are angry,” Rhaenyra said before Daemon could speak, “But I beg you to dismiss all but Daemon and I so that we might speak freely.”
“Your Grace I must counsel against—” Otto began, but Daemon did not let him finish.
“You will remove this traitor from Rhaenyra’s vicinity or I will remove his head, brother.”
Hightower recoiled, and Viserys’ gaze snapped from them to his Hand.
“You know of my skill with a sword. I can achieve it from even this distance.” Daemon threatened, and Rhaenyra squeezed his hand yet tighter in her own. If they were truly destined to fight with near everyone they knew, it would not do them well to add her father to the list.
“Kostilus, Kepa.” She begged, taking a small step forwards and ignoring all but her father as she implored him in their native tongue, “Emi olvie naejot ivestragon ao.” Please, father. We have much to tell you.
Viserys met her gaze and stared her down, as though awaiting her to confess to some strange elaborate hoax. It did not bode well for his reaction to the story they had for him which was far stranger than what he had yet heard and seen.
“Very well,” He acquiesced at last, “My Lord Hand. Go to the hall of the small council and await me there.” His voice turned hard, serious, “Though I caution my kingsguard to remember that I have not yet accused Lord Otto of anything untoward.”
Hightower nodded to the King and swept from the throne room with a murderous look shot at Daemon as the guard filed out behind him.
The moment the door closed and they were alone, before her father could ask them again, Rhaenyra was already talking.
“We have had a shared dream. An impossible dream, identical to one another down to the most terrible details.”
Having received a dream he himself believed to be prophetic, Viserys slowly sat back down on the Iron Throne. “Both of you?”
Rhaenyra nodded, and swallowed hard. “Please forgive us our… uncourtly display. We are having a very strange morning.”
“It cannot be so strange as mine, daughter,” the King warned, “So I suggest you tell me everything at once.”
So they told him everything. How Otto Hightower’s machinations had led to a civil war, Viserys’ own denial of Daemon’s proposal led directly to Alicent being able to accuse Rhaenyra of adultery and crown her own son despite Viserys himself naming Rhaenyra his heir until his very last breath. Neither of them, however, could bring themselves to mention the specific manner of his death and, mercifully, he did not ask.
“She and her contingent kept the news of your death from us until they had crowned the usurper. The stress and the rage was so great that I—” she stopped, unable to say the words aloud again. So many children dead, and all for a power grab from the woman who had once been closer to her than a sister.
Jace and Luke and Joff and Viserys II all gone as barely more than boys. Baela and Rhaena had survived, as had Aegon III, thank the old gods.
But… Rhaenyra felt a chill soak all over her. But they hadn’t, had they.
She turned sharply to Daemon, feeling tears in her eyes though she could not stop them from pooling there.
“She knew no pain, my love,” Daemon told her, not for the first time, “Our girl never drew breath to know pain.” But Rhaenyra had begun to tremble as she gripped at his doublet and shook her head madly.
"Issi mirre morghe.” They are all dead. “Daor! Qubykta se morghe!” No! Worse than dead! Daemon tried to pull her in but as panicked as she was fast becoming she was fighting him off as she had when news of her father’s death had reached them. “Lo ziry sia drējī iā ēdrurys, pōnta gōntan daor glaesagon rȳ mirre.”
If it were truly a dream, they did not live at all.
She gave up with a whisper and fell against Daemon’s chest. He held her fast to him as her words sank beneath his skin in turn.
“Kesi tepagon zirȳ ābrar istin arlī, ñuha jorrāelagon,” He murmured the promise into her hair. We will give them life once again, my love.
“īlon daor. Daor pōntoma.” She said numbly, we cannot. Not all of them. “Kesi daor pirtir lēda tolie. Daor mirre arlī.” We will not lie with others. Not ever again.
“How many children did you lose in this dream?” Viserys asked, his voice gentled in a way that Rhaenyra was used to but Daemon had not heard directed his way since boyhood.
Daemon answered for the both of them, their technical parentage of no concern in the same way it had not been when they had joined their families in marriage. Her first boys had been as much his as his first girls had been hers. “Five. Four in battle and one in the birthing bed.”
“From hearing of my death and Aegon’s crowning,” Viserys clarified, understanding the words Rhaenyra had been unable to say, and Daemon only nodded. Who was more familiar with such pain than his brother, after all?
Rhaenyra did not speak. Her arms were not around Daemon for once but wrapped tightly around her empty belly. Daemon paid her father little mind as he stroked his fingers through her hair.
“You do not—” the king stopped, corrected himself, “You told me you did not want marriage or children.”
“I did not,” She answered finally, pressing her forehead briefly to Daemon’s chest and then straightening to stand on her own, “But children have a funny way of appearing whether we want them or not if we act as adults do. And once Jacaerys was here I found I could not remember not wanting to be his mother.”
“A good strong name,” Viserys said, as though they were presenting the boy to him here and now.
Rheanyra could not bear to linger overlong on the memories of her burned children, and so continued to outline the dream for him. When she spoke of Aegon II ordering Sunfyre to eat her on Dragonstone, Daemon gripped her hand so tightly she thought the bones would crack.
“And this is the end of it?” Viserys asked.
Before Rhaenyra could speak to confirm, Daemon shouted at his brother, “Is that not enough?” And before Viserys could say a word in turn, Daemon continued, “Your son will grow up to murder my wife and children!”
“And you, my husband,” Rhaenyra could not stop herself from adding furiously.
Viserys raised a gloved hand to them both, though he did not raise his voice in return.
“I will remove my Lord Hand and exile him at once,” He said, flicking his eyes to Daemon, “And you have leave to execute the traitor Ser Criston Cole before he partakes in this treason.”
“And what of the traitor Lady Alicent Hightower?” Daemon demanded, and Viserys eyes shuttered.
“Be careful with her,” Rhaenyra said suddenly, though where the impulse came from she knew not, “Perhaps, in the absence of her father and his manipulations if we are careful with this foreknowledge, we could prevent what she has yet to do.”
“Then we ought to spare the knight as he has not yet committed the crimes of which he is accused,” the King said, and Daemon drew breath with the clear intention of arguing, but Viserys did not let him. “Enough, brother! I am speaking semantically. Kill the knight, make an example of his treason to keep the rest in line.” He cast his eyes upon his daughter, “But if Alicent is a spy for her father sent into my chambers like a creeping disease to destroy our house from within, I must know.” He returned to Daemon, “Retrieve Hightower and the kingsguard but leave me a moment with Rhaenyra.”
“I do not wish to be parted from her—”
“And I do not wish to wed my favoured child to a whoring, gambling, power seeker twice her age! But according to the two of you, we must all now do things we do not wish.” Viserys’ booming voice echoed down from all sides.
“So you will wed us?” Daemon asked, seizing upon the King’s wording.
“Out!” And this too rang from the ceiling, and Daemon mercifully backed down.
“As you command, brother,” Daemon said before withdrawing one of the many blades hidden about his person. He presented it to Rhaenyra, hilt first, knowing her to be unarmed.
“No one will attack me today,” she protested, even as she took it from him.
“Not that we have seen,” He appeared to agree, “But already we have changed things. And I will not take chances with your safety.”
And once again, as though her father were not looking directly at the both of them, Daemon kissed his wife. By his standards, by theirs, it was chaste. Not so in the eyes of the King, by accounts.
“Seven hells,” the King muttered, and Rhaenyra only narrowly avoided laughing as Daemon winked at her on his way out of the great hall.
Viserys rose, a familiarly amused look on his face that she had not seen in a while. “If I approach to greet you daughter, will I find myself with a belly full of my brother’s blade?” He asked, and the dagger clattered to the floor as she launched herself into her father’s arms.
For him, it had been two and a half moons since he had seen her. He had missed her accordingly. For her, it had been years since his death, and she the same. He kept up a soothing litany of calming words as he held her and she sobbed in his arms.
“You truly believe us?” She asked him as he settled her back to the floor, giving no indication of how much it must have hurt his many wounds to hold her so tightly. She wanted to ask him but she did not want to hear the answer.
“I do,” he nodded, somber, “Many things can be faked. Anger. Tears. But the pain of children lost? That is something only those of us who have experienced it can understand. If you were lying I would have known it by that alone.”
“We named one of the boys for you,” She told him, and she saw his own eyes fill with tears as she had not since the death of her mother, “We sent him and his brother away for safety as they were both so terribly young when the war broke out. But the greens captured their ship and only Aegon III managed to escape. Stormcloud was not yet big enough to carry them both. I do not believe my darling boy ever truly recovered from having to leave his little brother behind.”
She could not imagine how it must seem to her father, to hear these words coming from a Rhaenyra who appeared outwardly to be only ten and seven.
Viserys placed both hands heavily upon Rhaenyra’s shoulders and locked their gazes together. “They may have been born only of dreams, but I will make sure the very real pain you have suffered in losing these children will not be in vain. I swear this to you, daughter.”
She sighed heavily and crouched to retrieve the dagger as Daemon returned, trailed by Otto and the kingsguard.