Chapter Text
Chapter I The Tower Of Horror
"They say foul beings of Old Times still lurk in dark forgotten corners of the world,
And Gape still gape to loose, on certain nights,
Shapes pent in Hell."
Justin Geoffrey
Daemon Targaryen, the Rogue Prince, Prince of the City, Lord Flea Bottom didn’t know how he went from falling to his glorious death at the Gods Eye to…here.
He had meant for it to be his last flight. Him and Caraxes, one last stand. A heroic final act that would inspire bards for generations, ensure immortality for his legacy. His last victory would have been remembered for generations. A story told for centuries!
Daemon was desperate, his dear beloved dead children whispering reproach in his dreams. So many reproaches and each one of them warranted; Daemon had thrown himself on Vhagar and her rider to try and drown them out. He was determined to prove his loyalty to his family with this last ditch act as dragonrider. It was his right as a prince of the blood, as a Valyrian, as husband and father. It would spare him from his queen's (his niece's, his love's) accusatory glances, but it would certainly have killed him.
Aemond was right about one thing; Daemon Targaryen had lived too long. He had sported mourning attire so often that at times he felt like the only colors he could see besides black were the red scales of Caraxes and the sweet red of blood.
Dark Sister was deeply embedded in the monstrous eye of his abomination of a nephew and they were falling, falling…their dragons screeching…
He had seen Caraxes, enraged by the battle falling alongside him, his majestic body still roaring in a furious attempt to defy their fate, defy death itself.
They were falling, the water getting closer and closer. Vhagar’s unrelenting grip pulling them down, and down…until.
There. Here.
Until he was somewhere else entirely. Splayed on hard rocks. No, not rocks; the smoothness beneath him indicated human intervention. Flagstones?
Daemon had kept his eyes open during his fall, prepared to meet death face to face. Instead he found himself face to face with a midwife dead on the floor, her head turned towards him. Her face was barely a few inches from his, her eyes were clouded over, terror frozen on her features. He could see another lifeless body a little further on his left.
Repulsed, he rolled over as far from the corpses as he could, trying to ignore the indignity of a prince crawling around on the floor. He didn’t have the knees of his youth anymore.
He pulled himself upright, amazed that his muscles answered his command, burning from physical turmoil and his mind still spinning with the thrill of battle. Vertigo seized him and he had to lean on the wall.
All of this was wrong. He shouldn’t be here, wherever here was. He shouldn’t be able to move injured the way he had. Aemond had almost got the better of him, even if he loathed to admit it to himself. But there was no trace of any of the wounds he had sustained. Exhaustion seemed anchored in every fibre of his being, but otherwise there was no trace of his violent fight with the kinslayer.
He looked around and around, until his vision began to spin and he realized he was in a round structure he had never seen before. He made his way to the nearest window and looked out, fighting nausea the whole way. Sand. Sand everywhere his gaze set upon. No Harrenhal, no Gods Eye, no dragons. Wherever he was it was not like any part of the Riverlands he recognized. There was no sand like this north of the Red Mountains. How in the Fourteen Flame was this possible?
He had gone from falling to his death above the Gods Eye to a tower in the middle of nowhere with two unfamiliar corpses.
A whine tore him from his trance and he spun to face the source of the noise, reaching for Dark Sister as he did. His hand found the pommel of his ancestral sword at his side, in her rightful place before he remembered she should still be buried in Aemond’s skull. He spun around, his eyes falling on the only other living person in the room.
The girl was lying on a bed surrounded by a ridiculous amount of flowers – blue roses, he noted absently, their perfume not enough to cover the smell of blood that permeated the air. She was going to die and it was no wonder why. She was petite, and pathetically young thing to be pregnant. She was little more than a child herself, certainly not a woman by any of Daemon’s criteria. Even lying down it was clear she was short of stature, her curves were still far from blossoming, despite her state of advanced pregnancy and her breasts leaking milk. She must have been a boyish girl before some asshole had put her in this condition.
Still in shock, Daemon distantly realized she might be younger than Sweet Rheana and Mulish Baela. The girl turned her head toward him, her stare feverish as she tried to focus on the only other human in this oven of a room. Why was it so hot? The room reeked of Death.
What in the Seven Hells was happening? How had his glorious battle with Aemond and subsequent fall (his last gesture of devotion for his wife and their children, the ultimate proof that he never betrayed his Queen) led him…here?
Was this a part of Essos he had never visited? Could it explain the warmth he felt?
Then the woman, the girl, was howling a horrible, heart wrenching sound. A child begging for her mother.
Daemon knew this sound all too well, had heard it before from the women he had loved. Knew their exhaustion from childbirth.
Daemon! Daemon Daemon!
He had often heard men and women comparing the experience to a battlefield. Daemon strongly disapproved. He would have preferred hours on the battlefield any day to ten minutes of being stuck in a birthing chamber. And he had only ever been a spectator, not an active participant.
The presumed midwives were dead at Daemon’s feet, their eyes blank, their features frozen in a twisted grimace. There was no one else in the room. Daemon’s eyes fell on the door, desperate for a way out. What could he do, already covered in blood and gore, for this unknown child unable to access or stupid enough to forsake Moon Tea?
Daemon couldn’t help. He could not help, but he could not leave either. He could not even say why. It was beyond logic, beyond all reasoning, all rationality. And yet, he couldn’t bear to leave this child alone to die. Because she was going to die, her own spawn sucking out all life from her eyes. Her big, wide, grey eyes. So different from the angry purple eyes of his wife which nothing ever brightened anymore. Not even their children.
Slowly, suddenly afraid for some unfathomable reason, he came close to the bed. She was going to die, Daemon did not need to be a healer to see that. There was already so much blood soaking the bed he was surprised the girl was still alive.
He could see the milky pale skin of the girl, a northerner, if he had to guess, her long hair tangled and soaked with sweat. But she was a noblewoman all the same, no smallfolk girl would have merited multiple trained healers or such luxurious furnishings in such an isolated tower.
She held her head high despite her pain and exhaustion, a frown of anger and defiance on her long face. All highborn ladies had the same defiance when confronted to the finality of their fate. As if something so undignified as death could not reach the pampered, precious daughters of Lords in their ivory towers. Dying in childbirth was a scary story whispered to one another, the source of tragic tales and meant to elicit pity for orphans whose unfortunate mothers succumbed bringing them into the world. As if Death was something that only happened to other people.
Andal ladies tended to act like they were immune to the realities of childbirth, protected by the Mother Maiden and Crone themselves. As if Death could not reach them, not the pure and fair believers of Westeros.
Northerners should know better, having rejected the Seven as thoroughly as they had, but this one was a child barely off her mother's teats. A child having a child of her own.
Hesitating for only a moment Daemon bent to touch her cheek and found that despite still drawing breath her skin was already cold as marble.
Suddenly his hands were clasped in hers, her eyes boring into him. Daemon was too surprised to immediately pull his hand from her grasp, which was surprisingly tight for someone who had to be tired and in so much pain. He couldn’t even remember seeing her move; she had been so quick about it.
He shook off his surprise and tried to pull away but her grip was abnormally strong and she held him steady. Her fingers curled like claws into his rough hands.
“Help me. Save her.”
Save her.
Daemon opened his mouth and closed it again. He was at a loss for words.
He wanted to run from this room, to flee. Why couldn’t he manage to order his body from this hellish room? Even the stones around him seemed to sweat, humidity building between the crack of the walls.
“Hold on.”
He couldn’t believe these were his own words. He felt disconnected from his body. He could hear a call in the distance. No. Not in the distance. Here. He couldn’t hear it, for there was nothing to hear. He felt it.
What you destroyed, you will revive.
Destroyed. What you destroyed. The accusation echoed in his ears and his mind as if it had been shouted in his ears.
Destroy.
Dark curls, a shy smile, and worried eyes. So unlike Harwin’s, no matter what their own family thought. A bloated, deformed corpse, eyes eaten by fish, full Targaryen lips torn apart, mouth open and white teeth in a horrible imitation of a grin. Forever.
Daemon had woken up for months from nightmares of Luke floating in a sea of blood, curled in his dragon remains, brave Arrax's last attempt to protect his rider.
The girl was pleading with him.
“Help her.”
Little Jahaerys was standing near his bed, his throat cut clean open. His orders to the thugs had been ‘a son for a son’. Not this. Never this. It had been a mistake. Alicent was the one he should have aimed at. The ghost had his mouth opened in an eternal silent scream, his eyes full of the purest fear. A child desperately crying for aid, for an adult, for his family to protect him from a nightmarish world. His gaze never strayed from Daemon, even as he faked sleep. The ghostly boy watched his uncle’s strong body, which shielded his aunt and cousins so often. He watched his murderer struggling to breath in his feigned sleep.
Destroy.
Viserys, so young, so clever, following Lucerys into Balerion’s realm, so far away from all of them.
Destroy.
Jacaerys, his spirit dead, dead long before he looked upon the burning ships and gave Vermax his last order. Long tentacles reaching for him, grabbing him to rest beside his beloved brother.
Destroy.
Helaena, sweet soft simple minded girl. No more responsible for the cursed blood in her veins than Daemon’s shame of a brother. Less so even.
Destroy.
Rhaenys who wished to straighten things with Laenor’s acknowledged heirs, the babies his son tried to make her love without succeeding. A son who witnessed her disappointment and rejection, having been himself the recipient of such the last fifteen years of his life. Longer, for his birth had shadowed beloved Laena’s. Rhaenys was forever silenced, now, her tears unseen by the son she had lost too soon, the grandsons she never cooed over, smiled at, ensured of her protective encompassing affection. Emulating their own grandsire's attitude. The Queen-That-Never-Was was not given a Targaryen funeral and her husband had brought his bastards under their roof even as the crows were feasting upon her flesh.
Destroy.
Aemond. His mirror. The permanent reminder of his constant failure. Failure as a son, grandson, brother, cousin, father, uncle. Husband. Failure as a Targaryen. A Prince.
“Help me!”
Daemon!
He had not managed to save any of them. He was only able to avenge their deaths, one by one, his rage nourishing itself from smoke and salt.
And this stupid child thought he could help her? Him? He had failed to save almost everyone he had ever loved. How was he meant to help her, whoever she was?
Daemon!
“Help her!”
Desperation bled from every word. How dare she command a Prince?
His body still refused to respond to his panic, to run. To search for Caraxes through their bond. His eyes never left the too smooth belly for a woman in labor.
Daemon!
Daemon!
Terror seized him but, like a walking corpse, for maybe it was exactly what he was, he cleansed his bloody calloused hands in the bowl of gently steaming water prepared near the bed.
He thought of the midwives at Laena’s side, their hasty hushed murmurs, the concern in their glances. They had been careful to scrub their hands clean.
So he mimicked them. And he prayed to whatever god had deigned to bring him here, to this terrible birthing chamber. He cursed them for bringing him here in the same moment calling for their help.
He had known his fair share of female intimacy but there was nothing appealing in the act of birthing. He found himself recoiling multiple times from the sights and smells of the birthing bed lest he become violently ill.
Blood was soaking the bedding and dripping on the floor, saturating his expensive boots in viscous red, coating his arms even as he whispered comforting nonsense to the poor girl.
She barely had the strength to cry. How was she still alive? Humans were not meant to survive this much blood loss. Why was he even helping her? Why was he fighting the inevitable? Because he was Daemon Targaryen and any challenge was to be accepted.
A yell more strident than all the others. A part of Daemon was impressed by this girl’s lungs.
He leaned between the barely covered legs. He noted absently the strong thighs of a horse rider, one with enough experience that their limbs took the shape most suited to their mount. His Bronze Bitch had been the same. He couldn’t stop his grimace at the unwelcome comparison.
Something was battling inside her womb, battling to live, their movement strong enough to make him fear something would break through the skin, phantom fist and foot kicking the lower belly of their flesh prison.
What could he say? What could he do? Cut her to try saving the baby? He wanted to vomit at the mere idea, Aemma’s and Laena’s accusing faces and frightened eyes in his mind.
He wouldn’t. He focused instead on the task at hand. Breathed deeply and steady as his teachers in the training yard, so long ago had taught him. He needed to focus.
Later he would have few clear memories of the half day and whole night spent kneeling beside Princess Lyanna. One of the few things he would be able to call to mind with little effort was holding her imploring, grasping hand and her pleas echoing in his ears.
“Is it going to be alright?”
No, of course it wasn’t. It would be a miracle if the baby made it, this birth was such a mess, but the girl was far too small and skinny for this. Had no one thought to feed her properly?
“Yes, you are almost done.” He had lied. Over. And over. “You have to push.”
Push. That was what the midwife always said, right?
“Push girl, push, in the name of the Fourteen Flames! It will be over soon.”
It never was. Hours and hours seemed to pass, and the sun began to fall, the heat of midday slowly retreating from the birthing chamber.
“You’ll hold your child soon,” Daemon told the girl, swearing under his breath, exhaustion clear in his voice.
If mother and babe lived long enough. More likely, their corpses would be buried together, Daemon thought.
Daemon firmly ignored the voice assuring him he would be the one to do the deed.
Still kneeling, he observed with a sort of detached horror, as the girl dilated a little more, more blood gushing forth coating her thighs.
And then, finally a miracle. The crown of the baby’s head appeared, barely visible through the mess.
Relief flooded him. Whatever this atonement, this strange nightmare had been, it would be finished soon enough, one way or the other.
With any luck he would be able to ditch the bodies in a hole before the heat of the next day began to decompose their flesh.
Then he saw underneath the gore, barely visible in the light filtering by the poor excuses for windows, white golden hair so bright even the mess of birth couldn’t hide the truth from the Rogue Prince. Daemon had held a dozen Valyrian infants in his life. He knew immediately.
A Targaryen baby.
He had been saved from a certain death and transported to this place to assist in the birth of a Targaryen baby.
“You will help save for love what you have destroyed for love.”
The clouds in his mind cleared. Any cynical tough crushed by bright, renewed, hope. He didn’t care who the father of this child was. Aegon, Aemond, Jacaerys, it did not matter.
Dead. They were all dead. Or soon would be. There would be no forgiveness from either side.
He could see himself presenting his Queen with this improbable beacon of light, this silver lining in years of endless grief.
No one would ever call this child a Dragon Seed. He would make sure of it.
They were no replacement for the children lost. But they were a sign from the Gods, and destined for greatness. For Daemon should be dead far from here. This was some God’s whim; there could be no other explanation. A God he never put his trust in had brought him here to assist the birth of a Targaryen child and he would honor their trust.
Here was an innocent newborn. Here was a chance for the Dragons. A reason for his continued presence. The sign he had been waiting for without knowing it.
Daemon's voice was no longer hollow when he encouraged the girl but awed and trembling with barely contained emotion. He addressed her directly, the mystery future mother of a child from his blood, abandoning any distance, terms of endearment rising from his tongue, cajoling her.
Darling. My Lady. Sweetheart. Beloved girl. Whoever she was, she was a Lady and had conceived a Dragon.
Pox on Nettles for predicting the Death of his family by his hands. Pox on her for desecrating his love for the one woman he ever loved.
Here was a Targaryen. Here was an heir. Untainted by the hatred of the Dance.
“We are almost there”, pleaded Daemon, as feverish as the young girl, suddenly. We.
“I can see your child. They have their father's hair. Please, love, you did good, we are almost here. They are almost with us. You are so brave my lady, a wonderful gift from the Fourteen Flames.”
He firmly flung away any thoughts of stillbirth, malformation, and child dead after only a day. Not this one.
“Push, love. Push, for me. Push for your baby. Our baby.”
He sponged the sweat from her brow for the hundredth time, before returning to the crux of the matter trying to help the child on their way out. His hands cleaned anew, trembling with anticipation. He could almost hold them.
What could he remember of the midwives chit-chatting? The head came first, not the feet, so no breech birth, he knew that much. But what other complications could arise? The umbilical cord came to mind but he couldn’t see well enough to tell if it was wrapped around the child's neck and that was a rare occurrence, wasn’t it? No he could see the neck, no sign of the cord strangling the babe before they were even out of their mother.
He had not dared to pull before seeing the shoulders, but as soon as he could see them through the gore he did not have the luxury of hesitating. The mother had no strength left in her. So Daemon delivered the Targaryen newborn to the world, cursing and praying in the same breath, pulling the child from the poor mother as gently as he could, drawing a resounding appalling howl, more beast than human, from the girl.
A final scream petered off into a whimper, her voice definitely wrecked, Daemon’s ears rang, followed by a little almost affronted cry. A cry neither the girl nor Daemon had produced. The prince felt faint.
The baby lived. The first Targaryen child since his own Viserys had been born. He could feel them feebly squirming in his hands, chest rising and falling with each tiny breath.
Viserys had been a beautiful baby, healthy and thoroughly cleansed before he was presented to his father.
In Daemon’s hands was a small, crimson red newborn, covered from head to toe in blood and birthing fluids. A simultaneously gruesome and beautiful sight.
He was too amazed, too fascinated to be repulsed. He hastened to strip the hideous little face from the…thing covering them, fearing it could impede their breathing. In his haste, his arms got caught in the umbilical cord, not yet cut and discarded, eliciting a new complaint, void of strength from the now nearly forgotten child bearer.
Daemon inspected the baby with ravenous greed. It was a girl. Too small, too quiet. He couldn't have cared less. She was his blood, his family. Just when he thought he had been cursed to stay alone for eternity, to spend the rest of his miserable existence locked in a deserted Hell, save for a pregnant reminder of the Bronze Bitch as a penance.
He could have cried, as he did when Rhaenyra delivered their first child, Aegon. Aegon, who he had fervently wished to call Gaemon before accepting her argumentation. They needed to rob any legitimacy they could from the ones eager to see Alicent’s child as heir to the Conqueror’s legacy.
The child, under the viscous birth fluids and blood, had pale, unmistakable Valyrian tufts of hair. A silvery golden hue, so like Rhaenyra’s.
Daemon cooed at the little girl. She grabbed the strand of Daemon’s tangled hair caressing her cheek and seized it as if it was some prize. Her grip was feeble, almost hesitant. A sharp contrast to her conduct inside her mother’s womb.
Daemon couldn’t hold a chuckle.
“You already know who you can mess with, don’t you, my little Fiery love?”
She mewled. An offended sound.
She looked like Rhaenyra. Like Visenya should have.
The thought came. Unbidden, almost shameful.
Rhaenyra had also been an eager entitled brat since the very moment she tasted life.
This newborn already bore a serious look demanding the respect of whoever stood in her presence.
A barely audible mumble broke Daemon’s focus.
A supplication.
The purple eyes of the Rogue Prince turned immediately towards the clearly non-Targaryen mother. She was weeping. Pain, exhaustion and knowing her end was near. Daemon could not have said what could provoke her sorrow or if she even knew herself. She must have realized she would not live to see the dusk. He unsheathed his dagger and in one clean movement, severed the cord between mother and child. She didn’t react, didn’t even move to try to protect herself when Daemon pulled out the blade, she was completely focused on her newborn in the Prince's arms. Said Prince was hastily crafting a knot, begrudgingly thankful to Corlys for his lesson on sailor’s knot.
Daemon felt a rare sentiment rise within him. Shame. He was not going to be able to save the mother of this Targaryen child. A death for a life. The gods were satisfied. The Northern Lady had made her sacrifice, bequeathing his family an invaluable gift.
She lay on the blood soaked bed, waiting to meet her daughter. Waiting for the Stranger to take her.
Hastily he used a mostly clean sponge and dry sheets to make the child presentable. He would be able to reassure the little princess her mother rocked her against her breast and covered her with her love for as long as she lived. Not that she wouldn’t be loved by anyone Daemon would allow in her vicinity.
Another spasm and the after birth came, adding to the pile of gore accumulating between the poor girl's legs.
She sighed, almost relieved, and for one second he feared she had breathed her last. But her grey eyes were still shining and were searching for her child.
Daemon was uncertain of how he could further help her, now that the birth itself was done and the child, against all odds, was safe and breathing regularly in his arm, so he just sat beside her, ignoring the blood so she could see the child.
“Look my lady, it’s a girl.”
Daemon’s voice was soft, his smile devoid of anything but joy, careful to clearly show his satisfaction, lest the young woman believe he wasn’t satisfied by this outcome. He was prepared for the girl’s disappointment. Every mother wanted to grant their husbands and lovers, sometimes their own family, with a male heir, to be able to rest in peace knowing their duty was done and the child would be well provided for. Daemon was prepared to swear the newborn would be cherished nonetheless. But he was rewarded by a faint smile of triumph.
“Help…hold…”
There was no way in the Seven Hells Daemon was willing to risk his new family member to the shaking hold of the skinny, dying child. She could barely move her arms. But he humored her, raising her on the pillows and posing the baby alongside her arms, careful to keep his own grip on the fragile little treasure.
She smiled. And Daemon, for the first time, could see beauty in her face. Yes, she could have been, must have been a very pretty girl before the difficult pregnancy sucked her energy and her health. Even now her somber grey eyes were fetching, as if holding some dark secrets that only the lady herself knew.
He felt a certain fondness for the poor thing, imagining too easily how she could have ensnared herself a Dragon.
None of Alicent’s sons, Daemon decided, for the whelps were only Dragon in name only and not in heart; entirely unlike the little hatchling trying to reach for her mother, smacking her lips impatiently.
He could feel it in his very bones.
Daemon was unsure if nursing was a safe idea but once more the dying girl overruled him. “Get her to me.” Then as if realizing what she was giving orders to a Targaryen Prince she softened her tone.
“Please, Rhaegar.”
The name made him jerk in surprise. Rhaegar? Who in all the hells was Rhaegar? Rhaegar was a Valyrian name, old fashioned, derived from the same root name Viserys chose for his oldest living child. The name had always felt pompous to Daemon, they had all been lucky Rhaenyra grew into it. Rhaegar…A name only a scholar would choose. Like Vaegon son of Jahaerys, the name didn’t hint at a literary background as much as it shouted it.
Both his father and his uncle Aemon had been dead for decades and he could hardly imagine the Archmaester Vaegon littering Westeros bastards anyway. For all that Viserys had claimed him to be an irresponsible whoremonger Daemon had usually taken pains to make sure the whores he did sleep with during his farce of a marriage to the Bronze Bitch wouldn’t end up with a child that could leveraged against him. The odds of having a bastard he didn’t know of and that bastard gallivanting unknown by all and impregnating a Northern lady was laughable. Viserys didn’t cheat. Never, not even during the shameful farce that was his second marriage; Jaehaerys’ lesson about unchecked dragon seeds had stuck in Viserys, like it had in Aemon and Baelon before him. No he preferred to marry his whores before sowing the perfect condition for a civil war and the total destruction of their House.
Daemon seethed, his teeth grinding, raising an army and a dragon for his ungrateful brother's cause had been the first in a long list of thankless tasks thrown his way over the years.
The Rogue Prince shook himself. He could think about his older brother’s foolish choices later. He had more important things to work out at the moment, he pushed down his confusion at the name that hadn’t been used in his family line in centuries and did as the dying girl asked.
Within seconds the baby was suckling with gusto to the exhausted delight of the Northern lady.
Well that was one problem delayed for the moment. For he had no idea where he was going to find a wet nurse for a Targaryen princess in the desert.
All of the sudden, he heard a commotion outside, men yelling in surprise and terror- so they were not as isolated as he had feared- followed by the unmistakable shriek of Caraxes.