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Part 1 of Someone You Knew In Another Life
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Published:
2023-03-03
Completed:
2024-01-10
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Someone You Knew In Another Life

Chapter 48: Daemon

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

When Aegon didn’t return the day Daemon had told them to meet him, he almost left straightaway on Caraxes to find them.

There were plenty of reasons for them to be delayed, Daemon knew, but knowing that did little to quell the pins and needles inside of him. He’d left Egg and Harwin off and on throughout the last moon, but it had been him leaving. He’d known he would return.

He knew Harwin would as well. He’d trust no one else in this makeshift army with his son, no matter how many children Lord Darry named for Targaryen warriors, no matter how true Ser Elmo’s praise of Daemon himself rang now. The Riverlands had fractured when their queen had needed them; Daemon would rather put them all to the sword to prevent it, if he thought it would work. But the Riverlanders hadn’t been the only ones to break when their queen needed them, had they?

“A rider, my prince,” one of the Tully men said, pulling Daemon’s attention toward one of the men who’d been with Harwin when he left with his son.

They’d found a corpse in the woods and Harwin was needed to sort out whether said corpse had anything to do with the fire, when she’d still been alive. He’d get better answers from the witch than he would back at Harrenhal, and he should have known that. Daemon dismissed the messenger without another word.

They came two days later, Egg walking toward him in Harwin’s shadow. He looked unharmed, and steady enough, and Daemon almost reached a hand out to clap him on the shoulder. But then he looked at Aegon’s eyes, shadowed and downcast, and turned to Harwin. “We ride for Kings Landing on the morrow,” Daemon said, and walked away.

 

Harwin found him later, sitting in a clearing tending to Dark Sister.

“The boy thinks you’re angry,” Harwin said, his voice tight.

Daemon looked up at him. “I am.”

Something angry sparked in Harwin’s eyes at that. “You’re not angry at Egg. You’re angry at—”

“You should learn to hold your tongue, Ser Harwin,” Daemon said, turning Dark Sister this way and that, so the Valyrian steel caught and reflected the late afternoon sunlight. “Else one day you might lose it.”

Harwin huffed something that almost sounded like a laugh. “At least I use it now and then, my prince. To speak to my father, whom I would not have wonder whether his son loves him. To speak to your son, who is a fine boy and deserves not the burdens on his shoulders. To speak to a friend, whom I’d like to wallop for his words and his silence.”

Daemon pushed Dark Sister into her sheath and stood. “Wallop?” he asked with a raised brow. “Come then. Strike me.” Daemon could do with a good fight.

Harwin didn’t hesitate. He closed the space between them and punched. Daemon slid away from his fist, more out of training than out of desire to stop the blow from landing. The two of them traded blows, quick and fast and hard, until Harwin caught Daemon in the mouth and reared back at the sight of the prince’s blood.

Daemon lifted a hand to his lip and smiled.

Dusk fell around them as they sparred. In the shadows, Daemon could see little more than the shape of Harwin—the straight bridge of his nose, the slope of his forehead, the curl of his hair—and he thought of Jace. This man’s son, the best of all of them if Aegon was to be believed, who’d died trying to save his brother. He didn’t give up, Daemon knew, without knowing how he knew. He fought the water he crashed into, until he couldn’t fight anymore, until it took him like it took his little brother, like it took his dragon.

He'd fought like a Targaryen should.

He’d fought like Aegon’s father should have.

He died for her, he wanted to shout, but all he could hear was Alys’ snide voice. Prince Daemon, whose last act for his queen was to die—and who wanted it that way. He’d let himself go, let himself die when his niece—his wife, his queen—needed him. That wasn’t me, he wanted to say… But wasn’t it?

Anger pulsed through Daemon. He took the hit Harwin aimed at his jaw, feeling the pain ratchet through him, but kept moving in close. A quick punch to the gut and a shot to the jaw, and he grabbed Harwin’s jerkin before he could fall.

Daemon pulled back his arm, ready to slam his fist into Harwin’s face and bring the man down. Harwin could take it if anyone could, he knew… But he looked into the man’s face and couldn’t do it. It wasn’t Harwin he wanted to hit.

Daemon let go and Harwin dropped to the ground.

“Go. Find someone else to fight.” He looked the knight up and down—his bright eyes, his heaving chest— and added, “Or fuck.”

Harwin climbed to his feet. “Daemon,” he said.

“Go.”

Harwin went.

After he was gone, Daemon drew Dark Sister and slashed into a nearby tree, letting out a yell through clenched teeth. He did not know what to do. He’d slaked Dark Sister’s thirst on outlaws for a fortnight, used his fists and feet to bring men down, fought until he was dripping with sweat and exhausted, and nothing dulled this rage. Daemon wanted to kill Otto Hightower. He wanted to strike his brother across his smiling, well-fed face. He wanted to hold his son without feeling such shame for what the boy’s father had done.

He wanted Rhaenyra.

And why shouldn’t he have her, he thought angrily, driving Dark Sister into the ground. She was his wife, bound to him in blood as he was to her. And yet though they’d been wed for two moons, he’d slept beside her but once. He promised to fight for her, to do whatever he could to uphold her claim, but still his brother had sent him here, the same place that he’d died in some other life. He was not sure he could ever forgive him for it, even if he did not know it all. Viserys should have known him.

But then he thought of Aegon’s father, sinking into the endless waters of the Gods Eye with a smile on his face, and of the half-formed plan he’d made as he watched Rhaenyra laugh in the streets of Flea Bottom. He did not know what he might have done, if they had not stumbled upon Egg. Maybe Viserys did know him, better than he knew himself.

Daemon dropped down beside his sword and bowed his head, listening to the men chatter and bellow and sing as they ate their supper. Would Harwin know the boy liked roast mushrooms better than anything else they had on the road? He’d sent men to forage for them, when Egg had returned. The boy had likely eaten only sweets back at Harrenhal, with no one to force eggs and squash and turnips on him.

Just like his mother, Daemon thought, who sometimes still wanted to eat only cake.

Gods, he wanted Rhaenyra. He needed her.

Daemon climbed to his feet, then wiped the sandy soil from Dark Sister’s blade and sheathed her. They would return to Kings Landing five days hence, marching at top speed, but that was not quick enough. He needed her, and so he’d get to her, sooner than that.

 

If Ser Elmo Tully found it strange that he left command of their makeshift army with him and rode south himself, it was not his place to say so. On his own, Daemon managed in one day what would take the knights four, pressing the horse beneath him almost too hard. He’d have called for Caraxes, but he wanted his arrival to go unnoticed, and a dragon never did.

He passed through the gates of the city just after dusk. The Gold Cloak at the King’s Gate was one of his men, and would stay silent at his word. He slipped into the Keep using one of the passages and made his way toward Rhaenyra.

When he’d found her chambers empty, he’d made his way to his own. He hadn’t expected her to be there, and the sight of her, even in a dusty, too-small dress and riding boots, made his heart clench in his chest. Her arms had wrapped around him before he could even speak. She was shaking, he realized, pulling her somehow closer. She could not be close enough. He breathed her in, the soap she bathed with, the dust clinging to her from the passages, the smell of dragon that never completely faded from a dragonrider. He never wanted to let her go, not now that he’d made it back to her.

He’d come home from the Riverlands, like that other version of him never had. He hadn’t realized until he saw her that that was what he’d needed to do.

She was like fire, surrounding him with her heat, pressing him into the bed, clutching him until the both fell apart. The Red Keep was not his home, nor Dragonstone; she was his home, and always would be, and he would come back to her, always. Daemon had let their son down, in some other life; he’d left him so alone he’d been ready to die. He’d left Rhaenyra so alone she had died, in the maw of a monster. But he hadn’t.

Rhaenyra said the same. It won’t happen again.

It wouldn’t. They wouldn’t let it.

 

Leaving her at dawn was harder than he’d expected.

He’d left her so many times before. When she was but a tiny child, Viserys would send him off to the Vale, still hoping he would find the same marital contentment that Viserys shared with Aemma. A fool’s hope, and Daemon would leave Runestone near as soon as he set foot there. After that, Viserys would send him away each time he stripped him of whatever role he’d given him. And then came Baelon’s birth and the longest of his banishments. Four years, he’d spent away from court. Away from a brother he’d grown to hate as much as he loved him and a niece who had grown from budding beauty to his own twin flame. He thought back to what he’d told Viserys, the day he’d found out Rhea died— that he could no longer go from place to place with only his sword and his dragon. That had been true enough then, and even truer now. He’d found his home. He would keep it.

After bidding Rhaenyra goodbye, when Daemon reached the passage that would take him to the Tower of the Hand, he paused. He could do it. Slip into Otto’s chamber and end him. It would be easy to do so; the man may not have even risen yet. Daemon’s finger’s danced along the hit of the dirk at his belt. He could slide it into his throat and Otto would barely even know he was dying.

But he’d told Rhaenyra he wouldn’t. He’d told Aegon he would do whatever he had to do to secure her reign. That meant killing Otto, eventually—but not today.

He continued through the passages, stopped in Flea Bottom, and then slipped out of the city, with only three people even certain that he’d come.

 

He met his men on the Rosby road near dusk, two days after he’d left them. They’d enter the Iron Gate the next day and he would lead the knights of the great houses of the Riverlands to meet king and court.

But first, he would see to his son.

“Baela’s just like you,” the boy had said once. But no matter if she was, this son of his did not only look like him. Daemon understood this boy. He had so much anger and nowhere to put it. He had so much pain. Daemon found that mirror painful, because he no more knew how to soothe Aegon’s pain than he knew how to soothe his own.

But he would try.

Egg dropped his eyes as Daemon approached. He was sparring with another squire, this time Lord Blackwood’s younger brother Willem, who backed away quickly as Daemon appeared. Egg looked like he wanted to back away too, but before he could, Daemon beckoned him forward.

He laid a hand on his son’s shoulder, carefully as he could, and waited until the boy met his eyes. “Come,” he said. “Let us speak.”

Notes:

Hi! I'm back! Regular (weekly-ish) updates should now commence!

Sort of a short one today, and of debatable necessity, but I wanted to catch up with Daemon before they enter Kings Landing next chapter and we get into the final leg of the story! I think the final chapter count is now correct. Eleven more after this one... and some things shall shortly be going down and blowing up.

October in the Fire & Blood calendar is the Death of Criston Cole, so happy Butcher's Ball Month to all who celebrate, lol. ;)