Chapter Text
Aemon Targaryen
“It is a strange thing to be dead, is it not, nephew?”
“I suppose you would know.”
“Would I?”
He did not reply and instead glanced around him. He had his eyesight back. He had noticed that first, of course. It was hard not to notice the fact you could see for the first time in over thirty years. And he had immediately put his re-discovered eyesight to good use. Not that there was much to see other than Brynden Rivers, who looked much the same as he had the last time Aemon had seen him over fifty years before. Just shadows and darkness. The shadow did move though. That was interesting given there was no breeze and nothing that seemed to be able to cast shadow.
“Why are you here, Brynden?”
“They thought you might like a familiar face. I did tell them Egg was a better choice...but they thought me to be more suitable,” Brynden replied. His hand gestured toward the shadows behind him that continued to sway slightly.
“I suppose it is bad news I am to here then?”
“Well, it’s not good news,” Brynden replied carefully.
“You were always adept at delivering bad news.”
Brynden laughed. It was a horrible thing, just as it always had been. Yet it bought a small smile to Aemon’s face.
“Is this this what comes after death? I must confess; I hoped to see my brothers and sisters again.” He was silent for a moment and then, unable to stop the words tumbling out, continued, “I’m afraid that if you are here to deliver bad news that I have had enough of it for a lifetime...perhaps even two. I do not wish to hear it.”
“This is what comes after death for a lucky few. Or an unlucky few. I rather suppose it depends which way you wish to look at it.”
He nodded, still peering into the darkness. “I would have liked to see Egg again.”
“I know.”
There was something in Brynden’s voice that made him glance toward his uncle. Brynden was looking at him far more softly than he had in life, with red eyes that showed more pity than the man had ever seemed capable of giving.
“Why am I here?”
“You died with your siblings’ names on your lips having lived your entire life for duty and doing what was honourable and right,” Brynden said eventually. “They wonder if you were born into the wrong house, Aemon. Family, Duty, Honour are Tully words, not Targaryen words.”
“I did what I thought was right.”
“I suppose you did,” came the soft reply. “Do you regret it?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
He made to reply but could not open his mouth to get the words out. He swallowed and tried again, but was still unable to speak.
“We all do our duty when there is no cost to it,” Brynden murmured. “You said such to a young boy once, do you remember?”
“Jon Snow.”
“Rhaegar’s son.”
He sighed and closed his eyes before he opened them again. He wanted to denounce the man as a liar. But what use were lies in a dream...or whatever this was. And the way that Brynden was looking at him told him that it was not a lie. Or at least the man did not believe them to be a lie. “I did not know.”
“We had rather gathered that. Besides, how were you to know?” Brynden asked wryly, gesturing behind him to the shadows around them that still swayed as though there was a breeze. “You would not have offered such as advice if you had known.”
“I would not,” he admitted quietly. “What happens to him? Do you know?”
“What happens to all things. They die,” Brynden replied.
He took a step toward the shadows, bringing him level with Brynden. Brynden turned with him, so they were stood side by side gazing at the shadows.
“The Children.”
He started, his eyes moving backward and forward to try and work out where the voice had come from. “What was that?”
“The Gods,” Brynden said carefully. “They watched you, as they watched every man, woman and child who has ever lived. They remember what you said. What you felt.”
He nodded, suddenly feeling even older and more tired than he already was, if such a thing was possible. “If I had been young,” he said quietly. “I would have gone to them. It was not an easy choice.”
“You had many days where it was not easy, Aemon,” Brynden continued gently. “Days where you had to choose. So many choices. You always held to your vows. They wonder, what that determination to duty would have done if – the very first time you chose duty over family – you had chosen family instead and done your duty to them, as you should have done.”
“I am afraid I do not understand.”
“When your brother died your father asked you, again, to stay in King’s Landing. Do you remember it?”
“I do.” He could remember it as clearly as if it had happened not a few moments before. His father’s fury had been spectacular, and he had never seen anything quite like it. He had fled the Red Keep the next day, back to Dragonstone, and never returned.
“You were wrong to pick as you did.”
“Wrong.” The words echoed back from the shadows again.
He took a step back as the shadows seemed to move closer toward him.
“I could not have stayed,” he whispered.
“Wrong.”
He mulled over the words for a few moments. And the more he did, the certainty that he had made the right decision all those years before began to vanish and doubt crept in. He could have stayed. Aerion and Egg were there. He could have served them as a personal Maester, or even just stayed in the Red Keep and learnt from the Grand Maester – there was precedent, after all – but he had not wanted to upset the Citadel. Perhaps if he had stayed things might have been different. Egg might not have done as he did...and Aerys could have been stopped. But perhaps not. Perhaps some things could not be changed.
He did not know.
He hated not knowing.
“You always did your duty as a Maester,” Brynden murmured eventually, breaking the silence. “When Maekar asked you to stay. When you went to the Wall. When Egg died. When Rhaegar, Rhaenys and Aegon died. When Daenerys birthed her dragons. Time and time again you chose your duty. What was it you said?”
“Love is the death of duty.”
“Yes, that’s it,” Brynden said. “Foolish words for a man too cowardly to admit he has done wrong. Love is duty, Aemon. Do you think I went to the Wall because it was my duty?” Brynden snorted and turned toward him and Aemon turned to face him. “I went because you were going.”
“You left me,” he said, the words sounding accusing even to his own ears even though he had not meant them to. He did not speak again though, unwilling to apologise. Instead, he stared into his uncle’s face and watched as several emotions flickered over it.
“I did.”
He turned away from Brynden and back toward the shadows. “You said the Gods wonder what would have happened if I had chosen family instead?”
“They do. I do. Don’t you?”
“Of course,” he replied, turning back to Brynden. “Every day for over fifty years. But it does not change what I did. I chose my duty, as you said.”
Brynden smiled sadly at him. “You did. Time and time again you were tested. Even when you were old they tested you because, after so many tragedies in our House, the Gods wished to see if you would still stick by your oaths. And you did.”
“You need not remind me,” he said sharply.
“Why? Does it hurt?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Of course it hurts. Are you truly so cruel as to think that reminding me of the deaths of our family – of the children – would not hurt? Do you truly think they are things I could so easily move past? I grieved their loss every day. I wept for them.”
“We weep for them."
“YOU DID NOT KNOW THEM!” He roared, turning toward the shadows. “They were my blood. My family! I have regretted my choices every day. You need not torment me so!”
“Dragon. Dragon. Dragon," chanted the shadows. "Dragon. Dragon. Dragon."
“They wish to make you an offer,” Brynden said, completely ignoring his outburst and gesturing to the shadows in front of them.
He sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to will down the dragon’s blood that coursed in his veins. He had not felt such rage in years. He had grown so used to ignoring it that it felt strange to have it back. Like an old friend you did not realise you had missed.
“You cannot hide yourself here,” Brynden whispered. “They know you, Aemon.”
He glowered at the shadows. But, finally, once he was sure he had his emotions under control he said, “let us hear it then.”
“Seventy years we will give you back, a gift of life you should have had, but nothing gained is ever free, paid in years they shall not see,” breathed the shadows.
He stared at the shadows for so long that he could almost feel his legs tiring. At least they would have done if he could feel anything, but he could not. He could not feel his body at all, he realised. He could feel his emotions more strongly than he had felt them before, but his body...he felt nothing. Almost as though it was not there.
A new chance.
Could he do it?
Did he want to do it?
To live again and change his family’s future? It was a gift. And a curse. He would have to live his days knowing that he would likely outlive them all. Could he bring himself to say his goodbyes again? He did not think he could. He was a coward at his core. He had barely survived it the first time and if he had a second chance and still failed to save his family he knew he would not survive it. And what then? What if he made it worse?
“You do need to give them a response,” Brynden said after what could have been hours had passed by. “The Gods have lingered here long enough.”
“Who shall not see years?”
“I think you already know the answer to that,” Brynden said gently. “You always were sharp.”
“I must live with this choice for the rest of my days,” he said eventually. “I would appreciate not being rushed. Even by the Gods.”
There was a whispering in front of them and a noise that could have been a snort. He peered into the darkness again but could not discern anything other than the shapeless shadows that seemed a bit lighter than the rest of the darkness. He wondered, for a moment, if the Gods could truly be so cruel as to return his sight and make the first and only thing he saw be Brynden Rivers, and then discarded the thought. The Gods had better things to do than torture a dead man who already tortured himself for decades.
He sighed.
If he had learnt anything over the course of his life it was that family was family. It was easy, he supposed, to not realise what you had until it was gone. All those years of wishing he could have done something – anything – to change his family’s fates. Now here he was, with the offer in his hands and all he wanted to do was flee like the coward he was. How was he to look upon his father and brothers and sisters, knowing what he had done to them? What he had done to their descendants? But how was he to pass on if he did not take the offer? What would that say about him?
“I suppose I have no choice but to take the offer.”
“What makes you say that, nephew?”
“It would be quite churlish to reject an offer from the Gods. Although, I suppose, I could be dreaming.” He was silent for a moment and then he said, “can it not be more than seventy years?”
“How many more did you wish for?”
“Ninety-one”
Brynden’s one good red eye fixed on him and his mouth turned downwards. “You could not have saved her, Aemon. Nor could you have saved Baelor or his children, or your grandfather. No matter what you do or what the Gods wish, some of us are destined to die young. Such is the nature of things.”
“Why not?”
“Because if they had lived, the future we needed would not have come true.”
He was silent for a moment and then sighed. “If they had lived, then father would never have become King.”
Brynden laughed at him, a deep, hollow, sound that cut to the bone. “It is a hard thing, to accept. You accept it more readily than I did when I learned of my fate.”
“And what was your fate?”
“To serve. As it always has been.”
There was something in Brynden’s voice that made Aemon start and he took a step away from his uncle. It was too late though for Brynden had moved as well and put his hands on Aemon’s shoulders to grip them tightly. He grinned sharply at him – a sight that promised pain and difficult conversations in the future – and said, “enjoy your second chance, nephew. I look forward to working with you.”
And then he pushed Aemon backwards.
**
Well. This was all rather unfortunate.
Not for the first time, he wondered whether the world had always been this bright. It was painful. The way the sun came in through the window and cast its light right upon his face. The way that it hurt when he stared at it. Because how he could not stare at it? He had been blind for over thirty years and now he could see again. It was almost like telling a child not to eat all the candied lemons off a lemon cake or telling a sailor not to swear. Tell them not to do it, or they should not do it, and it would be done.
He closed his eyes against the light and then, carefully and slowly, opened them again until he could keep them open long enough to glance around him. The chambers were as he remembered as was the feather bed under his body. His fingers grasped the mattress underneath him and he had to resist the urge to shuffle down into it and let out a contented sigh. It felt better than he remembered.
He was not sure what he had expected upon waking from apparent death. A small part had hoped that, perhaps, he would still be on the boat with Gilly and Sam. If not that, then perhaps he would awake with his brother Daeron still alive.
But he knew that was not the case. Old memories – memories he had repressed for over half a century – coursed through him because they were recent memories. And memories from his future also coursed through him. He winced and closed his eyes again. It hurt.
Something was pressed against his lips, and he drank from it greedily and, a few minutes later, knew no more.
When he awoke again, he took his time trying to calm his heart as it beat against his chest and tried to force his brain into thinking calmly and not panicking. Eventually, once he was sure that he was calm as he ever could be again, he opened his eyes.
His eyes swept over the room and he swallowed.
What he had not expected, was to look upon a man he had not seen in seventy years.
He should have known better than to make a deal with the Gods. Tricky, treacherous, beings that they were.
Still, what was there to be gained by not making the deal? He had been dead. Death marched on the Wall. Daenerys Targaryen ruled in Essos, alone and under threat. Everyone he had ever truly loved was dead. The Seven Kingdoms were in chaos. It was not as though things could get much worse.
At least that was what he had thought.
Except, apparently, it could get much worse.
He glanced at the man next to him out of the corner of his eye again. The man’s face was tilted toward him slightly as he lay slumped over the edge of Aemon’s bed as though he had fallen asleep at some point and no one had thought to move him. Knowing the man as he once had, Aemon rather suspected that no one had been brave enough to try and wake him or suggest moving him. Father always had been sharp.
He looked much the same as Aemon remembered him. Even in sleep, his mouth was pressed into a firm downward line, and his brows were pinched together in concentration. His pox scarred cheeks were whiter than Aemon ever remembered them being before. He looked worried. Tense.
Not for the first time, Aemon wondered whether the man had ever truly known peace.
The last time he had seen him, he had been yelling at Aemon to leave and to never step foot in King’s Landing again. He had called him a coward and craven. He had thrown a pitcher of ale toward Aemon’s head.
They had never spoken again.
And looking upon him now, Aemon could remember the last angry words they had exchanged as though it was yesterday. The biting disappointment that, even when he was doing what was right, the other man was never happy – never content – and always disappointed with him. It made hurt ripple under his skin. Even now that he was a man who had lived a hundred name days, and spoken to the Gods, and seen the impossible happen, the memories of that last conversation with his father made his heart clench and tears bloom in his eyes.
Yet father looked so different.
Aemon had never seen him look so tired before. He had always looked so strong. But the man in front of him looked like he had aged a hundred years in a short period of time. His heart clenched slightly as he realised that, if the Gods had been right in when they would send him back, his father would be dead within three years. He had acknowledged it, of course he had...it had been but minutes before, perhaps less – time after death was hardly a well-studied thing – but to look upon his father now and know that they had time again, but not enough, hurt in a way he had not imagined it would.
Abruptly he realised that violet eyes were locked on his own. His mother had violet eyes as well. Dayne eyes. Everyone had always joked that Aemon and his brothers and sisters had been destined to have violet eyes because how could they not with two parents with those eyes? They had looked at Aemon and his siblings and seen violet eyes. Mother had had light violet eyes, almost more blue than violet. This man’s eyes were darker, almost black in the right light. His siblings had had violet eyes. But their eyes had always been somewhere between his mother’s eyes and his father’s eyes.
Yet Aemon, for all that he had disappointed his father, it was he alone who had been gifted with his mother’s eyes. In his youth, he had wondered if that was why his father had struggled to love him and look upon him with the same fondness as he did his siblings. Was his father disappointed that he did not look like him?
Now he was older, he understood.
His father had struggled to look upon him not because Aemon was a disappointment but because it hurt.
And he understood now because it hurt him to gaze upon his father and see the man that he had left behind all those years ago – the man he had turned his back on – and know that he had made a mistake. He had turned his back on his father in his hour of need. Said no when asked to provide aid.
Duty, he had said to himself.
It had been his duty to serve elsewhere. He was a Maester of the Citadel, not a Targaryen – not anymore, at least.
They were the same words he had told himself every day until the day he had died.
He had made his choice.
The wrong choice, if the Gods were to be believed.
If it had not been for their gift – so cruel in so many ways, though it felt right now – he could have cursed what he had done. To be so sure in himself and yet to have made the greatest mistake in Targaryen history. He was no better than Rhaenyra and Daemon. They had doomed the House of the Dragon and so had he.
“Aemon?”
“I am quite well, father,” he replied, turning to fix his eyes on the ceiling above him and letting the moment end. He was silent for a moment wondering whether he should try and mend the divide between them – the divide that was the only part of his relationship with his father he had ever been certain of – or to leave it be. Then, unwilling to make the same mistake again and gathering his courage, he breathed out, “I just did not expect to see you here.”
“Well, where else would I be? Daeron is dead and you nearly died on that accursed ship coming to tell me the news.”
He nodded, unsure what to say. It was not the first time that he had not known what to say to his father. He had not nearly died before, he was sure. Perhaps this would be it then – the moment that changed their futures. The death of a son was a difficult thing for any parent, yet alone nearly losing another within a few days.
“Did he suffer?”
He started, surprised by the abrupt tone of his father’s voice and by the question. Once he would have thought that tone to be harsh and cruel, but now he was a man grown and had lived so many years with men who never said as they thought – who lied more easily than they breathed – he could spot what his father truly meant. He was grieving. No wonder he looked so tired.
Last time he had simply said, “no,” and that had been the matter closed. This time, however, he wished to say more and so he cleared his throat. “No, father,” he said softly. When the words finally came out, he was surprised to realise there were tears in his eyes and his throat was tight, making it hard for him to breath. “It was peaceful, in his sleep.”
“Your brother never slept peacefully.”
He snorted in a deep breath, trying to clear his throat. He had grieved Daeron once. He could not do it again. He had grieved enough for a lifetime.
“This one was,” he replied. Then, when his father continued to stare at him with his brow furrowed, he pressed on, knowing that his father would appreciate directness over the softness of his usual tone, in a firm voice, “I made sure he did not suffer.”
“That is good,” father replied carefully.
He watched his father in silence, knowing there was more that the man wished to say and refusing to speak until he did.
Maekar, as always, appeared unbothered and possibly even unaware by Aemon’s perusal of him. As a child, and as a young man, he had often envied his father’s ability to appear either disdainful or uninterested by everyone and everything. Now, when he looked at his father with a century of life behind him, he could not help but see the way his father’s mouth tilted down under his perusal, the way his jaw tightened slightly and the way his breathing slowed.
It was an obvious thing, in truth. Maekar was the fourth son. Never expected to be King. Always overlooked until the day he had killed his brother. And then, suddenly, everyone knew who he was. And the gazes that had so often swung past him had turned scornful. It was one thing to be ignored and overlooked and unappreciated, it was another to only be looked upon because of the worst moment of his life.
He glanced away from his father and stared at the intricately carved ceiling above him.
Daeron was dead.
He had known, when the Gods had said it would be seventy years, that he would likely not be able to save his brother. Still, it cut deep. There had been eight years between he and Daeron. Too many years for them to be close as siblings. Yet, he could remember the grief he had felt when his brother had died – he could feel it now. They had not been close. But whilst Daeron had drunk himself into a stupor on every occasion possible, babbling about dragons and green flames, Aemon had run Dragonstone for him. And he had done so quietly, as any Maester should, and covered for his brothers’ inadequacies more than many Maester would.
Daeron had been such a deeply unhappy man that Aemon could still remember the relief – then and now – when he had died. In his sleep. Wits dulled by milk of the poppy. It had been a mercy, in the end, that his brother had died that way. His brother had never been happy or peaceful in life, yet in his death – when he had likely finally found the happiness and peace he craved – he had left many unhappier. Aemon had been one of them once. He still was.
He missed Daeron now. But there was something else...a relief, perhaps, that his brother would not suffer anymore. That had not been present before. Yet it was present now because Aemon was older now. He understood just how much his brother had suffered and that the knowledge that he suffered no more was enough to ease the agonising pain of his grief.
“I asked you to serve me once before on the Small Council. You refused and went to Daeron instead,” father suddenly said. He was silent for a moment, his eyes fixed on Aemon’s and then he continued, “Dearon is dead. There is nothing for you at Dragonstone. I shall not give it to Aerion.”
“I understand.”
And he did, in a way that he had not before.
How could I have been so blind?
“As such, I would ask again that you stay and serve.”
Maekar had said the words in the same way once before.
Serve. Not serve me, he thought, wondering if he had truly been so blind before. Foolish.
As before, Aemon longed to say no. He did not wish to be here. He had a duty as a Maester. He had made his vows. But now he wished to say no for a different reason. He did not want it. Could never want it. It was a curse.
Yet those vows - and the refusal before, even though he had not known what he was refusing - had cost him everything and everyone he had ever loved. He had, according to Brynden, made the wrong decision when he had said no before. There was no duty without family, and without family there was nothing. He had died almost completely alone, having failed his family more times than he could count, with the agony of the deaths of his family on his mind as they had been for half a century. He had clung to his duty out of fear of admitting that he had made a mistake all those years ago. Now he had a chance to do things differently.
But what would they say about him? He understood his father. He knew what this meant. He had not understood before, but he did now. Because the way his father was looking at him, with unguarded hope in his eyes, told him more than words ever could.
His father needed him. Had always needed him.
He would never say it. He could never say it. But it did not make it any less true.
And so, instead of saying no and fleeing back to Dragonstone as he had done a lifetime ago, he said, “it would be an honour, Your Grace.”