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The Iron Throne was nothing like Daenerys expected. For one, it was hideous. Jagged metal spikes rose into a tower, listing sharply to one side. There was no place to safely rest one's arms. Even the back bristled with blades, so one would have to sit straight up at all times.
For another, she had not expected to have to climb. The steps might present a problem in her current state.
One arm hung useless at her side. The other was pressed--also quite uselessly--against the gash across her waist. She had wrapped the tunic of a fallen soldier around the wound, but all that had accomplished was ruining a tunic.
Outside, something exploded. Another of my father's welcoming gifts. The first pot of wildfire had gone off before they had even breached the city, after some smallfolk had torched a brothel in their panic. Even the stones of the Red Keep wouldn't stand against it forever. Dany began to stumble toward her birthright.
The throne room was deathly silent. She had hoped for a deal more music and dancing, but now the only song was the roar of battle in the distance, and only the stags and lions danced on their tapestries. Dany felt their gazes judging her, mocking her, as she passed. The Dragon Queen is come to take her throne, they seemed to say, come to rule her kingdom of ash.
She had met no resistance once inside the keep. It was deserted, all its inhabitants fled once they realized the castle would not hold. For their boy king, they had mounted a defense like nothing Dany had dreamed of. She had known King's Landing would fight her, but not that every man who knew which end of a sword to hold would stand against her. The Kingslayer himself had led the charge to meet her. He must have known he was not the warrior he had been, known he would die, known their cause would fail, but he had done it anyway. Dany had never thought she would despair in ending Jaime Lannister, even knowing the truth about her father.
She wondered where Jaime's bastard was now. Dead, like as not. The thought saddened her. She would have spared him.
Hazzeah, Tommen, how many more? the stags and lions jeered. Dany tried to ignore them, imagining the Great Hall as it had been, all cloaked in red and black with great dark skulls snarling from every side. She wondered what would become of Drogon's skull.
The thought of her dragon brought a wave of pain unrelated to her injuries. They had arced so gracefully up over the battlements, the air before Drogon shimmering with heat as he prepared to loose his fire. By the time they saw the archers, the arrows had already torn his wings to ribbons.
Her only consolation was that half of them were crushed when Drogon fell. He beat frantically at the air with his ruined wings, screeching in rage and agony, releasing torrents of black flame in every direction. They plummeted anyway. Dany lost her grip and came crashing down on her shoulder. If she hadn't had the breath knocked out of her lungs, she would have screamed. When she managed to push herself to her knees, her arm dangled awkwardly, worse than useless when it sent pain lancing at the slightest nudge.
And then, while she struggled to her feet, someone put a sword through Drogon's eye.
This time Dany did scream. Pain tore through her, more than physical. Her eye burned as though it too had been pierced, her head throbbed, but the true agony was something else. It felt as if someone had ripped out a part of soul. She was alone inside her mind for the first time in years. When she saw the black blood spilling from her dragon's eye, she saw her own heart pulled from her chest.
Dany had never so much as held a sword, and she never did figure out how she got one. She screamed and sobbed and charged the soldiers who had taken away her child, blade clutched in her good hand. She only remembered one scene from the ensuing madness: a spray of blood suspended in the air, stark against the black sky. It might have been hers.
Not until Barristan Selmy pulled her out of the fray did she realize someone had opened a red slash across her belly.
Dany had known then that she would not survive to see the first dawn of her reign. And so she had fought her way to the Red Keep, to the home she had striven for all her life.
The home she had not seen until she came to burn it. The home I destroyed.
Dany had reached the Iron Throne. She began to climb.
Her legs shook beneath her. All the usurpers were slain, all the lands conquered, all the fighting done, but this last obstacle might see the Mother of Dragons defeated. She resolved, absurdly, to have Drogon melt the damned thing down as her first act as queen. Dany wanted to weep. Instead, she laughed. My coin has fallen, Ser Barristan. Would you like to see how it landed?
Her wounds cried out with each step. The swords pricked her everywhere, and fresh blood mingled with the dried stuff on her clothes. She climbed until she could go no further, and then climbed more.
At last she lowered herself onto the seat, the final relic of the dynasty she had worked so hard to save. The dynasty she had extinguished. She surveyed her empty throne room and leaned back until the blades bit into her skin.
This is the most uncomfortable chair I have ever sat on.
Daenerys Targaryen closed her eyes and smiled.