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Viserys wakes.
There is his own breathing, ragged and rasping; the ever-present sound of the city, whether night or day. The creak of the massive structure around him, as much cage as castle and keep, and the smell of the incense, never able to completely neutralise the scent of his decay.
There is someone else’s breathing within this space. “State your business, or be gone,” Viserys says tiredly. He is not usually so curt, but the exertions of the morning were great, and he must rest in anticipation of the supper tonight. He doesn’t even bother to open his eye.
“You’re not usually so discourteous, brother.” Viserys does not have the energy to be surprised, but still, it is not like Daemon to come to him willingly.
“A trying day,” he replies, around a cough that shakes his ribcage brutally and sets the lesions on his back to burning from the motion. He peers up at Daemon, who seems impossibly tall from this low vantage, who looks unbearably hale and healthy, his lustrous silver hair, his skin unmarred and whole. “What brings you here, Daemon?” If his bluntness startles Daemon, then the younger man does not show it. Viserys closes his eye. He is accustomed now to conducting full conversations in the dark.
“Can’t a man visit his king without some ulterior motive?” King, Viserys notes. Not brother. It must be a political visit, then, rather than a personal one. That part is unsurprising. Daemon has little use for him these days, beyond the Iron Throne, and it must be something important, to have brought Daemon here. His little brother never could bear a sickroom.
“If this is about the Driftwood Throne, I have said all I will say on the matter.” There is an odd choking sound from Daemon.
“You think I give a fuck about the Velaryons?” He sounds revolted. Viserys arches his eyebrow, but it’s the eye that’s gone, and the brow ridge has long since gone bare and is hidden under bandages anyway.
“Something else, then. Some scheme you have hatched.” Viserys pauses to breathe. “Not content to let an old man die in peace, little brother?” He hears Daemon draw in a breath, then another. They are strangely ragged, for a man whose lungs are far healthier than Viserys’ own.
“I didn’t know.” Viserys frowns at the words, and at the tone. There is something like desperation in Daemon’s voice. “I didn’t know how bad it’s gotten. If I’d known –”
“You were keeping my grandsons and daughter safe – in short, you were exactly where you were meant to be,” Viserys tells him. Daemon makes a low, wounded sound in response, like that of a man struck hard around the middle, and it is odd enough that Viserys must crack his remaining eye open to investigate. His brother is no longer standing tall and proud, but has sunk to his knees, only the crown of his fair head visible, pressed to the covers that hide most of Viserys’ wasted body from view. “Oh, my brother,” Viserys sighs, and a sound like a sob tears out of Daemon’s throat, his broad shoulders trembling. Daemon is a big man, a seasoned warrior, a husband and a father, but he is also Viserys’ little brother, and Viserys can’t bear to see him desolate.
He reaches out with his good arm, and closes his hand around one of Daemon’s own.
That makes the younger man look up. His grasp is almost painful around Viserys’ damaged fingers, but damned if Viserys is going to tell Daemon to let go. “You’re not going to die,” Daemon says ferociously, Targaryen hair and eyes blazing in the muted sunlight. “You’re not. Say it, you bloody bastard, say it –” His eyes darken. “Why are you laughing –”
Viserys cannot help it. He pats his brother’s beautiful hand in mute apology, shaking with the force of his amusement, the weak chuckles the best thing he can remember feeling in years. “Forgive me,” he says eventually, when he has his breath back. “It is only – so very you, Daemon, barely able to stand my presence for most of our lives, and now ordering me to live, as though my decay can be halted by your whim alone –” He laughs again; breathless, alive. “I do love you, brother.”
Daemon has stilled. He could be a statue of the Warrior, or even the Stranger, except for his eyes. “You have not said that to me in more than twenty years,” he utters; soft, bewildered. Viserys gives into temptation and puts his mangled, broken hand out, stopping less than an inch away from Daemon’s flawless cheek.
Daemon moans, deep in his throat, and presses his face hard into Viserys’ palm, so much like the child he’d once been that there is a flare of physical pain in Viserys’ breast, near his stubbornly still-beating heart. “You fear it not,” he rasps. “The taint of my illness. You did not fear it today, when you came to my aid.” Daemon’s eyes are wet, as is his cheek; the sensation of those tears on his skin is still something Viserys is able to feel, as is the bleak, leaden misery in his heart.
“I may be the warrior of us both,” Daemon says thickly, “but you are by far the braver. To stagger towards that wretched metal chair, barely half-alive and riddled with agony –”
“It is a man’s duty, to protect his kin,” Viserys points out, tracing the familiar line of Daemon’s cheekbone, razor sharp as it has been now for years, since the last of Daemon’s puppy fat melted away in his late teens. Even now, Viserys can almost see that chubby boy’s face superimposed over Daemon’s current visage, a ghost of the past. “And a king’s to protect his bloodline. Soon –” He coughs. “Soon it will be your duty, little one.” Viserys blames his addled brain for the endearment, incautiously uttered. Hopefully his brother will not notice.
But Daemon’s breath catches. “I don’t want you to go,” he says, voice small, as small as he used to be, frightened of thunderstorms and of the shadows in the hall, crawling into Viserys’ bed in the small hours between midnight and dawn, silver hair tousled, thumb tucked into his mouth.
“‘serys, I’m scared.” Those huge bright Targaryen eyes, those tiny feet shuffling on the stone, the feel of his little body as he curled into Viserys’ side, already drifting into sleep, secure in the knowledge that his brother would keep him safe. Such a little child, to become such a large man. Where did the time go? Viserys knows it not.
He is drifting into dreams that are half memories, exhausted, barely able to keep his eye open. “Come, little brother,” he murmurs. “Get in already. Father will not be happy if we fall asleep at the breakfast table again.”
There is a pause, and the cheek beneath Viserys’ hand creases, as though the owner has twisted his mouth into a grimace. But just before Viserys surrenders to sleep, the words come, quietly. “All right, brother.” The voice is soft, small, but the frame that lifts the covers on the far side of the bed is not. Still, Viserys smiles as he is drawn into a careful embrace, his face tucked against a strong shoulder, even as his ruined body sings with the agony of it, in skin and bone and muscle. His emaciated frame is nothing compared to Daemon’s physique, and Viserys huffs out a weak laugh.
“You’re the big brother now, little one,” he japes gently. Daemon sobs again, and soft lips press against Viserys’ balding, scabbed scalp. The kiss is so tender, and so foreign, to be touched without pain, that Viserys nearly weeps himself.
“No, ‘serys. That will always be you and you alone,” Daemon replies, like a vow, like a sacrament. His muscled warrior’s arms are so gentle that Viserys could almost forget the harsh realities of his existence; his rotting body, his ruthless wife and Hand, and that dreaded Throne, which has cut so much of himself away. “Sleep, big brother. I’ll keep you safe.”
The circle always turns, Viserys reflects drowsily, mustering a weary smile. The little one becomes the strong. The protector eventually requires protection, and on it goes, ad infinitum, to the breaking of the world.
“I love you too, brother,” he hears, both in Daemon’s adult voice and in his baby one, drawn up from the vaults of memory, and smiles again, well-satisfied, and returns to sleep.