if i don't get out of this town (i just might be the one who finally burns it down)
Series Metadata
Listing Series
-
the fire is coming (so i think we should run) by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
11 Aug 2026
Tags
Summary
Daeron Targaryen has spent his entire life since he can remember praying. Praying to be more Hightower than Targaryen, praying to be a lord that could make his Uncle Ormund happy, praying to get away from the clawing touch of his Uncle Ormund’s hands against his shoulders, pressing down on him, making him feel as much a maiden staring down the blade of a marriage even as his Uncle forced him to become a warrior.
And yet—
And yet, there is a part of Daeron’s soul that is lodged beneath Tessarion’s blue scales. There is a part of Daeron’s soul that itches to touch his dragon.
There is a part of Daeron that needs to get to his girl before he makes it out of this town.
“I need to get to her,” Daeron murmurs for the first time in his life, and for the first time in his life, his uncle nods at his side.
The fact of the matter is that Daeron doesn’t just have siblings that he’s never met and one uncle that sees him only as some sort of beacon only when he refuses part of himself.
He also has his Uncle at his side.
Daeron looks at Uncle Gwayne and he sees himself. Sees the parts of himself that are unclean, that are considered unholy, impediments to the grand Hightower design.
Series
-
this is the river I crawled from and I refuse to drown here by aletterinthenameofsanity for Ailendolin
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
23 Sep 2026
Tags
Summary
In the end, it is not that hard to execute the plan.
It is easy as taking a cup of tea to his nephew. Simple as that. Daeron doesn’t even think about summoning a food taster, because why would he?
For all that has separated them, all that Gwayne abandoned him into the hands of Ormund Hightower, Daeron trusts him. He trusts that Gwayne wouldn’t seek to harm him.
And it is the truth, in its way. Gwayne wouldn’t seek to harm him. He would do anything to save Daeron’s life, whether he likes it or not.
Gwayne knows, in this moment, as he sets the cup of tea down on Daeron’s small table in this small room that Ormund has set aside for him in the Footlys’ keep, that he is like as not to lose Daeron’s trust for the rest of time.
But if the price of Daeron’s trust, his faith, is his life, then Gwayne is willing to pay it.
So the night before the battle, as those in Tumbleton are drinking away their last nights on earth, Gwayne drops milk of the poppy into Daeron’s tea.
(When Daeron refuses to leave Tumbleton, Gwayne makes the decision for both of them. He will not lose his nephew to their uncle's ambitions, whatever it takes.)
Series
-
my body is a cage (set my body free) by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
25 Aug 2026
Tags
Summary
Before Daemon can send Daeron up in flames, Daeron has already slid off of Tessarion’s back, white cloth in hand—a surrender, clear as day.
Daemon seems pissed as Daeron calls out, as loudly as he can: “I’m here, Prince Daemon, to fulfill the terms of Queen Rhaenyra's deal."
In an instant, despite the flag of surrender, Daemon has his sword drawn, pointed at Daeron. “You must be the little shit who declared himself king. I should have your fucking head.” There is something vicious, a predator playing with his prey, as Daemon says, “Where is your lying craven of a cousin?”
“He doesn’t know I’m here, Your Grace,” Daeron says, and that barely mollifies Daemon Targaryen, who should be his uncle, but would rather burn Daeron than take him inside of the castle walls.
But Queen Rhaenyra has made an offer, and Daeron is intent on seeing it through.
So Daeron waves the parchment that he stole from Ormund’s desk before he’d left. “I'm here to bend the knee. To save my uncle.”
(When Gwayne is captured by the Blacks, Daeron goes to trade himself for his uncle, but only ends up a prisoner as well. Still—there is one silver lining: he is imprisoned not in a cell, but with his sister, Helaena.)
Series
-
greensleeves was my heart of gold (even so, i still remain a lover in captivity) by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
28 Aug 2026
Tags
Summary
The kitchen should be empty this time of night, when the hour of the eel bleeds into the hour of ghosts.
And yet, there is a figure here, dressed in green, copper hair spilling across the back of his head, two single braids tied together in the back.
And Rhaena cannot help her smile, even with his lack of forthcoming information about working for the Lord of the Hightower earlier.
“You could have told me that you were Lord Hightower’s squire,” Rhaena says.
Garmund nearly jumps as he spins around, a pastry clutched in hand, and her smile only grows.
(When Rhaena arrives in Oldtown to marry Prince Daeron for the sake of peace, she meets- and falls for- an auburn-haired boy in the market first. When she arrives to meet her betrothed, she finds out that the boy in the market is the squire of Lord Ormund Hightower. There is something rather off going on with her betrothed, his cousin Lord Ormund, and her boy from the market, and Rhaena is going to have to get to the bottom of it.
Or: Ormund sends Gwayne away and plays a switcheroo with Daeron and Fake!Daeron, and Rhaena has to figure out how to break the chains that bind.)
Series
-
you swallow my heart (but I want it back) by aletterinthenameofsanity for This_world_of_beautiful_monsters
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
28 Aug 2026
Tags
Summary
Viserys the Peaceful lives up to his name and dies peacefully in his sleep.
He’d been ill for so long, don’t you know?
His wife mourns him and his daughter burns his body and he passes onto the next life as befits a Targaryen.
No one will ever think to check to see if he was poisoned. Why would they? He’d been ill since before his daughter was married. Everyone from his cousin to his daughter to his wife can attest to that.
(Viserys, Otto, Ormund, and Daemon each die in their own ways, at the hands of those who know what it is like to be carved away at for the sake of other's desires.)
Series
-
we're the product of love that we do not receive (i'll corrupt every branch of this family tree) by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
05 Sep 2026
Tags
Summary
In Gwayne Hightower’s defense, he knows that sleeping with the future Prince Consort of the Seven Kingdoms is a bad idea. He knows it before they kiss, before they touch, before he's getting fingered open in a tent at a tourney.
But Laenor’s hands are tender against his bruised side, and it’s been so long since anyone touched Gwayne tenderly, and for a moment, just a moment, it’s easy to forget.
It’s easy to forget that Ormund looms over every single moment of his life. That his father is waiting in Oldtown, expecting Gwayne to make the family proud.
(It’s harder to forget the fact that he had to leave Daeron behind in order to come to the tourney, that it is the stupidest idea in the world to break his vows for this.)
But Laenor’s hands are soft, his mouth is bright, his touch makes Gwayne ache, and he wishes—
Gwayne wishes for so many things that he is not allowed to have.
All he can take are quick snatches of a life that he dreamed of before a babe was dropped into his arms and he looked down at the babe’s bright eyes and the tiny dragon hatchling next to him and realized that he was all that stood between the babe and the wide, wide world that would seek to devour him whole.
Series
-
nobody in this house wants to own up to the truth by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
03 Sep 2026
Tags
Summary
There is not enough water in the Honeywine river to wash the sin out from under Gwayne's skin, for knowing what Ormund was and still leaving Daeron in his clutches when he left, all because Gwayne had thought that he was the only one.
In an instant, Gwayne has his sword to Ormund’s neck.
“Tell me if you did to him what you did to me,” Gwayne demands, and his rabbit heart is pounding prey-quick inside of his chest, but he cannot let fear stop him from finding out the truth.
Ormund raises his hands, but he doesn't look afraid. Rather, there is something blase about his tone of voice. “Train him to be a good knight? Raise him in the Light of the Seven when his absent father could not? When you abandoned him? Why yes, I did.”
“You know what I mean,” Gwayne snarls, a rabid hound, lashing out at its master. "You know what you did—"
(When Gwayne realizes that Ormund has been treating Daeron as he once did Gwayne, his sword is drawn. But when Daeron’s sword ends up at his neck, Gwayne realizes that he made a mistake in leaving in more than one way.
Is there a way to save Daeron and get out of this, or will they both be stuck with Ormund until the bitter end?)
Series
-
thought that if i piled something good on all my bad (that I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from Dad) by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
04 Sep 2026
Tags
Summary
There is a boy in the dungeons, with copper hair, with Rhaenyra’s eyes, with a dragon too far away.
Rhaenyra’s boys are dead, buried in the salt and the sea, ended in fire and blood. Why should she have any sympathy for a brother she has never met?
Except—
The letters pour in, from Oldtown, from her own castle, from squires.
Please don’t kill him, Your Grace, come the letters, come the pleas and the prayers.
A mummer’s farce of a prince with false silver hair writes to her from Oldtown: I was his whipping boy, and yet, I rarely felt the pain of Ormund’s punishments, because Daeron knew it would come to me and he didn’t want me to suffer for his mistakes.
He’s my son, Alicent pleads, the despair of a mother who has already lost too many children, and who now only has one child left. He was sent off to Oldtown as a boy and I beg of you not to visit the sins of my cousin on a boy not yet grown.
But from Rhaenyra’s dungeons, the greatest prayer of all, from a man who is set to be executed himself on the morrow: he’s a boy. Just a boy, who has suffered enough, and you can kill me if you’d like, but if you have any mercy in your heart, Your Grace- give him a chance to live.
Series
-
i tried to be good (am i making you feel sick) by aletterinthenameofsanity for Idkhowtodothis, RayByAnotherName
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
08 Sep 2026
Tags
Summary
For Rhaenyra’s third marriage, her official coronation as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, no usurpers trying to steal her birthright, no civil war to destroy her claim to the throne, she marries her brother.
She has never had good luck in marriages; her first marriage was to a man who she loved, in his way, who was a good father to her children, but who had no desire for her.
Her second marriage was to her uncle, to a man whose interest in her was all desire, was all hunger, was all passion, the exact opposite of her first husband in all ways.
Rhaenyra knows nothing about her third husband other than the fact that he rides a dragon, that he is her brother, that he tried to steal her throne, and that she will give him less babes than either of her first two husbands.
That is—she will give him nothing save her hand, which will be enough.
(In order to end the Dance of the Dragons, Rhaenyra Targaryen must wed her younger brother and make him her prince consort, but she has no plans to bed him or let him have a claim on her throne. What she comes to realize, though, is that he doesn't wish for either, but that he is willing to do whatever it takes to protect what family he has left.)
Series
-
because i love a burning thing (i made my heart a field of fire) by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
08 Sep 2026
Tags
Summary
The blue egg hatches for a red-haired boy, but it is not the boy with the Targaryen-bright eyes. It is not the boy who is still a babe, the boy who has dragonfire in his veins, the boy who is the son of a king.
(Though once, generation and centuries ago, the Hightowers were kings, too, don’t you remember?)
The fact of the matter is that no one has ever really tested to see if any families other than Targaryens can raise dragons. The Targaryen eggs have always been zealously guarded, especially since that whole…situation with Elissa Farman.
But the Queen herself had entrusted babe and egg to her brother.
The hatchling is no bigger than the babe in Gwayne Hightower’s arms, and he, like everyone else, assumes that when the dragon comes close and nips on his fingers without breaking the skin that the dragon belongs to Daeron. Who wouldn’t?
(No one else knows that Gwayne Hightower’s skin itches every time he leaves the Sept after visiting the prince’s dragon with him. That whenever he goes to eat food that isn’t cooked meat, it tastes vaguely of ash. That he craves his meat a little rarer that he used to.
That when he looks at the sky, he craves nothing more than to fly.)
Series
-
his hair's on fire and his heart is burning (wash him deep where the tides are turning) by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
23 Sep 2026
Tags
Summary
Stories filter across the Narrow Sea of a pirate ship with a pink flag with a dragon that flies over the ship.
Many dismiss it as just a ship with a dragonhead figurehead, carved out of the pink wood that the Myrish find so enticing.
Many of the Free Cities claim descent from Valyria. They take the dragon back, claim it for themselves, from their ancestors that fled the Freehold and its empire.
Besides—what dragonrider would ever choose salt and sea over fire and blood?
There is no chance of such a thing.
Rhaena Targaryen and Laenor Velaryon are long dead and gone. That is what everyone knows. It is a fact, burned into the sands of Driftmark, when Laenor’s body was found and a little girl’s gown was found shredded on the rocks alongside a finger, burned down to the bone by dragonfire.
(Yes, there is a girl on the pirate ship who is said to be missing her pinky finger, but that’s just a story, isn’t it? It’s all just stories in the end.)
Or: a story in which Rhaena hitches a ride with her fleeing uncle when he fakes his death, and years later Gwayne and Daeron are captured by pirates when they flee the Battle of Tumbleton. These two facts are more entwined than you'd think.
Series
-
we loved each other with fragments of ourselves that were dead by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
11 Sep 2026
Tags
Summary
King’s Landing is full of ghosts.
Anyone who has ever lived in the Red Keep could tell you that. They could tell you of the drip of blood off of the edge of Visenya’s sword, spilling down to her son’s corpse on the throne, still rattling his last breath. They could tell you of the way that Alysanne Targaryen’s rage against her husband can still be heard, crackling against the stones like the dragonfire of a mount now dead in battle. They could tell you about Aemma Arryn and how her screams against her once husband echo with the strike of a smith's hammer against Viserys' skull.
But as for King Daeron, sitting the Iron Throne with his uncle as his Hand of the King, the ghosts are as much a comfort as they are a fear to everyone else.
Because it is here that Daeron finally gets to meet the siblings that he never got to meet before they died.
(Those who have had near-death experiences can see ghosts. Daeron Targaryen is one of them, and as one of the last Targaryens left, this should be terrifying; rather, it’s a strange comfort.)
Series
-
the wasted years, the wasted youth (the pretty lies, the ugly truth) by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
13 Sep 2026
Tags
Summary
Mother is the word for an empty space filled with yearning, that cavern between the ribs that aches for tenderness and yet can find none.
Uncle is the word for a distant kindness. For the way that the breeze blows over Battle Island on hot summer days, cutting through the oppressive harbor heat for just long enough to take in a breath.
Soulmate, Daeron is told, is supposed to refer to one's other half. The person that allows you to feel whole.
Soulmate is the ache of a bruise pressed down on until you cannot remember anything but the pain, a scream bubbling up because you feel naked every time that you are touched, that the teeth sink in and you become nothing more than meat—
Soulmate is supposed to be a word that means love.
If this is what love is, Daeron doesn't know why anyone wants it.
(Daeron has known since he was a babe that his soulmate is Ormund, who's had a soul mark from the first time that he touched Daeron.
But as he grows older, he never develops any desires for Ormund—and on the day of their bonding ceremony, Daeron discovers that the foundation he's set his life on might have been a lie all along.)
Series
-
there’s a little bit of hell in everyone by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
15 Sep 2026
Tags
Summary
1.
Aemond Targaryen, the third child, is the one who learns how to endure first. Despite being raised on the stories of fire, Aemond Targaryen, disciplined, studious, controlled, is earth.
2.
Helaena is quiet and everyone expects her to be water. Fire is reserved only for those that wish to burn away entire armies in a blast of heat, to create a Field of Fire, to wreck everything and bathe in the ashes of the entire world.
3.
Aegon is water, quick, flowing, unable to focus, spilling his ache all over the place, unpredictable as the sea.
4.
Rhaena has always itched for the skies.
But by this point, her father would have settled for any elements at all in her at all.
5.
Daeron is an airbender, but he grows up unable to breathe.
(In a world where Targaryens bend instead of riding dragons, Rhaenyra can wield all four elements, leaving her younger siblings and cousin to figure out each of their individual powers on their own and how to not feel not alone. When Aegon, Aemond, Helaena, and Rhaena find out that something strange is going on with Daeron, they head for Oldtown- only to discover that there might be someone more alone than any of them.)
Series
-
you think that you’re the man (i think therefore i am) by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
20 Sep 2026
Tags
Summary
Princess Daenys Targaryen was born with strawberry gold hair. The maesters were sure that it would lighten to silver-gold over time, just as they were sure that her bright blue eyes would settle to proper Targaryen lilac, just as her baby-round cheeks would sharpen to a Targaryen’s beauty.
Her father didn’t pay attention, but the lords of the realm did. Of course they did.
A Targaryen princess, especially one who would some day become a pretty thing, would make a perfect bride and a great prize for some great Lord, just as her great-Aunt Daella once was.
(At the end of the day, Daenys did none of these things, because she died before the age of sixteen, a ghost without a body found over the ashen battle of Tumbleton.
Or, at least—the girl named Princess Daenys died.
The boy who rode her dragon didn't.)
Series
-
evidence that i left there on purpose (can you find me) by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
23 Sep 2026
Tags
Summary
Gwayne swallows. "I dealt with so much shit in the Riverlands. I lost the man that I was—" Gwayne grimaces. 'Falling in love with' is far too romantic a notion, even for the teenage boy that he once was at that tourney in King's Landing, the Rogue Prince unhorsing him in front of the dashing Criston Cole.
He'd thought about that again, after the dragon on the field where Criston had urged their men to the forest and saved their lives, after Rook's Rest, in the Riverlands, when Gwayne had made the offer to bring Criston back to Oldtown.
Not just the handsome man that brought Daemon Targaryen to his knees, but the man who made Gwayne reconsider his duty to the Hightower cause.
“Please, Daeron. Live. If not for me, then for yourself.”
So Gwayne holds a vigil. He beats back the dark, if only for one night. He holds off the Stranger.
You are not allowed to have my boy, Gwayne swears.
(When illness rips through Tumbleton, Daeron gets sick and Gwayne takes care of him. But when Ormund forces Gwayne to go out to scout, Daeron thinks that Gwayne abandoned him yet again. Gwayne is determined to get back, though—he learned a thing or two from Criston Cole, and he will not leave again.)
Series
-
waste it all for the truth (for the fool in her wedding gown) by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
30 Sep 2026
Tags
Summary
Gwayne's gaze is fixed on her forehead rather than her eyes, and it takes everything she has not to stamp on his toes.
I am my mother's daughter, Rhaena nearly snarls, I am a prize, not a punishment.
But she is wearing slippers and she does not wish to bring herself his rage in the bedroom on their wedding night and so she smiles at him instead.
But she does think: I don't care what my father thought of me. I am Laena Velaryon's daughter. I am made of fire and blood and sea, sharp as Valyrian steel, and if this is to be my punishment, then I shall not surrender to it. I shall find a way to make it my victory.
And when the partners switch and Baela ends up dancing with Gwayne, Rhaena ends up in Garmund Flowers' arms.
Garmund is as awkward as his father, but he is not as stiff. It is clear that he is genuinely trying, that he is giving her a shy, sweet smile.
And for a moment, Rhaena almost forgets where she is.
(When Rhaena and Gwayne are forced to marry, Rhaena finds herself dealing with her husband's lack of desire and the presence of his bastard son. But as secrets unravel, Rhaena finds herself falling for Daeron, and having to deal with everything that comes with that.)
Series
-
be like the love that discovered sin (that freed the first man and will do so again) by aletterinthenameofsanity for meum
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
06 Oct 2026
Tags
Summary
Daeron rides on his horse up to the royal box and he holds the crown of flowers up.
“If it please you, my lady,” Daeron says, and he offers out the crown to Rhaena. Not to his mother, not to his sister, to Rhaena Targaryen, Rhaena of Pentos, Rhaena the dragonless, Rhaena the Radiant, Rhaena the Restless, Rhaena, shining pale and bright and beautiful as the moon on the river-water. “I would like to crown you the Queen of Love and Beauty."
For a moment, Rhaena Targaryen is a creature made of ice, silvered and sparkling and stiff beneath the sun, staring at him with nothing but frost in her eyes.
Daeron can hear some gasps ringing the tourney grounds. They are not betrothed. They are not even close to being connected. He is as green as his brother, while she is her father's daughter.
But Daeron is not thinking of his own cousin and what he will think of Daeron choosing someone that he was not given as an option.
Daeron is thinking of Rhaena Targaryen, and the stubborn tilt of her chin in a clearing where she asked after his dragon, of the way that she is the same species of lonely as him, of the way that her ink-dark eyes are the most beautiful that he has ever seen.
Series
-
honey, tell me, are you good at stayin' still? by aletterinthenameofsanity
Fandoms: House of the Dragon (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
07 Oct 2026
Tags
Summary
Gwayne is determined to help Criston find a way to live in a way that satisfies him in this world.
There are some days, though, where Criston’s hands shake just as Gwayne’s leg trembles. Where he cannot try out new things. Where he must sit there and try to find a way to accept that some days, life hurts, and it is not a reflection on himself, not a measure of his own fault and the Seven punishing him, but rather his body telling him that he is allowed to rest and recover.
And sometimes, those are days like this. Days when the seeing the sunrise at the top of the tower feels entirely out of the question.
But there is one way to get to the top—a way that Ormund never would have allowed.
Running the tower is about beating your opponent. About showing that you are stronger. About showing that you can win the battle and the war alike.
But Gwayne doesn't want to be at war with Criston. He doesn't want to prove that he is better.
He just wants to prove to Criston that life, that light, can always been found. That the dawn will always come.
And so Gwayne doesn't give a shit how they make it to the top of the tower—just that they do.
Series