Work Text:
and I am not frightened of dying,
any time will do, I don't mind.
i.
He died for the first time on the riverbank of the Trident, Robert Baratheon’s hammer smashing into his chest.
It was decided in a matter of seconds, a lounge, a missed step, a hit; and then there was the pain, sudden and fierce and unbearable, as the hammer fell down and down again, crushing steel and lungs and ribs. Rhaegar found himself on the ground then, laying in the bed of the river, even though he could not remember falling. And then he realized he could not breathe either, water twirling all around him, slowly reddening; and Rhaegar knew it was his blood.
So this is how I die, he thought; and with realization came the regret, if only he’d moved quicker, acted sooner, made it all better; but it was too late. He thought of all the people he would leave behind, his family and friends and Elia and Arthur and Lyanna; but there was no longing there. We will see each other soon.
Together in death and darkness, because he had failed, so lost in his grand plans of life and death that he’d forgotten to account for the wars of men on men; and here he was, dying in a river, the shame of his failure stinging worse than Robert’s blows.
And then the hammer hit again, smashing hopes and bones alike; and Rhaegar’s last thoughts were of despair.
ii.
When he next opened his eyes, he was staring down at a painted ceiling, in a room he had not seen for years. His boyhood chambers in the Red Keep, Rhaegar realized, from before he even married Elia; and it took him only a few moments his eyes widened in silent realization and his hands, those youthful, unscarred hands, started trembling in pure emotion.
If only Arthur could see me, he thought then, he’d laugh himself sick. But Arthur was nothing but a boy now, still in Starfall and safe. They were all safe, from Arthur to Mother and with no reasons why they should not live for decades more now.
The court was in Lannisport one year later when the King was told of the malcontent brewing in Duskendale, but Rhaegar pleaded with his father not to pay any attention with the man. He remembered very well what Aerys’s message to Lord Darklyn would say, what the king’s reaction would be; and how everything had gone wrong from there.
“Do send one of Lord Tywin’s men,” Rhaegar had told his father, “it’s a matter of importance, and a raven could get lost.” And by the time a rider went and came back with Lord Darklyn’s absurd terms, the tourney would be over, and the king well on his way back to the Red Keep.
The Lannisport tourney was every bit as magnificent as Rhaegar remembered, the Lord Hand still set in having his daughter marry the Crown Prince. Rhaegar dreaded the day Aerys would refuse; but, in the end, he did not have to worry about it.
Lord Darklyn of Duskendale was still as angered at the king as he had been the first time around; and this time he showed it sooner, with a mercenary from Essos he’d paid to join the lists in Lannisport.
Rhaegar Targaryen died again at seventeen years of age, with a lance through his neck in the final day of the joust.
iii.
When he next came to his senses he was riding on yet another tourney ground, his armour heavier than the old one had felt. Only when he broke his final lance on the other man’s shield Rhaegar realized where he was; that the knight had been Arthur and this was Harrenhall, some five years later.
After Arthur there was Ser Barristan and victory; and the crown of flowers, the beautiful blue roses Rhaegar still remembered having prepared especially for Lyanna, so sure he had been he would win. But when he saw Elia he could not go further; Elia, whom he had not seen in so long, ever faithful Elia, so much more than he deserved and yet not enough, never enough.
It was her Rhaegar gave the crown this time around, no matter that the blue of the flowers was not a match for his wife’s flame-red dress, the pale winter roses clashing against her golden skin; she looked as lovely as she was kind, and Rhaegar felt again the familiar twinge of guilt.
“What happened?” Elia asked him, later. “I thought you meant to give it to the Stark girl.”
There was acceptance in her voice, and relief and a fair amount of bitterness; and Rhaegar found himself smiling a humourless smile. “In front of this company? Lord Robert would have killed me.”
He still brought Lyanna to Dorne, half a year later; and then rode as fast as he could to King’s Landing before Brandon Stark could make it there, before his father could have Lord Rickard killed.
He had no such luck, arriving late enough in that mockery of a trial that the guards would not let him inside. “The King ordered it, Your Grace,” a captain said; and Rhaegar only stared back at him, one hand on his sword hilt.
“Will you stop me?”
By the time he made it into the Throne Room, his father was already there with a pyromancer; fire burning in an iron brazier and Lord Stark already suspended above it. Two Kingsguard were there as well, and no one else. But they haven’t brought Brandon Stark yet, he thought. It’s not too late. “What his the meaning of this?” he asked, loud enough that everyone turned to look at him; no matter that he already knew.
“Ser Gerold?”
The knight did not answer, but the King did. “Son,” Aerys began; and he smiled. “It seems that the Starks want you dead.”
“Ser Gerold,” Rhaegar repeated. “Ser Jaime. I trust you can see the King is not well, he should be brought to his rooms to rest.”
Jaime Lannister nodded promptly in agreement, but it was Ser Gerold Rhaegar was looking at. “Ser,” he repeated. “My father is not well. What do you think will happen if he kills his Warden of the North?”
“What,” Rhaegar heard his father say, his voice an awful shriek; and he turned to see that the king had risen from the Throne and was now descending the steps. “What are you trying to do, boy?”
He made for an awful spectacle, his eyes red and sunk, nails an inch long, wrinkled clothes and hair in disarray. There was blood on the king’s lips, from his continued chewing; and, next to the throne, the fire was still burning.
“Put that out, in the name of the gods,” Rhaegar called out. “Or did you really mean to burn the Lord of Winterfell?”
His father walked down the last step.
“Oh, you arrogant, ungrateful shit,” he spat. “Are you a traitor, too?”
Things would have been better if I was, Rhaegar thought. If only he’d had his father removed years ago as he should have… But there was no time now.
“You are not yourself,” he began; and that was when Lord Rickard screamed.
“Put out the damn fire!” he said again, but the pyromancer was nowhere to be seen. His potions and barrels were, he noticed, and Lord Stark’s cloak had started burning. “Ser Jaime,” Rhaegar called. Jaime was just a boy with, his head full of tales; he clearly wanted to be everywhere but here, attending a madman.
“Ser Jaime, get Lord Rickard out of here,” he said; and Jaime looked almost grateful for the chance. “It’s an order.”
“Stop that, boy,” Aerys said; and Jaime flinched, eyes darting between Rhaegar and the king.
“I am sorry, Your Grace,” he said in the end. He went to knock off the metal brazier from under Lord Stark, and the sound of iron on stone was as gloomy as that of a funeral bell.
“Traitors,” the king said, “the lot of you.”
“Father…” Rhaegar began, but suddenly there was a spark, and one of the smaller barrels caught fire.
He barely had time not take notice of the greenish shade before the flames engulfed him.
iv.
And then Rhaegar was fighting on the Trident once again, his sword against Robert’s hammer, Aerys’s eyes still on his mind, and there was no missed step now. He hit Robert with the tip of his sword in the guts, cutting through the armour and the skin behind like Robert had done the first time.
He won the battle and the war and arrived in King’s Landing days later to find his father’s men at the gates.
“You are to come with us,” the new Hand, some pyromancer Rhaegar did not know. “Alone.”
They led him to the Red Keep, to the King’s solar, where his father was waiting for him with nine-inch long nails and a white mane of hair.
“Rhaegar,” Aerys called out; and he felt a sharp pain, the ice coldness of the blade in his back. Oh gods, he thought, please no.
Rhaegar fell to his knees on the stone floor, and the last thing he heard was his father’s voice whispering in his ear, caressing his hair almost lovingly as he was stabbed again and again and again.
“I did not want you to die,” the king said, sounding almost sane. “But you made me.”
v.
He was at Harrenhall again after that; and when the lords Stark and Arryn and Tully offered him the crown and the men to depose his father, he said yes.
But someone always tells; and, this time around, it was the headsman’s axe that killed Rhaegar Targaryen.
vi.
Rhaegar woke up once again on the night of Aegon’s birth; too sick and tired of it all to visit Elia in her birthing chamber.
She was dead before the dawn came, but his son was alive, and Rhaegar felt part relieved and partly disgusted at how cold he had become. But she was always too good for me, was she? he found himself thinking, as spiteful as that was. She had been kind and loving and generous; exactly the kind of woman who was fit to become Queen, and Rhaegar wished with all himself that he could have fallen in love with her.
But I never had and spent years feeling guilty for it.
Rhaegar had fallen in love with Lyanna instead, sometime between her brother’s death and the fifth month of their stay in Dorne; but that had been so long ago. I’ve died five times in the meanwhile, he realized, dismayed.
He died again a fortnight or so after that, after sharing a cup of wine with the Red Viper at Elia’s funeral feast. There had been rumours in Dorne of Rhaegar having his wife killed by the Grand Maester so that he would be free to marry the Stark girl he’d crowned Queen of Love and Beauty at Harrenhall; or so Prince Oberyn told Rhaegar, conversationally, as the poison worked its way into his system.
“It won’t hurt,” the Viper promised him. “Elia wouldn’t like that.”
It didn’t.
vii.
He lived again and again after that, and every time he died.
Burning alive, he decided, was the worst. Drowning was a close second and then there was stabbing, not because it was particularly unpleasant; but mostly because Rhaegar was coming to hate the feeling of a blade in his back. And every time he was back.
Rhaegar never lived long past the end of Robert Baratheon’s rebellion, whatever he won it or not. It was no longer Robert’s rebellion because he had never even glanced at Lyanna since his third death, no matter how much he missed her; but the realm would not tolerate a madman for a king. Rhaegar himself had been the rebel more time than he cared to count, whenever he thought they had a real chance of winning; and fought to protect his father’s throne at least as many times.
Some things changed, some others remained the same, but he had never gone back further than Duskendale since the very first time, and never lived to see his twenty-fifth nameday.
He stayed awake at night more often than not, thinking. Perhaps it was the gods’ will, that he did not die until his destiny was fulfilled. Does that make me the one? Rhaegar had given up on that idea the night he’d seen the comet, some two years into the future and tens of lifetimes ago. And I am not even close to fulfilling anything, he thought, bitterly. How could he, if he kept dying?
That night, Rhaegar rose from his bed in his rooms in the Red Keep; feeling as though he was suffocating, trapped. Elia stirred in her sleep and he hurried out of the room, trying not to wake her up. They barely talked these days, and he knew she wondered what had happened to the man she had married. A ghost took his place, my lady.
He had arrived into this life a year or so after Rhaenys’s birth; long enough into their marriage that his wife had seen the difference, how he’d changed into a different person from one day to the next. She had even asked him directly, once, and the thought of confessing everything had been so tempting he had stormed out of the room. You would think me mad, darling. As much as Aerys, if not more.
And perhaps he was.
Perhaps he would have scared her away. It was almost tempting, now; the thought of living at least once without his constant companion, the woman he did neither deserve nor wanted and yet was all he had, life after life after life. Rhaegar had never resented anything or anyone in his life as much as he had come to resent Elia Martell and hated himself all the more for it.
In the end, he made his way to the top of the Traitor’s Walk and jumped.
He had never felt more alive than he did in these few seconds, before hitting the ground.
viii.
There was a certain degree of freedom in choosing one’s death, Rhaegar learnt, almost inebriating; the pleasure that came from knowing he had a destiny and still refusing to care, to set apart duty and destiny and live by his own whims.
In the years that followed, Rhaegar ran away.
The first time he woke up one day at nineteen years of age, some two or three months before Steffon Baratheon’s death. He slipped away that night taking nothing but a few valuables, cut his hair and boarded a ship for Braavos. After that there was Norvos, then down the river to Volantis; and he made it as far as the Smoking Sea before his ship was boarded by slavers and he himself captured. Rhaegar let himself be killed then because he had still the pride of a prince; and, if he were ever to see New Ghis, it would not be in chains.
ix.
After that, Rhaegar spent years travelling. He saw Ibben and Vaes Dothrak and the Summer Isles, the Isle of Cedars and Qarth by the Red Waste. He visited the ruins of Yeen and Naath and in the forest of Qohor, and once bathed in the Rhoyne by the Sorrows to find out what greyscale felt like, but it took so long that he killed himself when he lost interest. Rhaegar played the harp for the Prince of Pentos once, and crossed blades with the First Sword of Braavos, losing badly.
He even sought out Myles Toyne of the Golden Company, when they were fighting for Myr against Tyrosh; telling the man he wanted to join in. The other man’s reaction had been the most amusing thing he could remember seeing in… a while, Rhaegar decided. He didn’t particularly like to remember how many times he’d lived and died. He ended up staring at the golden skulls, fascinated. The only one he could recognize was Maelys’s, killed by Barristan the same year he had been born.
“Which one is Bittersteel’s?” he asked Toyne, as pleasantly as he could; and for a moment he thought the other man would kill him there and then.
“You are mad,” it was all the man said, and Rhaegar merely smiled at him because Toyne had the right of it.
I’ve always been, I just never knew.
Rhaegar fought two battle against the Tyroshi, but by then rumours of his presence had begun to circulate, and he did not want Varys to find him. The next time he went into battle with no armour, and there he died.
x.
When he woke up he was in King’s Landing once again, and it was the day of his daughter’s birth.
Rhaegar didn’t go to see her before leaving yet once again. Why should I? he asked himself, and could not find a reason. He would never live long enough to see her turn four in any case.
This time he went to Oldtown, cropped his hair short and dyed it black; and presented himself to the Citadel. Some two weeks in the rumours on the mysterious disappearance of Prince Rhaegar had reached him like it always happened, but this time he was still in Westeros and dark hair wasn’t enough. Rhaegar got into a tavern brawl not soon after, emerging with a check sliced open and a couple of missing teeth; and no one would have taken him for a prince after that.
In Oldtown, Rhaegar studied the occult and the myths and legends of the East. He remained there for years, long enough to become a maester if he so wished; the longest life he ever had. He turned twenty-five at last, and twenty-six and twenty-eight; and it filled him with a hope he hadn’t known he could still feel.
Some few months after his twenty-eighth name day, he heard whispers of rebellion from the east. The king was mad, they said in Dorne and in the Stormlands, mad and cruel and he killed on a moment’s whim, commoners and lords alike, as he had killed his son. It was the same tale Rhaegar had heard over and over since the time he had decided to forsake his duties and leave King’s Landing and Westeros to their fate… but he was in Westeros now and, for the first time in decades, he was ashamed of himself.
The realm rose in rebellion in the end, the way it always happened; and Rhaegar bought himself passage on yet another ship bound for the East. He did not stop at the Jade Gates this time, going even further, to Yi Ti first and the Shadow Lands after, and cursed himself for a fool for not having gone there sooner.
Because in Asshai by the Shadow, he saw the dragons.
After this, he thought, I can die at peace.
And he would do just that, Rhaegar decided, living out to the end of his days in a land where and warlocks could command ghosts and demons alike, where saffron was no more costly than meat, the trees always ripe with fruit; where winter never came.
He learned of the cult of the Red God, of the Great Temple where the fires never went out; and joined in the worships to listen to the priests preach of Azor Ahai, almost laughing in their faces when he first heard their tales of the Great Other and the battle of ice and fire. Ice and fire should be allies, not enemies, he wanted to tell the priests; but why should they listen? He had given up that right when he’d left the realm to itself, and by now it was too late.
Rhaegar had been in Asshai for more than ten years when the priests’ sermons became more urgent; they talked of war in the west and dispatched many of their own numbers to fight the mysterious enemy.
But the ones who left never came back, and Rhaegar stopped listening. He wondered if there was anyone still alive in the Seven Kingdoms, any of the people he had loved once and sworn to protect; and the guilt nagged at him, day and night. How could I know? he pleaded with his own gods, praying for relief; but they did not listen. You ran away, the voices chanted in his dreams, and they sounded like his father. You had a duty, and you ran away.
He cried in his restless sleep and begged the voices to listen. How could he have known, Rhaegar asked over and over again, that he would be needed, this time? After so many wasted lifetimes and meaningless deaths, what made this one different?
The voices never answered spirits or gods that they were, and Rhaegar was nearing his fiftieth year when he went into the desert by the Shadow for the last time, and there he fell asleep.
This time, when he woke up, he was nine years old.
xi.
Rhaegar was delighted at first, elated and more hopeful than he could remember feeling since that first time. Suddenly his existence had a meaning after countless years, and his repeated lives felt once again like a blessing instead of the burden they had become.
This time I’ll do it right, he promised to whoever would listen. I know I will. And at that moment he was himself again, reborn with a renewed fervour for the purpose he’d given his life, so many lifetimes before.
That was the day Rhaegar went to Ser Willem, to begin his training, as he remembered having done, once upon a time; and he welcomed the pleasant feeling of distant memories coming back together, piece by piece. There were old friends in this new life of his, faces Rhaegar had not seen in so long he’d almost forgotten how they looked like, and faces he’d have been glad to never see again.
And, most of all, there was Rhaella; back when she was still smiling and beautiful and carefree, younger even than Rhaegar had been when he’d fought Robert for the first time, and seeing her so lively broke his heart. He treasured every moment with his mother, every half-forgotten echo of his childhood made alive in front of his eyes as the years went by; agonizingly slowly at first, and then faster than Rhaegar would have believed possible.
He was, in the eyes of the world, even more silent and aloof of a young boy than he had been the first time around, with even less patience for children’s games and boys’ pastimes than he’d had; but it did not matter. Rhaegar spent all his time immersed in his own books, or putting to writing all he could remember of his life in Asshai and the future that was to come, and convinced himself that it was for the greater good. Young Arthur Dayne had been at court for almost a whole year before Rhaegar even took notice, and the distance and distrust in the boy’s eyes hurt Rhaegar more than everything else had.
He told himself it was better this way. Arthur will die and so will everyone else if I am not ready, he thought; and that was the day he wrote his first letter to Aemon at the Wall.
Nothing else mattered. When Duskendale rolled around again, four years later, Rhaegar made sure that it was Ser Harlan Grandison and not Barristan Selmy who was dispatched with Lord Tywin’s army, Ser Harlan who was sent to retrieve his King.
He failed and was killed, and so was Aerys. It is better this way, Rhaegar told himself at his father’s funeral; and then again a fortnight later when he was crowned in front of the whole realm. I will do better than he ever did.
That was, in Rhaegar’s memory, the only one of his lives in which he had become king; and he did everything in his power to prepare the kingdom for what was coming. He lowered the court’s expenses and the taxes; tripled the strength of the Night’s Watch; established institutions where the children of the smallfolk could be properly educated, for the time when everyone would be needed.
He did not, however, marry Cersei Lannister; and Lord Tywin gave his daughter to Robert Baratheon in exchange for the promise of a throne. The people loved Rhaegar even more than they had the fifth Aegon, but his nobles did not, and once again the rebellion tore the realm apart.
Rhaegar died on the Trident for the second time, in the exact same spot, in blood and rubies and green river water.
xii.
He was eighteen again in his next life, and the first thing he did once he took in his surroundings was to make sure that Lord Steffon and his lady wife had not yet sailed for the Free Cities. The next thing was to make sure they brought their firstborn son with them, and a few months later Robert Baratheon’s body washed ashore in Shipbreaker Bay.
Rhaegar did not marry Elia again; in fact, he went out of his way to make sure they never met each other. He saw her only once, at her wedding to Jaime Lannister, glowing; and that was the end of it. He played the game he despised this time, the memory of Tywin’s schemes still fresh in his mind; and courted blatantly to his side every lord and lady who came across his path, winning allies for the day Aerys’s madness would show itself again.
Robert Baratheon had been dead for three years when Rhaegar wrote to Winterfell asking for Lyanna Stark’s hand in marriage; and, if Lord Rickard was surprised, he did not let it show. Lyanna was not quite fourteen by then, younger even than she had been on their first meeting; and Rhaegar spent many a sleepless night during his journey North. He had not seen Lyanna in what felt like centuries; countless lives spent cherishing these all-too-brief memories, too scared to spoil them with the truth. But it has to be now.
This was to be the last time, the final time; and he wanted her by his side.
In all his lives Rhaegar had never seen Winterfell and found himself looking around curiously, trying to imagine what Lyanna herself would see. He remembered her describing how the castle would look like snowed in, when the ice crystals crept up the windows; remembered the sound of her voice and the little smiles, and the way she would brush her dark hair behind her ears. It’s beautiful, she always said.
Winterfell was beautiful and so was she, in a silver dress that had obviously never been worn before, glancing at him with curiosity and wariness and with a fierceness that brought up so many memories, it almost paralyzed him on the spot. The rest of the Starks were as guarded as she was, though Lord Rickard looked more flattered than anything else and Brandon downright suspicious. As expected.
There was a feast, and Lyanna’s smile was frozen on her face as they danced.
“Why me?” she asked, blunt as always; and Rhaegar had to pause before answering. Were there even enough words to explain it?
“Why not?” he told her, as the music ended; and she frowned. “Come riding with me tomorrow, my lady,” he said. “Let’s talk.”
And they did, Rhaegar doing his best to recreate the relationship they’d lost; the understanding, the easiness of it. He told her of all the places he’d visited and what he saw there, passing off his stories as someone else’s adventures; because he knew she liked to hear of distant places. He asked her about her favourite horses, of the Wall that he’d never seen, and swimming in the White Knife in summer. He challenged her at an archery contest, mildly scandalizing Ser Oswell, and there she laughed.
Rhaegar won in the end, but very narrowly, because for all of his experience the bow would never be his weapon of choice. Lyanna looked genuinely regretful to see him leave, ten days later, and he counted it as a win.
“Do you think you could be happy?” he asked her. “With me?”
Lyanna looked surprised that he’d even asked at first, maybe even thought him to be mocking her; before realizing that he genuinely meant it.
“Perhaps,” she said, in that grave voice that he knew was a perfect imitation of Lord Rickard’s, and he had to laugh because he had missed that voice most of all.
They were married four years later, and by that time Rhaegar was king in everything but name, Aerys long since removed from power. It was summer when they married, a short summer but a bright one, and warm; and the Grand Sept was full of the perfume of winter roses.
He had not seen a blue rose in so long.
We will be happy now, he thought; and they almost were.
The heart of the matter, he supposed, was that he loved her; and she didn’t.
Oh, she enjoyed his company well enough, and they were together most of the time, as unusual as that was to some people. She was fond of him, as fond as he had been of Elia; and, somewhere, some god must be laughing at that. Rhaegar even thought that she had come to love him after the birth of their first child, but she would never be in love with him the way he was with her as if there was nothing more precious in the world.
Why me, she had asked him on their first meeting; and he had never been quite able to explain it. I’ve loved you since forever, he could have said, I’ve loved you through the years and life and death, but he knew she would never understand. It was ironic, he supposed, that the court called him solemn and distant and with more ice in his veins than his Stark bride had; and yet he loved her with the intensity of a thousand burning suns, and she did not love him back.
Rhaegar doesn’t have it in him to be happy, he remembered his mother telling Ser Barristan when he had been a small child, so long ago; and he supposed she must have been right.
They had three children, he and Lyanna, two daughters and a son; like he had hoped and prayed for years, but he knew better than give them the names of his dead children who would never be born. He let Lyanna choose instead, Daena for the defiant princess she admired and Alysanne for the greatest Queen the kingdom had ever had, but she would not name their son after some dead king, or so she said. She named him Jon, for her father’s grandfather, and Rhaegar laughed and asked how was some dead lord’s name any better.
But he had learned his lesson, time after time. In the end, symbols and spells and names counted for nothing; and he let her.
When the Others came from beyond the wall, as he knew they would, he was ready.
They were ready, Rhaegar and his children and sister and brother, with the dragons Rhaegar had hatched from the eggs he had found so many years ago in Summerhall, the eggs that had been lost on the day of his birth when so many had died. Rhaella had begged him not to do it, crying; but Rhaegar knew what must be done and how remembered where the dragons in Asshai had come from.
He was glad he had not killed his father this time around, because only death could pay for life, and Aerys’s would work well enough.
The White Walkers came and so did the Children, but far too late; and even four thousand men weren’t enough to man a wall that was crumbling down; not after the Horn had been sounded. It was the heart of winter now, bitter and icy cold, the nights so long that they barely saw the sun.
They swept across the North and down the Neck, and it was snowing even in Dorne, the rivers completely froze in the Riverlands, hundreds of thousands dead.
It came to battle in the Green Fork by the Twins, before the army of monsters and walking dead could march further south, before the sea itself froze and they could walk on it before more men died and rose again.
“Today,” he told his men. “We fight.”
And they fought, and lost, and died.
xiii.
When he woke up the sky was dark and the air was cold, and it was the night before the battle again.
xiv .
And again.
xv.
And again.
xvi.
Gods help me, he begged; but the gods never did.