Chapter Text
Daemon remembered falling.
Endlessly, it seemed, until—
A shock of pain, everywhere at once, like his bones shattered into millions of fragmented pieces. Like his entire soul was rent apart.
Then cold. Deep, penetrating cold.
Then darkness. Only darkness.
Then nothing.
When he opened his eyes, he was everywhere—and nowhere. A void of pure, white light. He examined his body and found it somehow unharmed, all of his pain a distant memory. Even the persistent ache in his shoulder he’d carried since the Stepstones was gone.
That was when he knew he was dead.
The thought passed through him harmlessly. It was simply a fact, like any other—he is tall, he is white-haired and violet-eyed, he is dead.
He turned his thoughts toward how it had happened. It seemed not to matter—not really—but a part of him still needed to know.
It came back to him in flashes.
Thirteen days by the weirwood, waiting, until an unmistakable shadow passed overhead, and his nephew finally emerged.
A battle, long and fierce above the Gods Eye, the shrieks and trills of their dragons louder than thunder.
A mortal wound to Caraxes that Daemon felt in his own heart. The surge of pride in how Caraxes’ jaws stayed fixed, draining Vhagar’s life blood until the last. The Blood Wyrm would not succumb until he assured his foe’s own death.
Daemon recalled the seductive caress of death’s dark embrace, but he would not relent until he claimed one final triumph. He remembered the heady rush of victory as he leapt from his saddle, and thrust Dark Sister through Aemond's good eye, knowing it would be the end of both of them.
Any pain he felt, any fear in the certain knowledge of his impending death, was eclipsed by the knowing. He had done this thing for his queen, for his love, and she, and the war, would be better for it. Even if she still believed he had betrayed her, when she heard of this deed, she would know his final act in this world was for her.
And knowing that, Daemon could take some measure of peace in eternity.
His life had been long—long enough, longer than he ever expected, by some stroke of luck claiming far more years than he had a right to. To die did not trouble him. His only regret was that he could no longer fight for her, and that he could not see her one last time.
But then again, there could never have been enough time with Rhaenyra to satisfy him.
Light all around him, from an unseen source pulsed and flared as he thought of her, until it was all he thought of, until his mind—or whatever passed for his mind after death—was consumed by memories and images of her.
Then he was transported.
It was as if he blinked, and when his eyes opened again he was someplace else. He hovered there above her, just out of reach. Mysaria delivered the news of his fall. He saw the heavy weight of defeat slump her shoulders. His beautiful wife, now so sad, so broken.
He wanted to roar and scream and shake his beloved, to tell her that the White Worm had poured poison in her ear, that he had never betrayed her. The girl Nettles was like a daughter to him, a comfort to have her by his side, like his own Baela.
He had only ever given his heart to Rhaenyra.
He was pulled away then, by what force he knew not. Glimpses and flashes passed him by, until he was unclear in what direction time moved, of what was past or present or future.
The Old King Jaehaerys laying his sword on either shoulder, proclaiming him a Knight.
A smoke-filled room, Rhaenyra pressed up against the wall, their lips meeting for the first time.
Soaring through the air in the arms of his mother, his first dragonflight aback Meleys.
Newborn Baela and Rhaena placed in his arms, and in another blink of his eyes, his precious boys—Aegon and Viserys.
The totality of the unshakeable bond when he claimed Caraxes.
Tasting the mingled blood and wine from Rhaenyra’s lips as they sealed their vows on Dragonstone.
His consciousness flitted from memory to memory, bouncing between years in no discernable order, until one day he arrived at Dragonstone, a pang echoing in the absence where his heart once beat to tread again those halls where they were happy, for a time.
There she was, his beloved niece. His wife. His queen. She stood proudly, facing down her treacherous half-brother and his golden beast.
Somehow Daemon knew that this was now for Rhaenyra.
It was cruelty and comfort both, to bear witness to her final moments, to see her burned away and scattered, ash in the wind. Because if the gods saw fit to keep him in this spectral form, why not Rhaenyra, too? And their children. Here at Dragonstone they could reunite their family—Lucerys and Jacaerys and little Joffrey, Aegon and Viserys, and sweet Visenya, who never was.
So he waited, and he hoped.
For if Rhaenyra was going to return to him, would it not be here?
But Rhaenyra did not come.
Others did, though none could ever see him. His Aegon, imprisoned in the dungeon. Later freed, to go on to become King. Bittersweet, that their line should live on after so much suffering. His fiery Baela, wed in Dragonstone’s sept, as beautiful as her mother had been on their wedding day. His sweet Rhaena, finally claiming a dragon of her own. He watched, a silent observer of his progeny as they lived and loved and died. He could not cry; he could not feel much of anything.
Still, she did not come.
Time passed differently, in odd spurts, where a blink could as easily be the passing of eons. He watched people come and go, moss cover the rocks, ivy climb the walls. And still the ocean battered relentlessly against the shore, and so the sun rose and fell and rose and fell.
Daemon never put much stock in gods or magic, save for what he could feel with his own hands, see with his own eyes. Their dragons were proof enough that some magic lingered in the world, but they were a terrible, tangible thing. This was something else entirely, trapped in some kind of liminal space, doomed to wait. He could only guess at the purpose—and if it was as he assumed, and his desire for Rhaenyra was what kept him tethered to this world, he would grasp hold of it as long as he could.
Still, she did not come.
Time continued to pass in fits and bursts, until anyone Daemon recognized was long since gone, and strange men took residence in his home. Until a girl with silver hair and purple eyes and dragons of her own arrived. Briefly he thought he’d been transported back, to a time long gone, but he realized this was now, and his descendant had brought magic and dragons back into the world. It gave him a renewed flare of hope.
But the girl was gone, like everything else, in the blink of an eye.
Still, she did not come.
Less and less frequently did people walk the halls of Dragonstone, until it became a rarity indeed that he would happen upon another soul. Occasionally he’d catch a glimpse of someone whose eye lingered on him just a bit too long, and thought, hoped, that perhaps they could see him. But as they always did, they savored the view of the sea, and left.
He began to think the gods had cursed him to this non-existence, as punishment for his many sins.
So he tried to forget, to sink into the nothingness that had briefly cradled him, so long ago. For a while, it seemed to work, so many of his memories, old wounds and grudges, fading into a great blur that was once his life. Yet Rhaenyra’s face was never lost to him; his children’s faces remained ever at the ready. No matter how hard he tried, he could not forget any of them.
And still, she did not come.
The world grew strange and unknowable, often changing so rapidly Daemon hardly had a chance to learn the new shape of it before it changed again. The castle was abandoned, reclaimed by the island and its creeping flora and chittering fauna. Daemon thought instead perhaps the gods had simply forgotten him.
Daemon gave up hope of ever finding her, resigned to spend eternity in the Sea Dragon tower, until perhaps the gods would bless him with the sweet release of death—a final one, where his consciousness could finally sleep.
Then he heard commotion below, the creak of the door being opened for the first time in a long time, so long he had almost forgotten the sound of those squealing hinges.
There were footsteps and voices, youthful and exuberant. How he longed for the days where these halls were filled with the bright voices of his own children.
Children in search of ghosts. The irony, he thought, that so many had come here in search of just that, yet none ever saw him. How many places had they looked, and simply lacked the ability to see? How many ghosts had slipped through their fingers?
Then there were footsteps coming up his stairs. It was with a detached kind of interest Daemon looked forward to seeing something new, something different. Their eyes would, inevitably, pass through him, out to sea, but for a brief moment, he would feel again that he had once existed.
But the person who appeared in the room wasn’t someone new; it wasn’t something different.
It was her.
—
She had known the answer before she asked the question, but Rhae still gapes in disbelief at the man before her. Or, not a man, really. Spirit. Ghost. Whatever you call the long-dead-yet-apparently sentient remains of your famous ancestor.
“So, you’re a…ghost, then?” It sounds so stupid when she says it aloud, but she needs confirmation that she isn’t completely insane.
“I suppose that’s what I am,” Daemon says.
He looks so…real. Substantial. She isn’t sure what she expected—some ghoul in rags, moaning and floating above the floor, dragging chains behind him. Rhae cautiously walks around him, examining him, looking for a spot she can see through.
“You’re my great-great-great…well, suffice it to say there’s a long line of greats…uncle.”
“Am I?” Daemon, the ghost, whatever—seems amused, if anything.
“Yeah. I mean, if my dad’s family tree is accurate. And he’s really into that stuff. So.”
“You’re a Targaryen, then.”
“I am.”
“Of course. You’d have to be. Your hair, your eyes…”
Rhae shifts uncomfortably under his gaze. “I thought…well, I don’t really know what I thought. Only that it wasn’t…this.” She gestures vaguely at his shockingly corporeal form. “Has anyone else ever seen you?”
Daemon shakes his head. “You are the first.”
Rhae isn’t sure if she should be flattered or frightened.
“Some could feel my presence, I think, he goes on. “That there was something more than meets the eye to this room. There was a girl, a long time ago, with dragons of her own. I thought if anyone might see me, it would have been her. But she never did. I have not spoken to anyone, have not been seen by anyone, since I…died.”
Rhae doesn’t have dragons, doesn’t have anything that should make her special enough to be the first person in hundreds of years to see Daemon Targaryen. She swallows thickly. “Is it…lonely?”
Can ghosts feel loneliness? Can they feel anything?
He shrugs. “I’ve gotten used to being alone. I don’t really recall what it feels like to be any other way.”
Just hearing that makes Rhae feel so desperately small and alone she wants to cling to the few people in her life she truly cares for. To touch the edges of that consuming emptiness is a deeper horror than she wants to contemplate. “Why are you here?” she asks quickly, to distract from the great sucking void now hovering at the back of her mind.
“I’ve asked myself that very question many times over the years.”
If someone had told her this morning that she would engage in an existential conversation with a ghost, Rhae would have laughed. “I mean, why are you here here? You died in the Riverlands, at Harrenhal. At the Gods Eye.”
It feels oddly presumptuous to tell someone about their own death, but she knows the story well—heartbroken, overcome with sorrow that his beloved wife thought he betrayed her, Daemon Targaryen, the Rogue Prince, waited for thirteen days by the shores of the Gods Eye for his nephew, Aemond One-Eye, marking the passage of time by slashes in the trunk of a weirwood. (The fact that Rhae has seen those very slashes sends a chill up her spine). They battled above Harrenhal, and Daemon thrust Dark Sister through the boy’s good eye, and they both fell to their deaths. Two great men and their dragons, lost to the churning black waters of the Gods Eye.
Daemon smiles sadly. “My Rhaenyra drew me here in the hour of her death. I have waited ever since, hoping she would come.”
Gods, that’s just about the saddest thing Rhae has ever heard. “So you’ve been here for a long time, then.”
“A long time, yes. And yet, some days it feels like no time at all.”
She gets impatient when the bus is a few minutes late, so it’s unfathomable, the amount of time he’s spent in this one place. How entire centuries have passed. Gods, he’s seen so much. There are so many things she wants to ask him, her thoughts tumbling over themselves in a frantic scramble. The question bursts out of her almost without thinking:
“Is it true, what the histories say about you?”
Then, Daemon laughs, and Rhae is taken aback by how present and alive it sounds. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific than that.”
She blushes. Of course—what a silly question. “Sorry um, I mean…in some of the books, they say…it says you betrayed…the queen—” She pauses, unable to bring herself to say Rhaenyra, to say her own name. “—and you took the girl Nettles as a lover. And when the queen demanded her head, you chose the girl.”
Rhae isn’t sure why this is the first question she thinks to ask. It’s the part of the story that’s always bothered her. Daemon Targaryen was supposed to have loved his niece above all else. He fought wars for her, killed for her. It was more than love—they shared a soul.
Daemon’s face seems to flicker and shimmer. “No,” he says sadly. Tiredly. “I never betrayed her.” She can see in his face that he tells the truth. There’s deep hurt there, centuries of pain etched in every line. “I died for her. And I would have done it a thousand times over, if given the chance.”
“Is that why you wait?” Rhae whispers. There’s an aching knot in her throat all of a sudden.
He smiles softly, and looks out at the sea for a long moment before he nods. “I’ve been waiting for her for so long, to tell her I never betrayed her, to beg her to forgive me for anything I did to make her believe otherwise. To make her see that my thoughts were only ever of her. Of our family. Mostly, to tell her I loved her above all else. And that I love her still.”
The knot in her throat unravels and Rhae feels hot tears prick at the corners of her eyes.
“I’d given up on the idea,” he says quietly, his striking violet eyes fixed on her. “And then you appeared. And I thought…” He trails off, and sighs. “So I will wait until this castle crumbles around me, until it falls to ruin and dust and is swallowed up by the earth. I was never a very patient man when I was alive. But there’s naught to do but wait, now.”
Tears stream down Rhae’s cheeks, and she hurries to wipe them away before Daemon notices. How pathetic, how embarrassing, to cry, now. This is ridiculous. But Daemon just shakes his head, and offers a sympathetic look.
“Please, don’t cry, zaldrītsos.”
Zaldrītsos. Little dragon. Rhae knows bits of and pieces of High Valyrian. From Daemon’s lips it sounds like music, like poetry, like the way the language was meant to be spoken.
The spark of recognition appears in his eyes. “You know what that means?”
“Little dragon,” Rhae says with a tentative smile.
“That’s right.” He sounds impressed, and Rhae can’t help but preen at the way warmth blooms in her chest. “As I said, don’t cry. Enough tears have been shed on my behalf to last several lifetimes.”
To add to the absurdity of this whole situation, Daemon gives her a warm smile, the godsdamned ghost trapped in an endless cycle of doomed tragic romance is comforting her. Rhae dabs the last errant tear from her eye and gives a rueful laugh. “Thanks,” she mumbles. “You know, you’re not like what I expected.”
“You expected to meet the ghost of your great-many-times-over uncle?”
“I...guess not,” she admits. Even if she had, she doesn’t think anything could have prepared her for this. Gods, there’s so much she wants to ask.
“Rhae!” Ali’s panicked voice drifts up from the staircase, and Rhae's stomach lurches. “Rhae! Where are you? We have to go now!”
Shit, the ferry. Rhae turns toward the sound, then faces Daemon. She doesn’t want to leave. She has so many questions. There’s so much she could learn, about her family, about her history, about the afterlife, about, well, everything.
“My friends…” she says reluctantly, gesturing toward the stairs. “I have to go.”
Daemon smiles, understanding. “Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, Rhaenyra Targaryen.”
She’s never liked being called by her full name—something about it always felt too formal, too flowery, for the person she is. Or like she hasn’t earned the right to bear it. But it sounds right coming from Daemon.
“Can I come back?” she blurts. “To visit you?”
Daemon seems surprised—as if this is the first thing in a hundred years to catch him off guard. He nods. “I'd...I'd like that," he says, smiling. "Come back anytime you like. I don’t seem to be going anywhere.”
“Great!” Rhae grins. “I’ll see you soon, then.”
—
“Well that was a bust, huh?” Laena complains, kicking her feet against the ferry rail.
“Yeah,” Rhae mumbles.
She isn’t sure why she doesn’t tell the others, only that there is a fierce compulsion burning inside her to keep it to herself. Daemon said she was the only person to see him, to speak to him, since he died—that had to mean something. Rhae chews her lip, mentally running through her upcoming schedule to figure out when she can return.
“Damn, I really thought if we were gonna see something, it would be at Dragonstone,” Cris says.
“Right?” Laena agrees. “We had the blood connection and everything!”
Blood. That has to be part of it. But that girl Daemon spoke of—he couldn’t have been referring to anyone other than Daenerys Targaryen. And yet she hadn’t seen him.
Laena and Cris prattle on about what their next adventure will be, but Rhae is lost in thought. Did any of it even happen? Did she inhale some moldy old dust and just hallucinate the whole encounter? She can’t help but think if she had just reached out, she would have been able to touch him, that she would have felt the heat of his flesh under her fingertips. He seemed so real, so substantial. But he couldn’t be.
“Rhae?”
“Hm?” She snaps her gaze up.
Ali watches her with wide, searching eyes, always looking so concerned. “Where’s your head at?”
Rhae shrugs. “Nowhere. Here. I don’t know.”
“Did something happen? Back there?”
Rhae’s skin prickles with gooseflesh. “No. Of course not. What would have happened?”
Ali looks at her curiously. “I don’t know. I thought maybe you…saw something.”
She shakes her head, even as Daemon Targaryen’s face is vivid at the forefront of her thoughts. “Nothing but ashes and dust.”