Chapter Text
Daemon woke with a gasp. The breaths he took were short and rapid. His heart was threatening to beat out of his chest. His eyes stared at the canopy of his bed in bewilderment.
Didn’t he just die?
He stayed as he was until his breathing calmed and his heartbeat slowed.
He did not recognize the canopy he was staring at.
Where was he?
He rolled over on the bed and his stomach rebelled at the movement. He stilled with his head buried in a soft pillow and let the nausea pass. There was a pain reverberating deep within his skull.
Was he drunk? He didn’t remember drunkenness feeling like this.
He groaned. He was too old for this. Way too old.
He gingerly lowered his feet to the ground and put his head into his hands and stayed like that for some time, waiting for the world to stop swimming and his stomach to stop rolling.
When the dizziness finally passed, he got up to stumble over to the washbasin and splash some water on his face. He needed to wake up, but his usual alertness was slow to return to him. He scrubbed at his face with a towel until not a drop of moisture could have remained, and did not feel any more awake for it either.
Swaying as he walked, he moved over to a window and rested his body against its frame, hoping fresh air might aid him. He let the rays of the sun caress his face and smooth out the frown lines that marred it. The warmth was easing the pain that still lingered behind his closed eyelids, and he breathed out a sigh of relief as the tension slowly started to drain out of him.
It was a long time before he opened his eyes again.
He listened to the sounds of a busy castle. There was a myriad of noises and smells coming from below him. Horses were neighing, metal ringing as blades met in easy clashes, voices laughing… and Caraxes. He could hear Caraxes warbling somewhere not far. A stone he had been unaware of fell from his heart, and he sagged more completely against the stone. Caraxes was here.
He opened his eyes with a smile. His situation could not be too bad when Caraxes was within hearing distance. He looked out into the yard below him and was content.
Something niggled at the back of his mind as he stared out. Countless colorful banners fluttered in the breeze, but Daemon’s sight caught on the coat of arms chiseled into a stone archway.
Strong.
Huh.
Harrenhal looked a lot less…charred than he remembered it.
He shook his head to banish the silly thought. Harrenhal had always been charred, hadn’t it?
He pushed away from the windowsill and decided to get ready for the day. It seemed to him that he was quite late for it already. Getting dressed took an unusual amount of time as his memory kept failing him. He reached for his breeches only to find them placed elsewhere. He reached for his shirt, and it was not a color he remembered last wearing.
A frown made its way to his face and deepened with every failure of his patchy memory. He must have truly drunk more than ever before. This was unlike any drunkenness he had ever experienced before.
As he wandered out of his chamber and into the busy corridor, he found himself at a loss. Where was he supposed to go? He found himself shaking his head to clear it once more. What was wrong with him?
Daemon let himself be carried by the flow of people around him and found himself in Harrenhal’s great hall. That was good. Now that he smelled food, he could hardly believe he had not felt his great hunger before.
He smiled and let his feet carry him to the closest table laden with food. He was about to sit down when a high, outraged voice sounded near him. “Kepa! Are you not coming to join us?”
He blinked in confusion as he looked around himself, only turning his gaze downward after a sharp tug on his sleeve.
His breath left him as he met the eyes of his niece and he breathed out a horrified “Rhaenyra” as he went to his knees. His little niece. His wife. The mother of his children. His stomach turned. He remembered fathering three children on this child. His stomach turned at the thought, and oh Gods, he was going to be sick.
He got up abruptly and nearly ran from the hall, no longer even remotely hungry.
There was something wrong. He remembered things that could not be. He would never touch his little niece so. Never. She was the first babe he ever held in his arms. She was the first child to ever call him kepa, and she was like to remain so unless Aemma…
Once outside the castle, he headed unerringly for Caraxes. He needed to get to him. He needed to fly. Fly away from the horrific images seeing his niece brought forth in his mind.
He mounted swiftly, not bothering with the chains, and flew. Flew for hours and hours, keeping his mind carefully and blissfully blank, one with Caraxes and the wind and nothing else. When he came below the clouds at long last and landed, he did so on the Isle of Faces. He needed to be alone.
He collapsed to the ground as he climbed down from his faithful companion and rolled to his back to stare up at the sky, puffy clouds slowly passing above him.
He remembered things that could not be. He remembered taking his four-year-old niece to wife. He remembered their three children, Aegon, Viserys, and the stillborn Visenya. He remembered a horrific war, dragons and dragonriders dying. He remembered dying himself, plunging into the very lake surrounding him.
He remembered his brother as a weak king. He remembered his brother refusing his petitions for an annulment of his marriage with the hateful hag that was Rhea Royce, again and again. He remembered his brother exiling him on the word of a stranger again and again. His brother threatening his life. His brother calling him a plague. His brother dying a rotted man.
He closed his eyes in pain.
There were some good memories too, thank the Gods, and he reached for them desperately.
He remembered marrying a beautiful lady, a dragonrider, wild and free. He remembered their travels. He remembered their beautiful twin daughters. And then he remembered her death. And that she was his cousin’s nine-year-old daughter.
Bile rose within him, and he could no longer keep it down. He retched pitifully under the judging eyes carved into the trees that surrounded him. He heaved and heaved, but as he spat out his last and wiped his mouth, he was determined. It would not happen. Daemon could not let any of it happen.
The vote had not happened yet. Had it, there would not be so many banners there still. The nobles had dispersed almost immediately after, and Daemon himself had flown off to celebrate in King’s Landing, only for his grandsire to send him back to the Vale without delay.
He cast his mind back to his morning observation of the banners. There were some missing. The Starks had arrived last, two days before the votes were to be cast. Their banner was nowhere to be seen in Harrenhal yet that morning. There was time. There was still time to do something.
His mind was set when he climbed back atop Caraxes shaken but firm. He knew what had to be done and he would do it.
Daemon’s heart stuttered as he came to land back at Harrenhal and sighted the blasted Stark banners approaching the castle. There was not much time left, then.
He strolled into the keep and did what he had not done since coming to Harrenhall for the Great Council. He went to his cousin’s chambers.
Neither Rhaenys nor her husband were there, which suited Daemon just fine. He entered the chambers and positioned himself to look outside, resting against the wall for support. He would need all the strength for the conversation ahead. Daemon had been his brother’s greatest supporter. He had gathered an army to defend his brother’s claim. He could scarce believe what he was about to do now.
He was lost in thought for a long time, and it was his cousin’s gasp as she entered her chambers to find him there that brought him back to the present.
“Daemon, what are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you, cousin. We have much to talk about.”
There was resentment in her voice. “Like how I should withdraw my claim because I am a woman and the realm will not accept me? Do you think yourself the first to tell me that? Do you truly believe Viserys to be the better choice? Why? Because of a little sausage dangling between his legs?”
Daemon hesitated but remained turned away from her. “No. Like how I would be willing to support your claim under certain conditions.”
She scoffed. “Truly? And what would those conditions be?”
“I will require that you give me a blood-oath that my demands will be met.”
The skepticism was clear in her voice. “And just what would those demands be? That I give you my firstborn?”
Daemon let out a dark chuckle. He wished he could ask for that. But Laena he remembered did not exist yet. There was only a little girl that, Gods willing, would never grow to be her. “There are four. The first is that my marriage be annulled at your ascension. It has never been consummated, so there are grounds enough.”
He took a deep breath as he continued. “The second is that you do not arrange or allow arrangement of betrothals for your children or my niece. Let them choose freely, if they even have a wish to marry at all. There has been enough cause for suffering in our family already. The third is that you will never allow a Hightower or any of their ilk into a position of power or influence. The fourth…”
His voice failed him. He betrayed his brother enough, but if he spoke these words… He closed his eyes and steeled himself. “The fourth is that you never allow Viserys to marry again.”
The voice of his cousin was horrified. So was Daemon. “What? Why would you do this? Why would you ask this?”
Daemon let a solitary tear roll down his cheek. “Viserys will not have a son. Not by Aemma. Not with how he damaged her already. If he were to take the throne, a war would eventually follow.”
He let out a trembling breath and his voice was barely more than a whisper. “I dreamed it, or I lived it, I know not which. But I have seen what my brother’s desire for a son and his weakness wrought, and I cannot let it happen. I died in the waters of the Gods’ Eye, having slain Vhagar, avenging you and Meleys, avenging a boy I loved like my own son.” He shook his head. “Nothing good can come of my brother ascending the Iron Throne.”
His cousin’s voice was broken. “Daemon…” She came to him and embraced his back. Silent tears were running down his face. “I will swear it.”
“Thank you.” And he turned in her embrace to return it.
And so, the day before the votes were to be cast, Daemon stood in front of his family, the great council of maesters, lords, great and small, and spoke his support for his cousin and her claim. Not his brother’s and not her son’s. Hers.
The Rogue Prince’s support shocked many and swayed more.
With dragonriders united, there seemed a little need for the vote to be cast and yet, to keep with the king’s plans, the vote proceeded.
The results were hardly a surprise. Princess Rhaenys would be the first ruling queen of the Seven Kingdoms.
The Rogue Prince gave his congratulations to his cousin and climbed atop his dragon, Caraxes. It would be many years before he was sighted in Westeros once again.