Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Where are you going?” Lucerys asked his older brother as Jacaerys stood up, taking a few steps away from their small campsite. 

Luke sat with his knees pressed together on a log that Jace had dragged in for him—an old rotting piece of wood covered in frozen lichen and moss—his body covered in thick winter clothes, a fresh s’more in his hands. The graham crackers held together the slightly burnt marshmallow that was blackened around the edges but still fluffy white on the inside along with the melting dark chocolate, the gooey mix spilling over the edges and creating a sticky mess on the younger Targaryen’s fingers. Luke was but four and ten, his baby fat still clinging to his cheeks that flushed pink in the cold, a fluffy mess of dark brown hair atop his head that hung over his forehead, big brown eyes looking up into his brother’s which matched his own.

“I’m going to get more wood for the fire, I’ll be right back. I promise.” Luke shivered where he sat, nodding with a gummy smile before biting into his s’more. 

It was the second of November, autumn was nearing its end, the once vibrant reds and yellows that decorated the forest now faded to an earthy brown, full foliage now fallen upon the ground, dead leaves covered in a light dusting of the year’s first snow. The warm fall breeze had turned bitter and cold, a winter’s wind whistling through the trees as they swayed with the snow falling gently from the dark gray clouds. Night had fallen over an hour ago, the light of the sun long gone, leaving only darkness in the woods and sky. 

Jacaerys and Lucerys had ventured north with their mother Rhaenyra and uncle Gwayne for a business trip—Joffrey still across the Narrow Sea with their uncle Laenor—and with the new vast wilderness that lay outside far different from their volcanic island home, Luke had begged their Hightower uncle to take him and Jace camping. But with his days completely busy and his nights spent in front of a bright computer screen, he had no time to entertain them with outdoor adventures—and as a compromise, let them build a fire in the woods not far from their rented house, the orange glow of the windows all but a bright dot in the distance between the darkness of the shadows of the trees. 

They would return home when they had finished their treats and tired themselves out.

Hours before, when the sun had begun to set beyond the mountainous horizon, they grabbed their snacks from the pantry and bundled up in coats, smiling and hurrying out the door with a kiss from their mother on their foreheads. Pink and orange settled above the treeline, the forest’s leaves rustling as they ventured out far enough so it felt like they weren’t only in their backyard, alone with the wilderness and all that lurked within. As sunset faded into twilight, they fought with pretend swords made of hefty old sticks, crowns of dying wildflowers on their heads, laughing as they jabbed each other with thin wood and tackled one another onto the forest floor. 

But as hours passed and their fire had begun to die, as the flames weakly licked at the blackened wood and the embers only glowed faintly, Jace went into the darkness of the forest to fetch some more dry wood to feed it, leaving Luke behind to munch on his chocolates and marshmallow goodie. When the sun had gone, the beauty of the woods with casts of warm light had been replaced by eerie shadows and vast darkness of unknowing, the source of every child’s nightmares lurking beyond. Jace tried to ignore it, the light of their campfire faded behind him, and he squinted as he tried to see in the woods, his surroundings black like pitch as he blindly kicked around, listening for the snapping of twigs, letting whatever skulked in the black fog know he was there as his footsteps echoed out around him. The trees creaked in protest against the bitter wind, the faint sounds of wildlife lurking and rustling in the brush soft beneath the kekekekeke sound that screamed from the thin bodies of the oaks. He would hear the flutter of a bird’s wings every so often. His heart began to pound in his chest, thinking of the many things that lurked within the northern woods—but mountain lions and wolves had no reason to venture so far from their domain towards the town, they would not be here. Fear had seeped into his blood, making it turn cold. 

They would not be here. But they are not the only things here.

The wind suddenly picked up, making Jace cover his face in his scarf, blinking furiously as cold tears filled his eyes, crossing his arms and shivering. He tried not to let his childhood fears haunt him now, visions filling his mind of creatures far larger than him, fast with their long bony limbs, things that would chase and hunt him as he was helpless and alone. He walked for what felt like an endless circle of time, nothing beneath his feet but dead crunched up leaves and small twigs that would serve him no good. The wind continued to beat against him, his dark brown curls itching his face as a twig snapped in the distance, ringing out as he snapped his head around, looking for movement in the darkness. There was nothing. The forest was quiet. He could hear no animals, he could not even see the light of their campfire anymore. 

And suddenly, a high-pitched scream filled the cold air, echoing in the trees and making Jace’s blood run cold. 

It was Luke. 

“Luke!” Jacaerys screamed out, his heart beating wildly as he ran, arms outstretched as low hanging branches scratched him and reached out like bony fingers trying to grab him. 

His lungs burned as he struggled to breathe, terrified and unable to think clearly. He ran blindly, running without thinking or caring for his own safety as he tried to follow the sound of his brother’s screams ringing out, only the fog and forest surrounding him in the darkness. Terror filled him as he realized he was lost, and he couldn’t find his way back to Luke. His screams had begun to fade, going further and further away as if he was being dragged.

Oh please, not my sweet little brother! Please don’t take him!

He stumbled into a clearing, falling heavy onto the dead grass covered in a thin layer of snow, laying on a pile of sticks as his head smacked the ground, hard. Blood rushed to his head—his ears ringing, air escaping him as he tried to suck in a breath, helpless on the ground. His vision was blurry, his head throbbing as consciousness began to fade from his grasp, the black treetops and dark gray clouds seeping into blackness. The blackened figures of the trees surrounded him, standing over him, taunting him as they watched him—their needles felt like a thousand eyes. He may as well be dead.

Luke’s screams suddenly stopped, and the woods went quiet. 

…..

A nightmare—most would call it a frightening or unpleasant dream. To those who suffer the vicious scenes of the brain’s devilish scheme, frightening and unpleasant seem like a taunting understatement. Thousands fall victim to the replay and imagination of their worst fears and the memories of times past, waiting and hoping for someone to wake them up. Sometimes one nightmare would even seep into another, tricking you into thinking you’ve woken up. Jacaerys has been one of these victims as long as he can remember, ever since he was a kid. Of course it starts as little things in innocent years, the monster under your bed or in the depths of your closet while you hide under the covers, calling for mommy as you cry and hope its long and bony black fingers don’t choke you. But as you grow older, you have much darker fears than an imaginary monster tapping at your window. Losing your family to the hands of those who thirst and lust for the crimson blood of those they hate, shadows in the dark, nameless men who take your sweet little brother and are never found. 

He was good, he was so sweet and he was good, why would anyone ever hurt him? 

Jace would cry and mutter to himself long after midnight, as wind pounded on the window pane and coldness creeped under the blankets. 

But now, those nightmares seem to have subsided for the time being. And some visions played by the mind are not all bad, but rather—comforting tricks. This one almost feels like a distant memory, so real it almost feels like it's happened before. Jace feels warm, fully content, lying on a soft velvet couch while his eyes are blurred. 

“Am I crying?” He asks himself, wondering if he could just wipe away the tears.

 But he couldn't bring himself to move his hands nor any part of his body for that matter. His mother, with her long silver hair and delicate smile, smiled and rocked her little babe with brown curls in her arms. This room was back home, with long stones and candle sconces that cast shadows and danced across the wall, flames flickering orange and blue at the root. He was pressed into a cushion of deep red velvet, soft against his cheek, plush beneath his body. There were strings of holiday lights hanging on the walls, glowing a fading warm white. The tall windows of diamond lattices opened to the night sky, stars gleaming across a canopy of endless blue. 

Jace could only watch in silence, heaviness tugging at his warm brown eyes as his mother rocked her babe and fed him at her chest, brushing his little hairs and singing an old tale of the salt and sea. But something edged at his brain—the warmth, his family, his home, it would all fade away just like it had so many years ago.

“It’s time to wake up, Jace…” his mother whispered, her amethyst eyes flickering to him beneath white lashes. 

“Jace..” She whispered again, calling out to him as he shut his eyes. 

“Jace!” He couldn’t stay, it would all fade away, skin and flesh would turn to ash and bone, blood long for the sea would be spilled in the snow. But he wanted to stay. 

“Mom..?” 

“Wake up Jace.” 

“What?” 

“It’s time to wake up.” 

In only a moment, that beautiful memory faded away into agony. The warm air turned into icy cold wind, the soft couch into brittle snow, and mother and Luke—nowhere to be found. Jace’s vision was hazy, dark evergreens with snow dusted atop their sharp needles surrounded his vision. They stood tall and menacing as if they were staring down at him, taunting him with their creaking wooden bodies. The evening sky was a dark gray, still crying its frozen tears of little snowflakes. The harsh wind made Jace’s ears painfully numb, like they would crack off if he stayed out only a minute more. He sat up with a heavy weight on his side and belly, only then feeling the throbbing pain behind his head, which felt as heavy as stone, and the excruciating pain in his stomach. He raised a trembling hand and felt the back of his skull, his fingers coming away coated in blood. 

“Did I slip? Is this still a dream?” He thought to himself, feeling the icy ground below him. The chill felt like tiny knives stabbing him all along his body.

“What was I doing out here again..?” Jace asked himself, looking around. The trees behind him continued into a dense forest, going on and on until it was nothing but a menacing black fog.

That darkness brought up that same childish fear, that there was a monster watching you, tapping at your window. But through the thin layer of trees in front of him, he could see his house. His? It wasn’t his. The wooden walls stood strong in the cold night and many windows were visible on every one. A chimney rose from the snow-covered roof, smoke rising from the top. The inside looked warm, and a fireplace was visible from one of the diamond muntin windows. 

I ran. He wanted to get up, to flee—but he was too weak. His body was freezing, a brittle cold, shivering to the core, and too much warm blood had been drained from his head. His mind felt hazy, and his vision blurred once more. 

“Maybe I’ll…slip into that nice dream again..” Jace whispered as he flopped back down onto the snow like a heavy chain had pulled his head back down. His eyelids drooped shut, covering his almost lifeless brown eyes. His breath appeared like smoke as he sighed into the cold air, a small hand clutching his arm before he was falling into unconsciousness once again. 

He stood alone in a clearing, surrounded by those same, taunting evergreen trees. The sky was still a dark gray, covered in thick clouds that rumbled and loomed with the approaching storm. The forest blew and creaked in the harsh and bitter wind, snow blowing furiously with the mountainous breeze. The sounds of the trees’ branches were like whispers, hushed in the heavy wind. They were the whispers of Jace’s mind, the ones that forced him to cover his ears until it was nothing but the sound of his own heart beating. Snow blew in heavy flakes, the forest beyond the clearing fading into a terrifying black fog. 

In that fog, he knew they were there, the monsters of his childhood home. The ones that hid under his bed, waited in the closet, and tapped at his window. Tap, tap, tap, tap. The thickly packed snow layered up to Jace’s shins, and only when he looked down did he see it—blood. Old blood. It left a heavy crimson trail in the white snow, haunting, tempting Jace to follow it. He forced his legs to move, he felt the dead, sharp grass beneath his bare feet, painful—oh so painful. Only a few agonizing steps in he tripped and landed flat onto a pile of sticks. 

Jace held his eyes closed until the ringing in his ears stopped, but once he opened them—he gasped with what little air he had. What he landed on wasn’t sticks. It was bones. They had frozen meat stuck to them, and blood stained to their ivory surface. He wanted to scream, bile rising up in his throat, but all that came out were the frozen tears from his eyes. He looked up, and saw where the trail of rotting blood led to. 

There, in the snow, was a flock of crows, picking and eating at something. It was too dark and the snow was too foggy for Jace to see exactly what it was, so he began to helplessly crawl towards it. The blood trail began to soak to his body, staining his calloused skin, sticking to his blueing hands. Once he got close, the crows flew away, all except for one. He looked down and saw a large, thick branch beginning to be covered by snow, and reached out a shaking hand to grab it. The surface was riddled with dying lichen and moss, scratchy bark leaving little bits of residue behind. Jace looked up once again, when he realized what lay there in the snow, he let out a piercing, bloodcurdling and cracking scream. 

It was Luke, what was left of his body, just the way Jace had seen that day he found him. Blood clotted all over his body, and flesh torn where his skin was exposed. His face was unrecognizable, the eye that was left pulled from its socket, dried blood cracking from his open mouth. The crow still picking at his spilled intestines, rotting and horrid to smell. Tiny still maggots and their eggs were frozen to his innards, dead with the cold. He was completely mangled, his legs missing. The whispers in the trees became louder, the crows above him squawked, wanting to take what was left of his little brother. 

The trees shrieked and shook, “You left him…”

The crows continued to scream in hunger. 

“You left him..!” Jace wanted to wake up, he wanted to escape this horrible nightmare. The crows were closing in. 

“It was only for a minute!” Jace screamed back, choking on his own terror.

“You let him be taken!!”

“I went to get wood for the fire! Please, I didn't mean for it to happen, I left him for only a minute!” 

He gripped the brittle branch. 

The crows, the crows, the crows. 

“LEAVE ME ALONE!!” He lunged forward and struck the crow feasting on Lucerys, swiping it to the left. It squawked in pain, thrashing around on the ground with broken wings. Jace fell on his knees and continued to beat it mercilessly, the blood poured and feathers scattered. A final blow to the head silenced it, bits of its brain staining the snow crimson. Jace dropped the branch and fell back.

He covered his ears, begging for the sounds to stop. But it didn’t work, it never worked. It never worked.

The crows screamed, the trees were laughing and squealing, kekekekeke. The tapping at the window, tap, tap, tap. His ears were ringing.

Wake up…

He’s being dragged away. 

Wake up…

He’s screaming for help. 

Wake up.

He’s dead.

Wake up.

Jace startled awake, gasping for air as his throat burned. He was still in the coffee shop where he’d worked, the doors locked and the place tidied, a cleaning rag still gripped in his shaking fingers. His feet ached and his arms felt sore from the double he’d worked that day, his bones screaming and cracking with every bend of his joints. I must have fallen asleep while closing, he thought. Jacaerys was a young man of eight and ten, with a lithe frame and pale freckled skin, brown short curls and similarly colored eyes that glowed like honey in the sunlight. He was only allowed muted colors for work, so he wore a simple black sweater that was somewhat oversized on him, his brown apron still tied loosely around his waist. 

The sky had long ago turned dark, no fading orange light from the sun peeking through the tree line. It was late autumn outside, with the vibrant colors in the trees of reds and yellows fading into dying browns and falling to the ground, leaving bare branches in their wake. The fall breeze had long been replaced by a biting winter chill, deep gray clouds hanging overhead with a light gust of snow, dusting the ground covered in dead leaves and wrinkling grass with a dusting of white snow. He ran his hands through his grease-addled brown curls, looking down at the wooden table at liquid stain and pastry crumbs. The incandescent bulbs of string lights above him were warm but dim, leaving the young Targaryen with heavy-lidded dark eyes. 

That dream came again and again, every night it would appear, then it was gone with Luke, faded away with the morning mist. Sometimes, he could not decipher dreams from reality—his life an endless sea of nightmares, unable to tell if he was awake or asleep. Even after all these years, that loss still hurt Jace the same as it did when Luke’s body was buried. He had been ten and six when it happened, and two years had come and gone since then. The north was cold and unforgiving, isolated in the endless sea of trees—his living there had begun as an act of independence from being spoiled by his family, but now he just couldn’t bring himself to leave the place where it had happened—where Luke had been found. 

I was his big brother, I was his protector, I was faster than all my siblings.

Yet I still could not save him. 

The night sky now was still as comforting as the night that his brother was put beneath the ground back home, but in a different way. Before, it was a beautiful array of stars that Jace and Luke could lay beneath, making imaginary shapes with the constellations above. They would do that for hours, until they fell asleep curled up against each other, when Jace had longer hair and had gone by a different name—to be scolded the next morning by their mother for sleeping outside, ‘it wasn’t safe’ she would say. But in these moments, the comfort lay in the idea that Luke was somewhere among those same stars, watching over him. Jace could still remember that pain like it was yesterday, staring with an echoing hole in his heart as dirt covered what had been left of his little brother. Tears streamed down his face as he said his final goodbye, leaving a little seahorse just beneath the ground. 

He shook his head in the cafe and buried his face in his hands, hoping to forget the scenes that plagued his nightmares and haunted his days. He often heard other voices in his head, some with his own voice, some with the voices of familiarity, ghosts haunting him. 

He disliked closing by himself, not only because of the workload it put onto him, but the uneasiness it left him with from the old memories that came to him with the silence. The small coffee shop sat beside the road in front of the tree line to the endless old forest behind them, hundreds of acres stretching out far into the northern lands that Jace currently called home, tall and thick evergreens surrounded by heavy brush. He didn’t believe in any of the stories and whispers that circulated of ghosts or creatures in those old woods, it seemed only a warning to keep people from going in. 

A year never went by without a story of a missing person disappearing in that forest or remains being uncovered there. It had been his brother once. Shivering in the cold, he remembered the officers talking amongst each other, “they said it was a wolf probably,” and the other had whispered back, “what kind of wolf can tear someone in half like that?” 

Those words haunted him like an old ghost. There was always a saying spoken whenever an incident happened—‘if you go to bury a body in those woods, you’ll uncover another digging the grave.’ And the locals would always shut their blinds and lock their doors and windows at night—everyone, without fail—as if they were trying to keep something out. They never spoke a name of these creatures, like they were afraid the words would drift in the wind and summon it to them. That was why he always took quick glances at the glass walls that surrounded him, making sure he was truly alone, that he wasn’t being watched. He didn’t want to be next. So many nights he had laid awake, his mind drifting to all the pain Luke must have suffered to a monster that had taken him.

I had only turned around for a minute, the fire was dying—the flames licked at the blackened wood but the embers still burned. I should have stayed. I can still hear the sounds of him being dragged away, screaming my name and begging for help—then the sounds suddenly stopped, and the woods went quiet. 

The fear of not being alone, of being watched, had begun as more of an instinctual thought than anything else, but for the past few months, he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him, not only at work but when he was on the bus, when he was walking home, even in his own house—the feeling lingering even after he shut every blind and locked every door. He always turned on the porch light before going to bed, the orange glow of the light seeping into his bedroom once darkness had fallen—yet sometimes, late into the night, there was no light—only a small, rhythmic, tapping on his window. Tap, tap tap, tap. When morning snow was fresh on the ground, even then he would find footprints in the snow outside his bedroom window. Two long walls of his small café were clear windows, leaving him open and exposed to the dark and cold night, only a house with dim orange lights down the road to keep him company, to keep him from feeling totally alone. 

He tried not to let his eyes wander outside, lest he conjure up images of figures in the woods or someone standing up against the glass, yet he still took quick glances all the same. Guilt seeped into him often, thinking that same monster—that which has no name we speak of—would take him too. Dozens of people had looked for Lucerys within those woods for days on end, but whatever cruel gods there were—old or new—had condemned Jace to find Luke himself. It was his fault. He hated to be surrounded by that same forest, those same, taunting trees. Throwing the grimy rag in the trash, he glanced up at the glass, seeing nothing but darkness and the black outline of the woods against the dark, gray sky—and with that he began to untie his apron and headed into the backroom with quick steps, wanting to be rid and free of this damned place for the day. 

He threw on his black coat and scratchy wool beanie, feeling the fabric itch his forehead as he turned off the lights and grabbed his belongings from his small locker. The feeling still lingered, even in this room with no windows. He turned around, eyeing every shadow in the corner with trembling fingers, seeing only webs from long dead spiders, the carcasses of flies and bugs still trapped—it’s only them and I, he told himself. He told himself that no one lingered for him outside the back door, waiting to take him. With a deep, stuttering sigh, he walked out into the bitter, cold night, gripping his pepper spray tightly—half expecting someone to be behind the door as it closed shut behind him. He conjured up images of a lanky monster with pale bony skin, a wide smile and flesh-ripping teeth, long arms that could reach out and grab him. Yet deep down, he knew the monsters he trembled for weren’t creatures, they were men. Men that lived and breathed just as he did, that passed him in the street, that he handed coffee to all day long—men that would stand outside his window. 

But when nothing was there, he took a deep breath, warm fog coming from his mouth in the frigid air that stung his freckled cheeks and nose—and he began walking to the old bus stop. The forest whistled with the sway of leaves and branches in the winter’s wind, the cold biting at his flushed nose and cheeks and brushing his brown curls across his neck. As Jace made his way out of the pothole-ridden parking lot to the sidewalk, he kept his head down, watching the ground as he walked. His old sneakers did little against the light dusting of snow, brown dead leaves crunching beneath his feet as they became colder with every step. The concrete must have been decades old, uneven across the grass, cracks splitting through to make way for moss and weeds—nature had almost completely taken it. His steps seemed to echo around him, every crack of a branch and crunch of snow ringing throughout the woods—letting them know he was there. Someone was watching him. Jace lifted his nimble fingers from his pockets, covering them around his mouth and blowing warm air, trying to keep his face from going painfully numb. Tears stung in his eyes, salt drying against his cheeks as the cold breeze blew against him. 

“I just wanna go home…,” he whined to himself more than anyone else. He wanted this day to be over. 

The once burning street lights had died months ago, yet no one had come to change them. The only light came from the little house across the street, a single window’s shades drawn down with orange hues peaking through the blinds. The rest of the house looked vacant, consumed by the darkness and deteriorating with age, vines and grass grasping at the walls—he’d never seen anyone come or leave from that old house. Yet a light was on. A truck was parked in the lot beside it, it looked old, a deep teal Ford, yet Jace hadn’t seen it before either—there had never been any signs of anyone living there save for the single light that never turned off. 

Even with his eyes down, Jace could sense the bench in front of him, coming into his view before he bumped into it. He took this same path every day, a hundred feet from the coffee shop to the bench, the steps memorized in his head like a dance. He leaned down and brushed the thickening layer of snow from the bench, red paint peeling and cracking from the rotting wood, sitting down despite how it screeched in protest. Only then, did Jace look up from his shaking feet. The blackened figures of the trees swayed and creaked with the wind, the night sky dark with snow clouds, and endless darkness within the forest, dead brush and fallen leaves scattered across the ground. Jace tried to tear his eyes away from it yet he couldn’t bring himself to, his fear keeping his eyes locked on the darkness, wanting to catch a glimpse of the creatures and monsters that haunted him like specters. The shadows of the trees were taunting him, the shapes of figures dancing in the leaves. Something, an animal—something in the woods let out a high-pitched scream, making Jace cover his ears in hopes it would go away. 

“It’s not real, it’s not real…it must be a coyote…” He wanted to shut his eyes, but if he did then all he would see was his brother’s little body, rotting in the snow, the stench stinging in his nose—and when he opened them, he was afraid it would be right in front of him. He never believed in the old stories, they were only threats, warnings—but now he feared the things people feared in those woods were not only the bodies that littered the ground. It must be easier to believe in creatures with no names that tore apart his brother quickly, more so than evil people who made sure he was afraid before they ebbed his life away, slowly and painfully. His eyes darted everywhere, brown pools filled with tears as his lips trembled, sucking in desperate and hurried breaths, his heart pounding a million miles a minute—he hoped the creatures would take pity on him and leave him alone. When he turned his back to face the forest behind him, his heart skipped a beat when he saw something in the darkness. There, amongst the fog and foliage, less than a hundred feet away—was a figure. It did not look abnormally tall or have disproportionately shaped limbs, he could not make out sunken eyes that gleamed only a speck of white or a wide smile filled with teeth—it looked…human. 

He stared at it, watching as it never moved—and he knew it was watching him. 

The headlights of the bus began to shine through the darkness, yellow beams slicing through the trees in Jace’s peripheral, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the figure. As the vehicle began to slow down to let him on, his heart dropped as the figure charged at him. He could hear the leaves and twigs crunch beneath its heavy steps, coming towards him quickly, yet he still couldn’t make out any features. The bus was screeching to a halt, yet it was only coming closer, closer, and closer. Jace yelled out hoping the bus doors would open before it could reach him, don’t let me die, not like this, please don’t let me be taken like Luke! The glass doors opened, it was at the bench, he could hear it breathing as it reached out for him and he clambered inside, tripping over the steel steps and his own feet. He thought he was already dead when he felt its fingers graze his back and touch his hair, he thought it would drag him out into the woods and do things to him he wouldn’t speak of. 

Yet the doors screeched close, and he was safe. 

For now.

Chapter Text

The driver, an older man Jace has seen twice a day everyday for three years, looked down at him with a worried expression. He had a kind, pale face filled with smile wrinkles, a well kept silver beard and mustache, and the typical white button up uniform for drivers upon which his nametag read ‘Westerling.’ 

“Are you alright, kid?” Jace was still trying to catch his breath, his heart thumping in his chest and threatening to burst, tears trickling down his face. 

“Yeah I’m…I’m fine…just drive, please...” the engine hummed as the bus pulled away, and when Jace stood on his feet and looked out the back window, the figure was standing there, watching him. 

“Gotta take a seat, Jace. Bus rules, you know,” Westerling said with a gentle smile, obviously trying to calm down the flushed and terrified look on the young Targaryen’s face. 

Did he not see it?

As the darkness enveloped any sight of the bench or the figure, he sighed with a nod and sat down in the plush front row behind the driver’s seat. Curling into himself, he tried to calm his heartbeat, closing his eyes and pressing his palms to them, filling his vision with tunnels of static instead of visions of nightmares. 

The bus was much warmer than the outside, dim yellow lights glowing overhead, patterned cushions covering the seats, thin rattling windows that showed the trees streaming past in flashes. Removing his hands from his face when his eyes started to ache, Jace sniffled and lifted his head—he saw the only other passenger on the row opposite of him, a woman that was a regular at the coffee shop. Her name was Aly, she always ordered an iced Americano with cold foam. She had long thick black hair which cushioned her head pressed up against the glass, supposedly sleeping. With still trembling fingers, Jace pulled his phone from his pocket, seeing the time was just past half past eight, the date of the second of November displayed just above it. Across the background photo of his three cats, well, his and his three roommates’ cats, he saw two texts, one from Gwayne no doubt worrying about where he was since he was later than usual, and one from his mother from a few hours ago. 

Mom, 6:17 PM

‘Are you doing alright? Call me if you can.’

It was a simple, short text—it showed she cared about him and worried for him even hundreds of miles away. Over the last few years their relationship was strained, not only over Luke’s death—but after Jacaerys’ transition. Rhaenyra had lost her only daughter— though she never truly had one—and gained another son. She was supportive of him, but he saw the way her violet eyes welled with tears despite the smile on her face when he cut his hair. He hadn’t spoken to her in months, his mind had been busy, running on autopilot fueled by cinnamon lattes and beer. His days had blended together for almost a year, waking up, taking the bus to work, working for twelve hours, taking the bus home, taking a shower, drinking a beer, filming a video, and going to bed. It was routine. It kept him sane. What made his sanity crumble was trying to keep himself from falling into guilt—watching every person he saw, wondering if they’re the monster who stole his brother away from him, if they’re the one who’s following him, watching him. He tries to see someone’s intent in their eyes as they glance at him. He never can. 

Sometimes he’ll tell himself it was only the creatures that lay in the woods. It’s easier to grasp. 

He clicked on her contact and hit call, pressing the phone to his ear and hearing it ring. It rang only once before she picked up. 

“Jace?” She still had the same sweet and gentle voice. It reminded him of home, of constellations and clashing of wooden swords. 

“Mom, hi, I’m…I’m sorry I haven’t called you in awhile, I’ve just—been busy,” her eldest son sighed, keeping his eyes glued to a blood red leaf stuck to his shoe. 

“It’s okay sweetie, I know you work hard. Is it still okay living with your uncles? You’re always welcome back home—”

“No, um—they’re fine mom, Daeron is liking school up here, he’s doing pretty well in his classes I think. Aegon still drinks sometimes but he never has rage fits anymore…not a lot anyway…and Gwayne…he watches after us,”  he trailed off a bit at the end. There was silence on the other end. 

“I can hear you thinking, mom. I’m okay,” He’s lying, but he can’t bring himself to admit that he doesn’t like it here. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s scared. He was meant to be the example for his little brothers, always making the right decisions—if he fails, he lets them down. He already let Luke down. You let him be taken, the nightmare still rings in his ears like a scream. 

“Are you making any friends up there? Maybe someone you could go on a date with?” She had a hopeful tone, yet she seemed on the verge of tears. She worried for him. 

“Mom, I…” he paused, he wanted to say it. I’m scared mom, I can’t trust anyone around me. I’m scared I’m being followed. Someone is watching me, they tried to take me like they did Luke. Mom, please come get me. 

But he couldn’t. 

“Not really mom, just a bunch of old people where I work. I have my uncles though, they keep me company well enough.” She gave a defeated sigh. Looking out the windows Jace saw a few more scattered houses, some small trailers pulled off the side of the road, each with a single light on. 

“Okay well, if you see some people your age try and make some friends, okay? And you have the pepper spray I gave you right, just in case?” He reached into his pocket, it wasn’t there. It had been in his hand when he left the coffee shop—fuck I must’ve dropped it when I was getting on the bus. 

“Um—yes, mom, I have it, thanks,” the bus came to a slow stop. Looking up in the windows he recognized the little neighborhood he lived in, small brick houses for small families or couples, little street lamps glowing in every yard. 

“Alright, mom, I’m at my stop, I’ll call you later, I love you—and tell Joff for me too, alright?” Jace got up, sliding out of his seat and next to the driver. 

“Okay, Jace, I will, I love you, and stay safe up there, okay?” She sounded like she was pleading, words unspoken about the dangers of where he lived.

“I will mom, bye,” and with that he ended the call and shoved the phone in his pant’s pocket, giving a small smile to Westerling before the old driver opened the doors for him. 

He hesitated for a moment, thinking for a second that thing might be there waiting for him. It’s impossible, I watched it stay still, left behind as the bus rolled away. With a deep breath, he hopped off onto the sidewalk in front of his driveway. There was nothing. There was only the cold wind hitting him in the face, snow still falling steadily from the sky and leaves beneath his feet. The doors screeched close behind him, the engine humming as the bus drove away, fading into the distance as Jace stood there in the cold. The wind still whistled and swayed the trees, leaves rustling in their branches. Those fucking trees. His house was brick like all the others, a small ranch home with a single garage on the left side, a simple window for every room. The patio was small, only a concrete step and a light that glowed yellow beside the oak door, neglected foliage creeping up the railing and across the wall. Some of their neighbors had put up various spooky decorations for the season, flickering fake candles, carved jack-o-lanterns, cobwebs, foam graves with corny messages—but their only sense of ‘spooky spirit’ was a rotting, uncarved pumpkin Aegon brought home from the grocery store. It was free, of course. Their house was small, a bit cozy, but it had room for each of them to have their own space, and that was enough for them. Gwayne’s car was pulled into the driveway, Aegon had taken the garage as his dumping ground for when he had his friends over—so they didn’t disturb anyone else as they often did. 

I didn’t think he’d be home yet. Jace thought as he walked with hurried steps to the front door, his tattered shoes scraping against the concrete, eyeing the woods behind the house with fear that began to fester in his head again. He opened the screen and then the door itself, quickly shutting it behind him and flipping the lock. He was instantly hit with the warmth of their small house and the smell of something baked coming from the kitchen, the lights dim in the hallway but turned up in the kitchen area. Their walls were yellow, a few family pictures scattered in various places—all put up by Gwayne—and a few fake plants to make it look somewhat lived in—also put there by Gwayne. Jace took off his hat and shoes, dumping them on the small table by the door before discarding his jacket as well, placing it on the hook before walking through the hallway towards the kitchen. His socks slid against the textured carpeting, his feet dragging more than he meant to. Vermax, his tuxedo cat with yellow and green eyes came rushing to greet him, rubbing his black and white fur against his legs. 

“Hi, buddy, did you behave while I was gone or did you rip up Aegon’s mattress again?” Jace bent down to pet his fluffy head, scratching his ears while the cat only chirped and purred in response. Sunfyre, Aegon’s large orange tomboy cat, peeked his head around the corner, his green eyes narrowing. Sunfyre only liked and showed himself to people he knew, otherwise he would squirm even in Aegon’s arms when strangers came around.

Jace just felt relieved to be safe within the walls of his own home, not out there, with the woods and whatever lurked within it. 

“Jace? Is that you?” He could easily recognize his uncle’s voice, his head peeking over the counter into the hallway to see him. Gwayne was his stepmother Alicent’s older brother, with her same auburn hair and brown eyes, pale freckled skin that flushed red around the cheeks—but his hair was much shorter, part down the middle and cut off at his ears. He wore a thick green sweater, cuffed around his wrists and fraying at the edges. He was also much older than his nephew-roommates, his mid-forties coming upon him with grace, his face looking much younger than his years. He was in many ways, their guardian. He looked relieved when he saw the young dark-haired Targaryen, his knitted brows softening. He walked around the counter and to Jace, stopping him and inspecting him for injuries, moving his arms and looking at his head. Other than a small bruise on his wrist, he was otherwise unhurt. Yet the look in his eyes was distant, brown irises shaking, unfocused and troubled.

“Oh, thank gods—where have you been? I texted you hours ago! I’ve been wondering where you were—whether that was at the bookstore or dead in a ditch somewhere, I—gods your hair is greasy—” 

“Uncle Gwayne, I’m fine! I just fell asleep while closing again…and why are you home so early?” the Hightower stopped his inspection, leaving his hands on his nephew’s shoulders, worry still painted across his face. He and his sister shared the same sad eyes that glistened in the light. 

“Again? I’ve told you, you need a day off from that place…and a better sleeping schedule at that, making coffee at four in the morning for twelve hours straight isn’t good for you…and with the snowstorm worsening everyone in the office just went home for the night,” Gwayne took a deep breath, his voice beginning to break a bit, “but you need to text me when you’re on your way home, I was worried sick…if something happened to you, your mother and my sister would kill me—”

”You’re rambling again,” Gwayne paused, a small smile on his face as he dipped his head, realizing he’d gone overboard with worry again. He met Jace’s gaze, honey-brown and earthy copper meeting.

“Can you blame me? You’ve been distant since…you know,” the end was left unsaid, but Jace knew what he spoke of. The incident. 

“I know…I just…there’s been—,” Jacaerys stopped himself, hesitating to speak of what had happened, what had been happening for months now. He would think me crazy, descended into madness from the burden of grief—he would send me away, abandon me, it would be fitting I suppose, I had left Luke. He had wanted to live his life back at home, amongst the tides and waves of the sea—and he died in this strange, foreign place.

“Jacaerys?” His uncle studied his face, eyes welling with tears. 

“Nothing. What did you make for dinner? I’m starving,” Jace pulled away, trying to divert his uncle’s attention to something else. Anything else. Vermax was following his feet with Sunfyre not far behind. On the kitchen stove sat a glass pan with foil over it, something orange-yellow visible inside. Their kitchen was relatively small, especially in comparison to the one Jacaerys was used to back home in the south. It had granite countertops and oak cabinets, electric stove top burners and subway tile, and a decade-old microwave that had food splattered across the inside from Aegon’s midnight raids. Back home, they had a large kitchen with shining silver and gold plated appliances, spider burners and espresso machines, deep maroon tile with marble countertops, black cabinets and a window over the stovetop. Luke had liked to do his homework beneath the pendant lights. 

“It’s spam and noodle casserole, but I added in some rice cause I was a little short on egg noodles.” When Jace pulled back the foil top, he was met with the warm smell of the casserole, noodles and cheese bubbling beneath the crust. 

“I see you went crazy and added cracker crumbs to the top,” Jace jested with a small smile, making a little fun of his uncle’s lack of diversity in his cooking. Dinners always consisted of something with noodles and rice, recycled leftovers, or instant meals melted on the burners. In the beginning, his attempts at meals had often ended in blackened edges and kitchen fires, but three years of cooking for three young men had improved his efforts tenfold. Gwayne gave him a small smile. 

“Yeah, the leftover crackers from my attempts at a charcuterie board for the office were still in the pantry so I just used them up before they expired…,” he paused, watching how quickly his second-oldest nephew grabbed a paper plate from the cabinet and shoveled the steaming food onto his plate, “when was the last time you ate?” The eldest Targaryen son paused, his eyes avoiding his uncle-in-law. His brown curls glistened under the light of the stovetop, slicked hair sticking to his scalp. Having to pause and think about it said more to the Hightower than what Jace would muster. 

“Jacaerys…,” his voice was soft, his shoulders slumped as he put a hand on his nephew’s.

“I know, I know…but packing a lunch never crosses my mind when it’s four in the morning and I’m trying not to wake you guys when leaving for work…” 

“Why don’t you get something from your job? You sell sandwiches and stuff, don’t you?” 

“I can’t afford them…” Gwayne paused.

“Then let me give you lunch money—”

“No! I’ll just—remember to pack some leftovers.” His uncle gave a defeated sigh, knowing he had a numerous amount of stubborn nephews. 

“Alright well—go sit down and eat your dinner, I’ll put some in a takeout box for you to take to work tomorrow, okay?” Jacaerys turned and smiled at him, tears still gathering in his eyes, his mind clearly lost in some other thought. 

“Okay. Thank you, uncle.” The Hightower pressed a kiss to the back of his head, shooing him off to the stools by the counter to eat. 

“You know how much I care for you kids, and it’s not just because you’re my sister-in-law’s,” Once Jace sat down and nodded, his brown curls bouncing as he pulled the stool close to the counter, he quickly realized he had nothing to eat it with—so Gwayne handed him a fork. 

“Thanks…,” the young Targaryen said with a small laugh, rubbing his face with his hands before digging into the full plate he’d made. It tasted of warm cheese and soft noodles and rice, the diced meat tender and making his mouth fill with saliva as he ate. Vermax hopped onto the counter to sniff at his food, stealing a piece of diced pork from his plate before rubbing onto his hand, longing to be pet. 

“Vermax, quit it!” Jace said with a chuckle and a mouth full of food, groaning at how black fur had found its way into his casserole. 

Nevertheless, he still scratched his tuxedo cat’s head, smiling at how Vermax closed his eyes and leaned into his hand. Sleep tugged at his eyelids, but he still had much to do before bed. I still have to do that private stream…fuck…it was what he hated most about the side hustle he had, the nicest words he could come up with for what he reluctantly did for extra money. 

He could never speak a word about it to his mother, or Gwayne—no matter how much he cared for and trusted them, they’d wring his neck if they knew he did sexual acts online for strangers to see. After his Hightower uncle had covered him for rent for too many months, with nowhere else in their small town hiring help, he was desperate. 

He cried the first night he posted a video. He had hoped for a sweet relationship fitting for his younger years, for someone to caress him and hold him close at night, a promise of protection and longing, warmth and comfort with dinner and movie dates—and now, he was only a faceless object of lust to strangers on the internet. 

But he could put it off for a little while longer. The events of the night still tugged at his mind, making him tremble where he sat thinking of how that thing had reached for him—had grazed his back. It was inches away from getting him, from taking him into those woods. He eyed the sliding glass door beside the kitchen that led to their small backyard, nothing but darkness behind the panel, but darkness is where it lurks in silence, waiting, watching. He turned away, fearing he would see that thing. Even now, I can feel eyes on me.  

Tap, tap, tap, tap. 

Jace startled at the sound thumping against the glass, flickering his gaze back to the door—he imagined a monster with long rows of human teeth and sunken eyes like black pitch clawing at the glass—but he turned, and there was nothing. 

“Jace?” 

He could hear Gwayne calling to him, but his ears were ringing, his voice drowned out in the noise. He kept staring into the darkness, looking for movement in the abyss, I know you’re there, I can feel your eyes. He kept wanting and waiting for that damned thing that taunted him and tore at his mind to fucking show itself. Let me know you’re there, so I know you’re real. 

Then, something in the woods let out a high-pitched wailing scream. It echoed  through the trees like specters, startling Jacaerys and making his eyes flicker through the forest. Tears welled in his eyes as his mind raced and his body trembled, let it all be a fucking nightmare—when I wake up, I’ll be home again, with mom and Luke. A shadow moved in the trees. It’s the thing from the bus stop, it followed me home. 

“Gods these foxes get closer and closer to the house every goddamn day, this is why I don’t let the cats out!” Gwayne slammed the fridge shut, rounding the kitchen counter and walking to the back door. Each of their cats—Vermax, Sunfyre, and Tessarion—were all perched by the glass, hair raised, claws and teeth bared, hissing at the darkness. Tessarion was a sweet and gentle plump gray-blue cat, hissing was unlike her.

The Hightower drew the thick curtains over the door shut, and suddenly they were alone—but the cats were still on edge, looking at the fabric as if they knew something lurked behind it. 

“Jacaerys?” Gwayne called out to him again, studying his nephew’s fear-stricken face—lips trembling, brown eyes wide and shaking, brows furrowed, his whole body shivering—he looked like he’d seen the face of death. 

“Hey, hey, hey…what’s wrong?” He quickly approached Jacaerys, putting his calloused hands to the boy’s face, earthy copper eyes meeting honey brown.

Gwayne’s heart ached, watching Jacaerys break down—for months he’d seen bits and pieces of his resolve crumbling away, fading as days and nights passed. With no children to speak of, he had taken it upon himself to watch over these kids that insisted on independence and freedom to take care of themselves, yet he still saw himself as their protector. Jacaerys was succumbing to grief, and he felt helpless to stop it. He’d been one of the few to see Luke’s body, that image still plagued him even now. 

“I don’t know what it is—it keeps following me everywhere!” His heart dropped. 

Locking all the windows and doors, shutting all the blinds, never sleeping, jolting at every sound, staring into the woods like he knew something was there. 

“What?” 

There’s creatures in those woods, ones we don’t speak of.

“Something is out there! I keep hearing it—outside my window, in the trees—it’s always watching me in the darkness but I saw it! It ran at me, it grabbed my back—”

Bury a body in those woods and you’ll find another digging the grave. 

“Jace! Jace, hey, calm down—” 

“It’s gonna take me like it did Luke!” 

Grief and trauma can descend people into madness, and madness can make you see and hear things that aren’t there. 

“Jace! Enough!” The Targaryen boy looked up at him with wide eyes, tears streaming down his face like the waterfall of a summer creek. Gwayne never yelled, especially at the boys he cared for the most. No, he protected them from people who would do that. It didn’t sound like him. 

“Jacaerys…you are safe in this house, okay? Every window and door is locked, and I am here. If someone breaks down that door I will put myself between you and them, do you understand me…?” Jace closed his eyes, and nodded, leaning into the warm hands on his face. Gwayne pressed a kiss to the top of his head, rubbing his thumb across his nephew’s pale freckled cheeks. 

“I won’t let anything happen to you…” Jace believed him. They shared no blood, yet Gwayne cared for him like he was his own. His heart would break if someone took Jacaerys away from him.

“If I’m ever not home and you’re in danger, remember the handgun in my nightstand…I know it will be scary but don’t you dare hesitate, just fucking shoot—I know you can, you’re a hard-ass just like your mom,” Jace smiled up at him with teary eyes, and somehow, he saw his sister from all those years ago. 

“Now go take a shower greasy, I’ll be out here awhile finishing up some work I didn’t get done in the office, so when you come out I’ll tell you about the time your mom pepper sprayed me cause she thought I was an intruder,” Gwayne ruffled his Targaryen nephew’s brown curls, ushering him to go with a smile—but before Jace did, he stopped, watching his eldest silver-haired uncle walk out of his room. 

Aegon had white hair and amethyst colored eyes with slight bags beneath them, and a small burn mark on the right half of his pale face from a house fire incident from a few years ago. He always looked tired, mainly because he was hungover most mornings—his greatest struggle leaving his bed in the morning. He often sported the same deep emerald green sweatshirt with gold-plated aglets, along with black baggy pants and black snow boots—if the temperature was too much to bear and a blanket of snow covered the ground, he’d throw on a winter jacket gifted to him by Gwayne. He was a few years Jacaerys’ elder, yet their standing in maturity varied. Aegon was best suited to socializing and depravities, his weekends spent draining the money he’d earned that week on booze and whatever habit or addiction he’d picked up in recent months. 

Even though he had his flaws, Jacaerys liked Aegon. For a child that had been subjected to things meant for those far older than him, he had done his best. When Jace moved up north with them Aegon had taken him to the animal shelter—the place had dim yellow lights and smelled awful but it was there they found Vermax and Sunfyre, a bonded pair, they couldn’t take one home without the other. He often remembered the way Vermax and his black and white furry body had snuggled up into his arms when he reached for him, and Sunfyre had kneaded Aegon’s hoodie while he laid on the floor, his uncle laughing at how heavy he was against his chest. 

“I’m going to pick up Daeron from the library, throw me the keys!” Aegon yelled out to his own uncle with his hand raised, despite how they looked nothing alike. Gwayne eyed the glass bottle of beer in his hand with an annoyed look. Aegon sniffed.

“If you seriously think I’m giving you the keys to my car to pick up your little brother while you’re drinking you are gravely mistaken,” Aegon scoffed, sniffing again, taking a swig of whatever was left in the bottle and setting it on an end table in the hallway. 

“There, happy?” Gwayne still stared at him, unmoving and extremely bothered. 

“What? I’m not a damn lightweight and besides I’ve only had one beer tonight, I’m fine to drive!” The Hightower rolled his eyes, but still reached into his pocket and threw his nephew the keys to his old car. 

“Remember to drive slow and pump, don’t slam the brakes if you start to slide, and there’s already ice on the roads so don’t let me get a call about you causing an accident!” Most of his speech went on deaf ears as his eldest nephew walked off, wiping his nose as he sniffed, turning the lock on the door and opening it along with screen, walking outside into the brittle cold and blowing snow, closing it behind him. 

Turning around towards Jace, Gwayne let out an exhausted sigh and rubbed his face in his hands, dragging his fingers through his auburn hair. 

“Your uncle Aegon is the reason I don’t have kids,” Jacaerys let out a little chuckle, turning to grab his pajamas from his room before going to shower. 

His room faced the front of the house, directly across the hall from Gwayne’s. The door was still open from when he left that morning, his double bed in the corner still unmade with the sheets tousled and the fluffy blankets strewn in different directions, the pillows arranged so he could hug them while he slept. A nightstand with a lamp that’s bulb had died many months ago and a dresser along with a small desk were the only other pieces of furniture, each matching wood with black handles. His only other decorations were a few books on his desk along with some candles his eldest uncle had brought home, along with a plush cat bed in the corner that could fit both Vermax and Sunfyre, and holiday string lights he’d taken from his little brother’s old room. 

His only room. 

The orange light from the porch glowed faintly through the blinds in the darkness of his bedroom, bits of the night peeking through the sides. Approaching the glass, he lifted the blinds just a bit. Nothing but falling snow, houses across the street with dim lights behind blinds, the empty street, and a fresh trail of large footprints in the snow that stopped in front of his window. Rattling the pane, Jace made sure the window was locked and pulled the blinds closed, his heart beating rapidly in his chest. Quickly, Jace pulled his pajamas that he planned to film in from his oak dresser, a set of a matching pair of gray fluffy shorts and a cropped shirt with patterns of pumpkins and ghosts that glowed a faint green in the dark. He wouldn’t need underwear.

With his pajamas stuffed tightly in his hands, Jace walked across the carpeted hallway to the bathroom, pulling a fluffy and fresh towel from the linen closet on the way—Gwayne must have done laundry earlier. The bathroom was tucked between the Hightower’s bedroom and the laundry room, decorated with deep teal glass tile across the walls and fake plants on the corner shelf, a walk-in glass shower on the far wall with a little window by the ceiling above the showerhead.  It had been the only room they had truly put money effort into renovating, but it had clearly needed it when tiles began to fall from the wall while they showered. Jace locked the door behind him, placing the pajamas on the sink’s faux marble counter and wrapping the towel on the designated rack. He opened the thin panel of glass to the shower and turned the faucet on, shutting the door and letting the water warm from cold as it first came out. 

Hidden in the darkness under the sink, laid a little neglected orange bottle, the old printed text on the sticker nearly faded—Jacaerys Targaryen, 400 MG Clozapine, take 2 tablets every 2 hours. Dust had settled on the cap, for it hadn’t been touched in a long time. 

Jace then turned to the mirror, his fingers fumbling with the fraying hem of his loose black sweater, slowly pulling it over his head and setting it on the sink, doing the same with his pants and socks, leaving him as naked as when he first came into the world. He eyed himself with tightly knitted brows, his thick brown curls hanging just halfway down his thin neck, brown eyes that seemed muddy in the darkness but glowed like pools of honey in the sunlight, pale and freckled skin blemished with little scars, his waist thin, ribs poking through his skin, and thick thighs brushing against each other. On his chest the scars from surgery still laid, mostly healed, colored white and jagged beneath his dusky pink nipples. And freshly regrown hair between his legs covered what still made him lack in being what he wanted to be, only a cunt as a reminder of what he once was. 

He was content in the look of his body, knowing some others must agree if the comments he received during his coffee shifts held any truth. Yet he still hesitated when showing it to others, let alone strangers he’d never known and never would. Jace’s eyes flickered with the sting of tears, remembering often how he’d never felt the gentle touch of a lover, was never caressed by loving hands, never cared for, never pleasured or engaged in lustful ventures. He was eight and ten, and others his age had mostly felt it ten times over—kissed crushes, cuddled partners, had sex with their lovers—but he was still alone in the world, put on a pedestal as only an object for others to stare at. Running his hands through his hair, he thought I’d give anything for someone to look at me and desire more than what laid between my legs. At six and ten, my mind was ruined, and I would forever be at the mercy of creatures in the woods that haunt me like specters and chase me like meek prey.

The cool air that lingered in their little house made him shiver, flipping the switch on the wall to turn the fan on, hearing it buzz in response before quickling pulling the glass door to the shower open, steam pouring out as he was testing the water temperature before stepping inside. Feeling the hot sting of running water down his skin, he sighed in content, closing his eyes warm pools running down his body like a summer’s creek. Suddenly, he was three and ten again, swimming in the island’s stream with his little brothers and their cousins, the sun boiled down from above, and the trees created a kaleidoscope of light. 

But when he opened them again, all that was there was dewy teal glass tile, I will never see those days again. 

Squeezing thick and clear shampoo into his hands, he ran it through his wet curls, scrubbing his scalp carefully for a while before grabbing soap and his razor. He could clearly tell which was his, given that two of his uncles had silver hair and the other had auburn. He shaved quickly and carefully while the shampoo in his hair set, suds sliding down his body as he scrubbed his skin clean. Must be perfectly hairless, or else they’ll call me gross and unhygienic—must be perfect for the fucking camera. 

He leaned his head beneath the stream of the shower, letting the soap fall from his body with the water that streamed down before finally putting conditioner in his thick brown hair, using a pumice sponge and his arms and legs to rid himself of dead skin that dried and flaked in the winter’s cold air. Once he finally felt clean, his skin reddened and his hair flat against his head, Jace reached for the faucet before he heard it. 

Tap, tap, tap, tap. 

His heart dropped and his eyes flickered quickly to the little window by the ceiling. There was nothing there except large, prominent fingerprints on the glass. They were on the outside. His heart thumped in his chest, his breathing labored as he waited. 

Nothing. It must be all in my head. 

Please let it only be nothing. There is no one there, human nor creature. Humans would never kill my sweet brother. I would rather it be something terrifying with bony limbs and teeth like needles than a man who lives and breathes just as I do. 

Turning off the shower, Jace’s skin was warmed only by the steam that had risen from the water, stepping out and letting droplets of water fall from his body as his feet met the soft and plush bath mat. Running his hands through his wet curls, he grabbed the fresh towel from the golden-colored rack it laid on, crimping his curls and drying off his soft skin. Looking at his freshly cleaned body in the mirror, he noticed a redness on his chest and thighs where the water stream had hit him, the scalding temperatures perfect for his liking but still somewhat irritating to his skin. ‘What our dragon blood craves,’ Jacaerys’ mother had said when she had run him baths as a child years ago. He took a deep breath before grabbing his pajamas from the counter, pulling the top over his head and stepping into the shorts, feeling the soft fabric like a cat’s fur against his skin. The cropped shirt covered his chest and scars but not his ribs, his thin and soft stomach left out—the shorts reached just below his navel, riding up on his thighs and leaving the crease of his ass just above the backs of his legs exposed. The embroidered patterns of cartoonish ghosts and pumpkins did little to help him forget what he would be doing in it soon. 

After he put some hair oil in his drying curls, the dark-haired Targaryen wrapped the towel around his body to keep Gwayne from seeing him in the chance he happened to glance down the hall to the sound of pattering feet while he was running to his bedroom, doing so and taking a deep breath once he was in the safety of his own walls, the door locked behind him, the porch light still glowing a soft and gentle orange from between the blinds at his window. 

There is no one standing there.                        

Jace sank to the carpeted floor, a temporary ease settling over him as the horrors of the night went further and further into the depths of his memory. Monsters and creatures with bony limbs and sunken eyes would stay false legends, merely warnings to keep others from entering the vast and terrifying woods, the trees that screamed in the wind the only sounds to be heard. It would all be kept to the nightmares in his sleep…

‘I will put myself between you and them, do you understand me?’ 

He would be safe. 

But fear still flowed through his blood like a sickness, and it would still flow within him no matter how he leeched it. 

Jacaerys could hear his phone buzz from his discarded pants on the carpet, and he struggled to reach it even as he stretched his body—finally managing to swipe his fingertips across it and bring it closer to him. When he turned it on, the light from his phone made his eyes squint in pain, his pupils shrinking to try and adjust to the glow in the darkness of his room. There were six messages. Four were from his youngest uncle, Daeron. The closest in age to Jace, he was a pre-med student at the local college about an hour’s drive away, he was bold and caring—with silver hair and eyes like lilacs in the spring, pale skin that seemed to glow white in the sunlight, an often occurrence in their lineage. 

Daeron, 9:23 PM

‘Staying the night with Addam’

‘Aegon mad he got halfway here before I called him lol’

‘Be prepared to face his wrath, pretty sure he picked up a six pack at the gas station with my debit card’

‘Can we visit you at the shop tomorrow <3? Wanna show Addam where I live and shit’

With a small, meek smile, Jace typed out a reply so Daeron didn’t think him dead. 

Jacaerys, 9:23 PM

‘Sure, don’t study too hard.’

The little message bubbles popped up instantly, a response following short after. 

Daeron, 9:24 PM

‘Been looking at diagrams since noon…only things I’ll be hitting hard tonight are some buzzballz and my head against the headboard!!’

Jacaerys gave a small and quiet laugh at his uncle’s crudeness, almost swiping close before a picture attachment came up. 

Daeron, 9:25 PM

‘Your future uncle-in-law <3!!’

Daeron and Addam were both clearly standing in front of a mirror with splashed water stains, the bathroom’s appearance fitting of a college boy’s with an uncleaned counter covered in razors and various soap bar leftovers, tubs of toothpaste left open and neon marks of dried mouthwash stuck to the granite. Daeron was holding his phone in one hand and a buzzball in the other, his leg lifted up by Addam’s hand and their tongues stuck out, both pretending to reach for the colorful cocktail. The two were a perfect mix in appearance, Addam’s long black locs and warm dark brown skin starkly contrasting with his uncle’s own silver-blonde short hair, purple eyes and pale skin. They seemed very happy if the drunken smile and flushed faces meant anything at all. 

Jace tried to ignore the ache of envy in his heart when seeing them together. He longed to be happy and content like that, held in someone else’s care and to be touched with yearning.

Jacaerys, 9:26 PM

‘Have fun, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do’

He knew it was already too late for that. 

Daeron, 9:26 PM 

‘See you tomorrow!!!!!<3’

Closing their conversation, Jace saw a text from an unidentified number, sitting idly in his inbox. 

Unknown, 8:29 PM

‘I hope you made it home safe.’ 

Must be a wrong number. 

He disregarded the text, then Jace saw the one little direct message notification from the private streaming app he used, the username ‘Bigdaddy69420’ highlighted in bold letters. Jace whined—subtle—he didn’t want to have to do this. In his bones, he was still rattled from everything that had taunted him that night—he had been chased and groped in the darkness of the woods surrounded by creatures and monsters, teased and frightened in his own home by fingers tapping on the glass to remind him of their presence—they had watched him for months, seeing his every move, where he went, where he lived. He wanted no more eyes on him.  But that wasn’t his choice anymore. 

With a reluctant tap, he opened the message. 

Bigdaddy69420, 9:15 PM

‘Am I gonna get to see you soon?’

Bigdaddy69420, 9:20 PM

‘Come on, I wanna see you. I paid good money for you.’

He talks to me like I’m some prostitute. 

Jace felt sick. His bottom lip wobbled, brows furrowing.

I don’t wanna do this…he protested, only silently.

I can’t believe I’m doing this. 

I’m so weak. 

Is this what I’ve become? What have I deduced my body to?

My body would be better suited to feed the creatures that haunt and trek the woods. Now his eyes would watch me instead of theirs. 

He hoped his sweet little brother was not looking down on him now. Jacaerys could not bear the thought of Luke knowing how he’d crumbled and broken following his death. 

JDragonRider, 9:29 PM

‘Only a few minutes more so I can get dressed..<3’

He lied. 

A response from his anonymous patron came in seconds. 

Bigdaddy69420, 9:29 PM 

‘I can't wait to see you.’

Jacaerys felt his stomach churn, letting his phone fall to the floor with a soft thump, running his pale fingers through his damp brown curls, feeling the towel sink lower down his body. He walked on his knees to the side of his bed, his knees scratching uncomfortably against the textured carpet as he went. 

Suddenly I’m back home, playing with wooden swords and paper crowns in my brother’s bedroom. 

The next few minutes were only a blur, his mind reeling with the shame that surrounded his debauchery—and he felt hopeless to stop it.

I only want to get it over with.

Chapter Text

Jace’s deep brown eyes were glazed over, staring blankly into nothingness as he sat laid back against his bed, legs spread open on the floor for his laptop camera to see his intimate parts between them, his face hidden from view—not that it mattered, he knew the anonymous man watching him cared little for that. His fluffy gray patterned shorts sat bundled around one of his ankles, his matching top still covering his small chest. He’d been in this position for several minutes, his soft thighs aching as his bones cracked, glancing every once in a while at his patron’s comments and demands. His lower belly thrummed with a subtle heat as the vibrator buzzed against the apex of his folds, yet he felt no actual pleasure. Any climax he reached on camera was forcefully drawn out, only sensitivity following instead of any actual release. Yet slick still dripped steadily from his vaginal opening, his body responding even when his mind was elsewhere. 

A new message popped up. 

Bigdaddy69420, 9:42 PM

‘How come you never put anything inside your cunt?’

The question was over the line, information best kept unknown, but Jace knew the answer nonetheless—not that he would answer him. 

Six months ago, Aegon had pressured Jace into letting loose one night—laughing reluctantly as he was joining his silver haired uncle in the garage he occupied with his three friends that Jace often heard but never saw. One had short dark hair and tan skin, another with fluffy blonde hair, and the third with a dark complexion and hair that matched his skin. The room had a sort of haze to it, the lights dimmed and smoke wafted through the air with a smell of thick musk that followed—it being a struggle throughout the night constantly avoiding the little table by the couch that had lines of powder and a rolled up dollar bill on it. For hours into the night the music was pounding in his ears and Aegon and his friends were urging him on to drink his body weight in alcohol—his uncle keeping him away from the hard stuff they laid out—ale buzzing pleasantly in his system and making his eyelids heavy, Jace passed out on the couch beside his uncle’s bed. He was uncaring for the dirty clothes that were heaped into a pile on the emerald fabric. 

The next morning, Jacaerys had woken with a raging headache, his body feeling impossibly heavy when he tried to get up, sleep tugging at his eyelids despite how light seeped in through the garage windows. But despite the way his whole existence seemed to hurt, his limbs aching and bones popping as he moved—his heart sank in his chest when he realized that his pants were pulled down to his knees and there was cum drying on his thighs with a tinge of blood, his asshole stinging. Looking around with crust ridden lids and blurry vision, Aegon was crumpled up on his own bed, and his three friends were scattered around the floor—each with their zippers undone and belts unbuckled, except Aegon. 

With tears in his eyes and a racing heart, Jace wobbled back to his own room and collapsed on the bed, curling into himself and trying to force himself back to sleep, hoping none of it was real. Aegon was kind to him for most of his life, and in recent years had been protective—but his silver haired uncle could have done nothing to protect him while unconscious, and doing so had left Jace alone with the wolves. For so long he could still feel the pain, shivers trembling in his blood as he fought the violation of what had happened to him. He couldn’t bring himself to tell anyone. He couldn’t even admit to himself that he had been forced on while sleeping—that he had been raped. It was only when the brown haired Targaryen took a shower some hours later that he realized his cunt was left untouched—he did not care to think whether leaving him unpenetrated was intentional, or an act of mercy.  

Jacaerys wanted to save that part of himself for his first love, the first person he would fall into bed with—someone who would actually care for him, caress his skin and hold him close, enter him with caution and shower him with kisses—so he was as grateful as he could be that they did not take that from him. That was all a distant dream as of now, passionate sex and lovemaking some impossible hope. No one wanted him like that, the people who paid for a view of his body would hold him down and do what they wanted if they got the chance, and they had made that clear with their comments. And this man was no different. Despite it all, he had still held onto his virginity—his hymen still intact within his walls, touched only by his fingers the few times he’d tried to pleasure himself. For the camera, he only performed anal with his toys, often dragon dildos either stuck to the floor or attached to the automatic machine stuffed in his closet. 

His quietness did not go unnoticed. 

Bigdaddy69420, 9:44 PM

‘Come on talk, I wanna know what your voice would sound like begging for my cock.’ 

Jace grimaced at the man’s words, but quietly whimpered when the head of the wand grazed deeply against his clit and a wave of pleasure made him shake. 

Another message appeared. 

Bigdaddy69420, 9:44 PM

‘You should tell me where you are, I’ll pay you twice as much if you let me fuck you.’

Tears cascaded down his cheeks, streaming down his neck as he fought back raptured sobs. The man paid them no mind. He did not care for his tears, only what he could give him. 

Good enough to fuck. 

Not good enough to love. 

Then, his phone lit up beside him, a light in the darkness. A text from the unknown number. Glancing at it, he saw a message with a photo attachment. 

Unknown, 9:45 PM

‘Are you alone?’

What—

It was a photo of him, sitting at the bus stop, his back facing the camera—as if the photo was taken from inside the woods.

Jacaerys felt his heart sink to his stomach.

It’s after me. 

He pulled the wand away and turned it off, closing his legs on instinct. A shiver ran through him as his blood ran cold, his body began to tremble. His heart thumped wildly in his chest, his deep brown eyes stuck to the message, twitching rapidly. 

This must be some sick prank, it has to be. 

A shadow passed over his window. 

His head snapped around, but when he looked back to his laptop, another message had been sent. 

Unknown, 9:45 PM

‘Did you lock all your doors?’

Oh fuck, oh fuck!

He scrambled to shut his laptop, the man who only jested at hurting him disappearing—but he felt no more safe with the chat’s eyes gone, because he could still feel eyes on him. 

Monsters tapping on my window, hiding beneath my bed, knocking at my door, skulking in the woods. They’ve come to get me. 

He heard the front door creak open, followed by heavy footsteps. 

I had locked the door, but Aegon—oh gods, he left it unlocked when he left. 

With terror filling his body, Jace pulled his shorts back on and stood on trembling legs, tears welling in his eyes as he fearfully listened to Gwayne shouting something he couldn’t make out, drowned out by the ringing in his ears. He stood in front of his bedroom door, his hand lingering around the handle. 

Gwayne will keep me safe, he promised he would protect me. He would not let me be taken like Luke had been. 

The shouting stopped, and Jace suddenly doubted himself. He heard only struggle, shuffling feet then the sounds of something smacking against something else. Hard.

Running through the woods towards the screams, trying to save someone from something I do not know. 

The gun, I need to get the gun. 

Gathering all the bravery he could muster, Jace carefully opened his door, quietly peering down the hall and into the kitchen. Tears fell from his wide brown eyes, his blood running cold because there, against the kitchen counter that had deep red blood leaking down the side, his uncle Gwayne was being held against it by a man far larger than him, large calloused hands wrapped around his pale throat. His brown eyes almost bugged out of his head, his brows furrowed as he fought furiously. The stranger was dressed all in black, a hood over his head, shielding his face from Jace’s eyesight. The kitchen lights were turned off, only a soft glow from the pendants leaving the room lit, the man shrouded in darkness. 

The figure from the bus stop. It followed me home. 

His uncle tried kicking and pushing away to break free, but it did nothing to help, the man’s grip only tightening—making the Hightower let out a strangled cry of helplessness, blood streaming from a wound on his head, staining his auburn hair. 

He cannot protect me. He couldn’t protect Luke. 

Bile in his stomach threatened to enter his throat.

The gun!

Perhaps it was the desire to end his suffering, or only the instinct of survival—but slowly and quietly, Jace stepped across the carpeted hallway into his uncle’s bedroom, quickly going for the older man’s nightstand when he was out of sight from the intruder, pulling it open. His thoughts were running wild in his head, loud and aching in his mind, overwhelming him as he pushed aside clothes to reach the bottom of the drawer, the tears swelling in his eyes making it impossible to see anything but a muddy mix of colors. 

Will he only rape me in my bed? Or will he take me out into the woods to do it? Will he kill me afterwards? Or will he keep me locked up for him to use like a slave? 

He didn’t know what would be worse, being left out in the woods, rotting and broken open—or left scarred in his own room, forever bound to the memories of being held down and forced that would haunt him for all his days like specters. All the images of what would happen to him, what might be left of him—they flashed across his eyes, muddled with the memories of Luke’s remains as if they were his own. 

Blood in the snow, innards exposed to the biting cold, maggots eating at my flesh, my body left vulnerable to the claws of monsters.

He was scared to move, even as his fingers reached the black handle, a nine millimeter handgun in his grasp. Cold air crawled up his body, shivers skulking across his skin like thin fingers as Jace lifted himself onto his feet, his finger on the trigger of the gun. Wind pounded on the window pane, leaves rustling in the distance. 

Don’t you dare hesitate, just fucking shoot. 

Peering into the hallway, he heard Gwayne choking as he struggled for air with the hands on his throat before he saw it—clawing at his neck while the color drained from his face—his fighting and struggling reduced to only twitches as consciousness ebbed from his body. Then, as either an act of mercy to end his suffering or distaste in the act, the hands around him twisted and snapped his neck,  letting him go and sink to the floor—unmoving. Cold flooded in from the front door, a draft of icy wind poisoning the air. 

Oh no, oh no, no please no—oh fuck! 

Jace fiddled with the trigger, his shaking hands and quiet sobs effectively screwing him over as the stranger turned to look at him. His heart was beating out of his chest, the thumping heavy in his ears as the ringing threatened to make them bleed. He continued to cry, silently pleading for the man that had raised him for several years to not be dead, to not be murdered like this. 

Not like this. Come on Gwayne, please get up! Please I can’t do this without you! 

“Gwayne, get up!” He yelled, begging with a broken voice and tears running down his cheeks. He begged for even a sound to come out, whether a cry or a word, he did not care. Somehow, silence was worse than painful screams. 

But his uncle’s body remained still, his neck twisting in a way that his spine poked through, sickening blood staining the floor beside his head. 

Maggots on his frozen skin. 

Blood in the snow. 

His legs are missing. 

“I did not want to kill him.” The voice that snapped him back to reality was deep, and somehow remorseful. 

The face that Jacaerys had imagined lurking in the darkness, stalking him, watching him from the woods did not have dark sunken eyes or an impossibly wide and grotesque smile—it was a face he knew from a long time ago. 

It was a man not much older than him—a few years at most, with dirty blonde hair that was cut just below his neck, pale skin with bits of stubble across his chin, and icy blue-gray eyes—the look he gave Jacaerys was not one of sin and evil greed, but yearning. He smiled softly and turned to Jace’s shaking form, as if there was no blood on his hands and he hadn’t just broken into the house, a gun pointed at his head. 

“Jacaerys, oh…how I’ve longed to see you after all these years.” 

“You..”

Cregan. 

Eight years ago, when the sun was just above the tide, Jacaerys—who had gone by a different name then that he had left to childhood photos, and parts of him he’s long disregarded—went out with his mother to pick up some fresh fish from the town before the markets closed, and on the cobblestone path he saw a frightened boy with short blonde hair. With his mother at his side, a little Jace of only ten went and approached the boy, his brown hair much longer then, curls bouncing as he rushed to where a shivering Cregan of thirteen stood alone. 

After some time of Jace holding his hand and Rhaenyra keeping a watchful eye on them, Cregan admitted his father and him had been hunting before he got lost. Apparently it was a particular species of cat that had long been prized as trophies, their heads and horns displayed while the rest of their bodies were discarded and wasted, a now endangered species in the tropics—but the young Stark did not know that his father was poaching. He had only followed the harsh and unyielding expectations that his father had set for him with unquestioning obedience. He dared not disobey him, and he still held the scars that reminded him of the consequences of breaking his father’s trust. The elder had told him to wait for him at midday when the sun was up and burning bright, but after many hours of sitting still in silence, darkness had begun to fall and the sound of loons scared him, and his fear had made Cregan begin to look for his father, getting lost in the process and ending up at the market just beneath the tropical forest hills. 

Jace had taken Cregan with him to his house while his mother made dinner with his brothers beside him, where the two stayed until the late hours of the night. After some time, the frightened shaking and mistrusting icy blue-gray eyes softened, and the boy with too many scars gave in to warmth. The foreign boy with blonde hair told Jace of his home back north, of the woods and summer snows, the mountains on the horizon and the wildflowers that grew on the hills—and the brown-haired southern boy had been delighted to hear of it, watching the other speak with color heavy on his face. Within the softness of the deep red velvet couch, the Targaryen made the Stark promise that one day, Cregan would show him his home back in the north. 

Cregan promised with his pinky locked in the other’s—but when his father came for him,  Jacaerys never saw him again. For years he had waited, and he continued to wait till the northern boy with the blonde hair was nothing but a story lost in the passing years, his name like a whisper in the winter’s wind. 

But he was there, standing in front of him, much older and much larger, his body filled out with muscle and his once soft face now sharpened—but he still had that same blonde hair and icy blue-gray eyes, some old scars long faded to raised white skin joined by others. 

For years I waited, and for years he never came. 

“Cregan—you…why would you do this? Why would you do this to me?” Jace fiddled with the trigger, much older, much different than before. 

“It doesn’t matter now…all that matters is I can take you home now, where you belong,” Cregan took a step forward, over Gwayne’s body. 

No, I don’t belong with you, not anymore. 

Jace stepped back. 

“How did you find me?” His voice wavered. He did not want to know, yet he did at the same time. 

“It doesn’t matter—”

“Tell me!” Gray-blue eyes flickered at him. 

I want to know what sealed my fate. 

“A few months ago, I went into town for some supplies…and I saw you in the coffee place. I never went in, I would just…sit outside, watch you from afar.” Cregan’s soft smile never faltered, if he hadn’t done everything he had—their reunion might’ve been sweet. Tears fell from Jacaerys’ eyes like a stream, flowing down his neck, salt crackling on his skin. 

Always the unfortunate. 

“I watched you for so long…learning what you did everyday…I’ve worked so long to get you back,” he took another step towards the trembling Targaryen—Jace took a step back, the gun still raised in his arms. 

No, this could not be the same northern boy with blonde hair. That boy was kind, he would never do this. He would never hurt me. 

“Your father..?” Jace watched as Cregan’s smile faded, his brows furrowing a bit at the mention of him. His dirty blonde hair caught the glowing light of the pendants, almost like a dim flame. 

“Gone,” Cregan began to step towards him again. 

For only a second, Jace considered turning the gun around on himself. 

Let me choose how I go, not by his hands—please. 

“Stay the fuck back or I’ll shoot you in the fucking head!” Jace was choking on his own words, sobs rattling out broken. Cregan only smiled. 

“You won’t.”

He’d never held a gun before in his life. If he shot, what were the chances he would miss? 

Would I go to prison? Would they think me guilty of cold blooded murder?

His uncle’s words rang out in his head, words now stolen from him along with the air in his lungs. His beating heart echoed out, panging furiously in his chest. 

Just fucking shoot!

He couldn’t hesitate.

Jacaerys lifted his rattling arms, pointed it at Cregan’s forehead, and pulled the trigger. 

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Chapter Text

The gun clicked. 

He could barely scream before Cregan lunged at him with brute force, the shrill sound in him dying as the handgun was ripped from his fingers and swiped across his face—hard. Jace fell to the floor with a strangled cry, the wind knocked out of his lungs, his throat closed and burning as he tried to suck in a breath. Laying still on the carpeted floor, blood trickled down his pale freckled cheek, staining and cracking on his skin. Fear flowed through his blood, cold like ice as the ringing in his ears threatened to make them bleed—his head throbbing from the impact. 

Might as well be dead. 

“Why would you do that, Jace? Why would you try and hurt me?!” 

“I…” His words died with the blood in his throat. 

“If you wanted to kill me, you should have at least made sure the safety was off!” The softness from Cregan’s voice had disappeared, left only with rage and brokenness. 

Somehow, he seemed gutted that Jacaerys had not just willingly gone with the man that had stalked him and killed his uncle. His uncle, who had raised him these past few years like a father would, when he had no father to speak of. Looking into Cregan’s eyes, he saw himself. 

No father, left broken in a world of evil people, fending for yourself. 

 He, too, longed for the little kid he’d held hands with all those years ago, when life was easier to understand. But Jace knew the blonde boy from the north had died a long time ago. 

Jacaerys could feel his senses fading away, blood beginning to stain his hair and the carpet beneath him—unable to move when Cregan crawled over him and heavy tape was put over his wrists, ankles, and mouth. Only when air began to leave his lungs and he began to suffocate did things begin to come back to him—his body fighting to survive even when he didn’t. 

When he closed his eyes, he saw Luke’s body. Decaying and rotting in the woods, innards torn and blood staining the snow, bones scattered like sticks. But his little brother’s face had been replaced with his own. 

Just let me die already. 

Suddenly, he heard glass shattering against the floor. There were black snow boots on the carpet, broken bottles of beer beside them. 

“Oh what the fuck!?” 

Aegon!

Through lidded eyes and hazy vision, Jacaerys saw his silver-haired uncle standing there in the hall, fear stricken across his face with a six pack of beer bottles broken on the ground, foaming residue stuck in the carpet, car keys in his hand. When Cregan turned to face Aegon, he hissed out in annoyance, rage building up with this inconvenience. Aegon was stuck still with terror, his body and lips trembling—a thousand thoughts seemed to pass through his eyes, perhaps it was his life. 

Please do something! Don’t leave me to the monsters like you did before!

Jacaerys begged. 

His hopes and pleas died when Cregan grabbed the handgun from the floor, pointing it at the elder Targaryen without hesitation. 

“No—!!” Aegon could barely yell out and try to flee before Cregan pulled the trigger and shot him in the head.

 A red mist of dark blood sprayed out and splattered the wall, deep crimson staining the paint and dripping down like a grotesque display. The bullet had struck him right below his hairline, his head split open with bits of his skull and brain twisted and strewn across the ground, his body reeling back at the impact and falling to the floor, dead. 

No! Please, not him too!

Jace wanted to scream out, a pained cry coming from his throat but muffled from the tape, swelling heavy tears streaming down his face at the murder of not one but two of his family. Aegon’s lifeless lidded eyes stared at him, dull lilac looking into his soul—blaming him. 

You, you, you. 

Bile filled his mouth, trapped beneath stickiness, but he could not bring himself to swallow even when the horrible taste settled on his tongue. 

I hope it fills my throat and takes all my air, choking me. 

New grief settled into his heart, his organ that beat heavily in his chest aching with his body. He could feel warm blood trailing down his neck, his throbbing head feeling dizzy. He wanted Cregan to put the gun to his head and pull the trigger. He would even prefer a hunting knife spilling his innards open to hold in his hands to the fate that awaited him now. 

His brown eyes now surrounded by red, Jace regretted ever coming north. 

Luke. 

Gwayne. 

Aegon. 

You, you, you. 

This damned land stole not only my sweet little brother, but the lives of me and my two uncles. 

On the windowsill, a crow of black perched. Come to feast on the remains of his past.

He wept, but his cries fell on deaf ears. 

And with no fight left in him, he fell unconscious. 

Dreams nor nightmares came to him. 

Only a void of darkness, death upon the hill, waiting in silence beneath its hood. 

.

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.

When Jacaerys awoke, his eyes and his heart felt heavy, bleary brown eyes filled with red blinking through old and fresh tears pearling and crackling on his lashes. His mind tried to come to, to understand what was happening, but everything was nothing but echoing sounds and blurry halos of light, the gentle humming of an engine and dim car lights. 

Where am I?

He was laying down—that, he could tell—against what felt like a cushioned car seat, his back against the upper part of it. His exposed skin felt the gentle warm air of a vent, the same fluffy gray shorts and top still on him. When the dizziness faded and the world finally came to, any semblance of happiness ended with it, trickling blood staining his pale and freckled skin. His head felt impossibly heavy, throbbing from his wounds—his waking twitches contained by the thick tape around his wrists and ankles. He could barely breathe, for his mouth was still covered. 

I was taken.

He could see the night, through thick windows of glass, bare trees and snow passing by—shining in the yellow headlights then gone again with the pitch of blackness. There were no stars, only deep clouds of dark gray covering the sky.

Jacaerys did not know where he was or how long they had been driving—but the trees had long turned to denser and thicker evergreens, winding paths along guardrails of jagged cliffs against mountains told him they were far from anywhere he knew. In the front seat, he saw a familiar silhouette of tufts of blonde hair and rugged hands on the steering wheel, driving quietly. Cregan did not seem to be aware that Jace was awake, lost in his own mind, icy blue-gray eyes distant. He was only partially lit by small icons glowing on the dashboard, various colors of light painting his older face of faded and fresh scars, outlining the bump of his nose and the ridge of his cheekbones—Jace’s eyes softened a bit. He thought the man that was his captor handsome. 

In another life, I may have gone with him willingly. 

But that life was not this one. 

The soft tread of crackling broken asphalt changed to bumpy gravel rocks as the car took a turn, winding up a hill through thick lines of forest and dying overgrown brush. The glow of the headlights scattered across the cabin as the beams hit a wall, and the engine hummed as the vehicle slowed then screeched to a stop. The lights turned off, and he could see the building for what it truly was. He saw a wooden cabin, with diamond muntin windows on every wall, and a chimney of cobblestone rising from the roof. Moss grew in the crevices, frost in the frames of the windows, dying candles in the sills. 

This place…

Suddenly, the once blowing warm air was replaced by the biting chill of winter, the soft tufts of hair across his body standing up as goosebumps pebbled his arms and legs, the door by his head opening—Jacaerys looked up, brown eyes like pools of honey in the sun meeting blueish gray ones like the winter’s sky. Cregan smiled faintly seeing Jace awake, quiet and still. 

“Come on baby, I’ll take you inside…” The Stark put his large hands beneath Jace’s arms, lifting him out of the seat carefully. 

Jace did not put up a fight, he knew he had no choice, his body limp as he was held close to Cregan’s chest, ragged warm cotton pressed against his cheek. Cregan shut the vehicle door, and only then did he see what it was. 

A deep teal Ford truck. 

Jace curled into the warmth of who was once his childhood friend, closing his watering eyes as a dusting of snow fell down with the winter wind—till flakes fell down on his cheek. It melted on his skin, and he blinked his eyes open. There, in the darkness of the forest, between the thick brush and creaking evergreen trees rustling in the wind, he swears he could see someone—or something, standing there, shrouded in black pitch, completely still. 

My mind is still hazy and drained of blood, it must be making up things in place of nightmares. 

He told himself that as the cold chill of fear rattled his bones, his heart thumping in his chest. He told himself that, hoping the monsters would remain those who waited outside in the woods, tapping at his window and leaving footprints in the snow, shadows that could be nothing but manipulated darkness—not someone he shared a bed and life with. 

He told himself that as Cregan climbed the stone steps by the door—his nimble and shaky fingers reaching out to touch the door frame, hoping for even a grasp at the world outside these walls—before he was being taken inside. The outside, gone with the cold.

 The small cabin was simple, covered in colors of deep red and warm browns—a scratched kitchen and round table tucked into the corner, counters covered in puts of long dead plants, a deep couch and cobblestone fireplace on the far end, embers and burnt wood still crackling from behind the hearth, and various old carpets scattered along the floor. The walls were decorated with numerous mounted animal heads and antlers, both predator and prey—trophies, he supposed—a shotgun over the fireplace, even a picture frame beside a door. There, he saw the little northern boy with blonde hair, with his father, and a woman with ebony black hair he did not recognize.

My little boy with blonde hair. 

 As warm air filled him, as the door locked with a key and heavy chain on the inside, Jace closed his eyes, knowing he would not go outside for a long time. Maybe he never would. The smell of wet moss and babbling creeks in the summertime may be all but times in the past best written down, never to be experienced again. 

Cregan kept his promise…

“Poor thing…your heart is beating so quickly, and you must be so tired…” Cregan whispered affectionately to him, carefully carrying him to a bedroom too small for two and laying him down on a soft plush bed with cotton sheets. His crying brown eyes opened wide, seeing the Stark with both knees on the foot of the bed, watching him. 

Oh no. This is it. 

His heart was beating out of his chest. He could almost feel the pain in his legs once more. 

I’m seventeen again, laying on Aegon’s green couch covered in dirty laundry in the garage. Except this time, I’m awake, and I will feel the pain. 

But Cregan did not touch him by force or climb on top of his shaking body, instead he only quietly pulled a small blade from his full pocket, the heavy tape wrapped on Jace’s ankles and wrists cut open and peeled away somewhat painfully—making the young Targaryen wince as irritated skin grew red. The tape around his mouth was peeled off too, finally leaving him able to truly breathe air into his wildly pumping lungs. He looked at Cregan, studying his soft blonde hair, his blueish gray eyes, his stubble on his chin—searching his face for any malice, for any hate—yet he only saw yearning. And Cregan saw pale freckled skin, tainted by crusts of tears and blood, a scarred wobbling bottom lip, doe-like brown eyes, and matching ringlets of curly hair—he could still see the face he knew all those years ago. 

Still beautiful like the rays of the morning sun. 

“This room is now yours just as it is mine, name something you want here, and I’ll bring it to you.” His voice was soft, almost caring. 

Our room…

Something I want with me…

So many things raced through his mind—paper crowns and wooden swords, soft textured carpet that scratched his knees, candle sconces, ivy vines, holiday string lights, his family, anyone to come save him. But every word and desire died in his throat, lost to a wheezing breath that faded into the cold air. 

“You can tell me tomorrow, just sleep for now sweetheart, it’s alright…you’re okay now…” The northerner pulled the blankets bundled on the end of the bed over Jacaerys, fabric made of thick fluff and furs. Cregan began to step away. 

No…

He stopped when he heard Jace say something. 

“My cat…” it was a quiet croak of a whisper, but he heard it nonetheless. Cregan looked at him curiously, almost pitifully. 

“Your cat?”

Cregan’s kindness gave Jacaerys some bravery. Perhaps that was his mistake, seeming brave enough to face the pain of his reality. 

“Vermax…he has black and white fur, and Sunfyre too…they’re bonded, and Aegon won’t be there to take care of him…” Cregan looked at him with a look he couldn’t read. Whatever was behind those eyes, he couldn’t reach it, it was secluded—lonely, like him and these woods. 

“Alright, I’ll see if I can get them.”

He went to leave, yet he paused in the doorway with his back turned. His figure filled the frame, a background of blue night around him. 

“Jace?” He called out to him in a whisper, turning his head. If Jace knew any better, he would see there were tears in his eyes that glistened like stars. 

He did not know better. 

“Did you remember me all this time?” He hoped. 

In another life, that question would make his heart swell. But his heart only ached, shrouded by grief and fear. 

“The boy I once knew is not here anymore. I remembered him, not you…” His words seemed to echo in the little room, followed by the reverberating silence of wind pattering up against the glass, “I don’t know who you are.” Crows were cawing in the trees. 

A silent tear from gray-blue eyes fell to the floor.  

“I suppose you’ll just have to love me all over again…” he tried a smile, weak and broken—just as his voice and heart had been. 

Then Cregan departed, leaving the bedroom and Jace, his heavy footsteps following his movements as he closed the window shutters around the small wooden cabin. Snow and winds pounded against the diamond muntin panes, the sounds of loons, crows, and the screams of something in the distance.  

The locals would always shut their blinds and lock their doors and windows at night—everyone, without fail—as if they were trying to keep something out.

He waited for Cregan to return.

He waited for the man to hurt him.

He waited for something, man or monsters, to force their way inside. 

But neither did. He was alone in this little room. 

His eyes and limbs heavy, Jace could not help but lay back against the mattress and pillows against the wooden headboard, sleep calling to him—he wanted to protest, he should fight and scream with every breath in him that was left, but he knew it would be all for naught. He was far from home, within the ridges of wilderness and mountains, a snowy place where if he screamed, no one would hear him. He turned around, his arms encircling the pillow, his belly to the mattress—trying to imagine he was clutching Gwayne like he had all those times he cried, that his sweet Vermax was cradled in his arms, with his soft fur and gentle purring, that it was his mother comforting him, shushing his cries, that it was Luke, cold beneath the stars. 

You, you, you. 

As his eyes shut, one final thought called to him as consciousness ebbed away in warmth. 

Your last breaths are drifting far in the wind, and I wish I could chase them—for I cannot let you go.

.

.

.

.

.

My life is an endless sea of nightmares.

I cannot tell whether I am asleep or awake. 

There are voices in my head. They taunt me. Torment me. Blame me. 

You, you, you. 

The crows, the crows, the crows. 

There’s blood in the snow. 

There’s blood on the carpet. 

They’re dead. 

Wake up. 

Chapter Text

Jace startled awake with a painful breath, fresh tears tracked across old ones on his skin, sweat sticking to the sheets. 

He checked his hands for blood, and for a moment, he could see deep crimson on his palms. But when he turned his hands, they were clean. 

The sun was warm against his skin, gentle beams of light poking through the trees and through the diamond muntin windows. The rays scattered hitting the glass, rainbows of colorful light dancing across every surface. When he shivered in the room’s cold air, Jace crawled beneath the cocoon of thick fluffy blankets and furs, curling into himself, his brown curls a mess and his warm brown eyes slowly adjusting as light hit them. His belly was pressed to the mattress, one side of his face against the pillow he embraced in his arms, the cotton beneath his lips damp from drool. Outside the window with now open sage green shutters, he could see fresh soft white snow fallen thick everywhere—on the ground, on the evergreen needles, and on the winter brush that gathered around the trunks. Between the treetops, he could even see the bright blue sky of the morning, snow-covered mountain peaks on the horizon with forests along their cliffs. 

For a moment, Jace felt peace. 

I could stay forever in a place like this.

But then, that fleeting thought brought him back to the reality of his situation. He felt cold metal wrapped around his ankles, cutting into his skin. His shorts were gone, but he felt no pain—and surely would have woken up had Cregan done something. He was locked in this wooden cabin, laying in his captor’s bed. Dread settled into his heart, and suddenly he could feel the cold dead eyes of those he’d lost watching him—for he found peace in a moment that should make him want to spill deep red from his throat. Tears glazed over his brown eyes, streaming down his skin along tracks of old ones, pooling on the sheets. 

I will stay forever in this place. 

He wishes he could walk out into the woods, lay down in the cold, and let the plants consume him—lost to the test of time and nature like all the things that came before him. Only his bones would be left behind, covered in the grass and mosses, a refuge to all the little things that live inside logs. 

There was a little nightstand beside him, covered in scratch marks and tiny drawings, some looked like animals—a doe and her fawn, a bear and her cub, a wolf and her pup—others, tally marks.                                     

The bed was empty, he could tell that, and he could hear nothing throughout the house except for the sound of fire crackling behind the hearth—red embers sending drafts of heat through the bedroom door—and wind of the winter morning blowing up against the windows. 

Cregan must have left. 

I could escape. 

But that was all but an impossible hope of the fire that only smoldered within him, sparking at the thought of making a run for it. Even if he could break himself free of the chains around his ankles and make his way through the locks on the door, he did not know where they were—how deep into the mountains they resided, which direction the town was in—he hadn’t seen or heard a car since he woke the night before, save for Cregan’s truck. Cold or exhaustion would likely get to him before anything that may hunt him within the woods. 

Some other way?

There must be someone else who will find me?

The shop must have noticed my absence by now. 

Did the police come to the house?

Have they found the bodies yet? 

Are Aegon and Gwayne still laying there? 

Do they know I’m missing? 

Do they think I am guilty of their murders?  

Will they search for me like they did for Luke? 

Will they look in the woods for my body?

How long before they give up? 

Surely my mother will spend all her days looking for me, till I’m found? 

When I’m found. 

Cregan left no witnesses. 

If I’m found.

No one knows I am here. 

If. 

His mind spiraled, hoping, searching, for any way out. His breath faltered.

I’ll die here.

Tears pearled on his lashes and bubbled down his face, cold against his skin. 

Then, in the bottom shelf of the nightstand, he could see a journal—with frayed edges, collecting dust.

His thoughts.

His reasons.  

As Jace sat up in the bed, his joints popped and screamed in protest, his numb limbs buzzing with rushing blood. He reached for the book, pulling against the chain that wrapped tightly around his ankles, his skin chafing as his fingertips brushed up against the cover, finally pulling it into his grasp.

The cover was leather, bound by a twine string and metal clasp—the string only held by a few threads. The old leather had been scratched with pictures, ones that matched the markings on the nightstand. Jace undid the string, and opened the little book. There was an ink pen inside, the tip dried out, the surface faded of color.

 Just inside the cover, in beautiful cursive with deep black ink, were the words ‘For my special boy on his thirteenth birthday, you’re a teenager now, and I want you to remember every part, good and bad. With love, your mother.’ 

 The ink was old and somewhat faded, yet he could still tell each stroke was careful, precise and perfect. And on the bottom, there was a date.

 July 16, 2014. 

Jace remembered the family portrait that hung in the living room, and the woman with ebony black hair and a small, kind smile. She must have been his mother. 

I could almost see her, writing this for Cregan, sitting at the kitchen table, her long hair draped over her shoulders. 

The next page was in the same ink, but different handwriting—less careful, more innocent. It was dated the same day, except it was Cregan. 

‘My mom gave this book to me for my birthday, she says I should write in it to document my teenage years. She says that these are some of the best years of my life, but I don’t know about that, all I do is help with chores around the house and go hunting or chopping firewood with dad sometimes. On rare occasions he’ll take me to town with him. Last time we were there the butcher assumed I was his nephew since he’d never seen me before. He must never talk about me either. I’ve never really been anywhere. I just stay here, with mom.’

He never went anywhere. Same as me.

Jace flipped the page, there was another entry, dated a week later. 

‘Dad locked me in my room again. Don’t have much to pass the time in this cramped room so might as well write in here. He’s having friends over and he says they like to do adult stuff that I can’t be around. But I know they’re just drinking and playing cards.

I tried dad’s drinks once. When he found out he dragged me out by my arm into the yard, put the bottle to my mouth and made me drink the whole thing without stopping. Most of it poured out of my mouth and made me throw up. I didn’t even want more to begin with, I was just curious why he drank it all the time. I could see mom watching in the window. I didn’t expect her to try and stop him, she had bruises from all the times she had tried. 

Mom snuck me a plate of food from the kitchen so I don’t go hungry. Dad always forces her to serve him and his friends when they’re here. He does the same thing when they’re alone. 

I don’t want my dad around anymore. I haven’t for a long time.

But where am I supposed to go?’

Cregan felt trapped.

The next few entries were much more of the same—stories of his mother and father, what he did, the animals he saw, the insects he took inside, all within this cabin and the woods around it. His world was confined to what his father allowed him to see. 

Then, one story was different. 

‘Dad took me south with him to go hunting. He said a buddy of his was willing to pay hefty money for shadowcat horns to put on his trophy wall. My dad brought me along with him to help him haul around his hunting gear. 

Not because he wanted to spend time with me. 

Not because he wanted me to get out. 

Not for me. 

For him. Him and his needs. 

It was so warm there, the air seemed heavier, and the wind didn’t bite at my skin. The trees and plants were all so bright and vibrant, it made me squint my eyes a lot. It was nothing like the snow and pines I’m used to. The forest was so dense with foliage and bugs it was hard to stay still where we had set up. I could feel bugs crawling on my skin, I didn’t like it. But dad just gripped my arm and told me to stop whining or else he’d give me something to really cry about. 

I still have his handprints marked on my arm. And in so many other places. 

But he left me alone for hours, it was getting dark, there were so many animal noises I didn’t recognize, I got scared. He told me not to go anywhere and to not get afraid like my mother but I was. I walked until it was clear, and there were no more trees. There was a seaside village. I just watched the ocean for a bit, so much water in one place was so mesmerizing, the way the light reflected off the dusk was something I’ll never forget. 

But a boy found me. 

His name is Jace, he has brown hair and dark eyes and freckles. He’s so pretty. He took me in while his mom looked for my dad. He fed me and told me stories, and kept me warm. I told him about my home, but I left out the bad parts. I wanted him to come with me.

But dad came and got me. Jace didn’t get to come. Dad was so mad at me, he wouldn’t stop hitting me for a while. Mom was so upset when she saw my face. But I paid it no mind. All I could think about was Jace. I want to see him again. My cuts and bruises are nothing compared to the way my chest aches when I think of him. 

I need to find him again.’

He’s talking about me. He wanted me with him from the start. 

But it seemed so innocent then. 

The entries tapered off for months after that, till there was one, dated in the winter time. 

‘Dad and mom always told me to never go outside after dark. Never even peek out the windows. Keep them covered, keep them shut tight. 

I always thought it was because they didn’t want me to leave. So I waited. After dinner was cleared, I went to my room and stayed quiet. I waited till the sounds of bottles had stopped. I waited till the headboard stopped hitting the wall. And when the house was quiet, I ran. 

I should have gone quieter, dad heard me and chased after me pretty fast. He kept yelling that it wasn’t safe and I needed to stop being a fucking idiot. But I wanted to go south again. 

He caught up to me. I was stupid for thinking I could outrun him. I tried to fight him. But I was too weak. He covered my mouth as he dragged me back to the house, and as we made our way back inside I saw why—across the road I could see a tall, lanky figure looking at us. It didn’t look human. 

He was protecting me.’

The next entry was covered in tear marks, splotches of salt staining the yellowed pages. 

‘He killed my mom.

I asked my mom why she let my dad hit her, why she hasn’t left. She seemed taken aback by the question,  like I had burned her somehow. She simply told me that despite it all, she has me, and as her child I bring her so much joy all the hardship and sadness melts away. 

Those were the last words she ever said to me.

My dad came in screaming at her, said one of his friends told him she was hitting on him when he was over a few nights ago. She swore that wasn’t true but he wouldn’t listen. He never does. He grabbed her by the arms and shook her so hard, I didn’t think before I got up and pushed him off of her. But he just threw me to the ground, calling me a useless piece of shit. She yelled at him to not touch me, so he hit her across the face. She went backwards, and I could barely see what happened from where I was on the floor. I think she hit her neck on the counter and broke it. It made an awful snapping sound. I tried to get over to her, but her eyes were so dull, and she wouldn’t move. I begged her to. I begged her to get up. I begged dad to take her to a hospital. 

But he didn’t. He just kept swearing under his breath, shaking his head and putting his hands in his hair. 

He buried her in the backyard under a big stone so we would know where she was. He didn’t even bother to put anything on her grave. Her grave was unmarked, only known to me and him. 

I can’t stop crying. He keeps yelling at me to shut up. 

I miss my mom.’

The last entry was short. 

‘I shot my dad in the head with his hunting rifle. I buried him next to my mom. 

I’m all alone now.’

There was blood in the shape of fingerprints on the edges of the pages. 

Jace felt tears on his cheeks. He hadn’t even noticed he’d been crying. 

I wanted to understand him. I wanted to understand his motive. 

Why am I here?

Because he was alone?

Laying there, he mourned the piece of him that was left there with Gwayne and Aegon, and basked in what was now the hollow shell of what he once was. 

Then, a sound. Clicking. Scraping of metal. The door. 

Jace scrambled to put the book back where he found it. 

Make it look untouched. 

Make it look like you never read it. 

Make it look like you know nothing. 

It clicked open, Jace could hear Cregan grunting as he carried things into the house, setting them down, and shutting the door. 

Then there was the sound of the chain. The chain that kept him locked in. Trapped. Forever in this place. 

There was shuffling for a bit, the stale sounds of quiet lingering between every step. Bits of dust particles scattered in the window’s light rays of sun. Jace reached out to touch them, but then the light faded, gone as quick as he had desired its warmth. The morning sun seemed to have gone away, hidden above winter clouds that came from the mountains, biting winds and heavy snows of storm in dark gray nimbostratus, towering in the sky. The cold and the dark had returned, and it showed no sign of going away.  The birds screamed and squawked as the pines began to move, their needles rustling and their wood bending. 

Kekekekekekeke.

Black wings hid in swaying branches. 

Bones in the snow. Dried blood. Dead maggots. 

The crows, the crows, the crows.

The sound of the bedroom door opening startled Jace in his rambling nightmare, his limp body trembling beneath the blankets that made him hold onto any semblance of safety from the voices that haunted and echoed in his head. He had expected it, yet it frightened him nonetheless. 

I’ve been molded and torn into a skittish animal. Kept locked and chained, mocked and touched. 

“Jace?” Cregan called out with fear in his voice, as if somehow he had escaped this little house and run into the vast mountain woods to freeze to death, or be torn apart. For a second the eldest Targaryen wondered if he’d ever be found, like Luke, half his face and body missing, left to nature for far too long while the earth ate away at him.

But it was not Cregan’s call out to him that made Jace lift his head, but the little terrified meow that followed. As his brown curls poked out, there, in Cregan’s arms, were two cat carriers that Jace recognized as the ones that had collected dust in their storage closet—with Vermax and Sunfyre inside. Their little furry bodies were trembling, hair raised on all ends as they curled in the backs of the cages.

 They were scared to death.  

“It took me a bit to find the cages and get them in but…I got them for you, along with their food and some of the litter,” the metal rattled as the plastic hit the blankets, “I’ll go shopping for a good box and some bowls later today, just wanted them out of the cold,” Cregan spoke calmly as he opened the latches, the cats still cornered to the furthest wall. Their green and yellow eyes like needles peering at him with uncertainty, Jace reached his hand out to let them sniff it—and once they did, their fur flattened, and eyes wide with familiarity. 

“Hello my sweet boys..” he whispered to them as they peeked their heads out, testing their paws on the blankets before nuzzling up against them. 

There was blood on their fur. 

Dark red, dried and crusted. 

“Are…Gwayne and Aegon…they’re still there? At the house?” Jace asked, softly, croaked, and afraid of the answer. Images of their bodies flashed across his mind—brown and purple eyes, looking up at him. Brains splattered across the carpet. Neck cracked and broken.  

Your fault. 

Your fault.

Cregan seemed hesitant to answer. 

“Yes,” He avoided eye contact, gray-blue attached to the floor like he was chained at the neck. 

Guilty.

Guilty, guilty, guilty.  

“Daeron will find them,” tears welled in Jace’s brown eyes at the thought of it, his uncle, his sweet and caring uncle coming home to find his family dead, gone and missing. 

Would he call the police?

Will they come looking for me?

“I know.” The blonde man busied himself with putting away the crates he carried inside, stashing them away in the corner, never to be touched again—because Jacaerys would never leave, so the cats wouldn’t either. 

“He’s never going to forget what he sees.” Images of therapy offices—rooms that smell of eucalyptus and worn deep couches, boxes of tissues and heavy air were there in his mind. Taunting him of what he caused and cost his family. 

Your fault. Your fault.

Maybe the sight and pain of it all would be too terrible for his silver haired uncle. 

Maybe he’d slit his wrists, and crimson blood would spill onto the tile till he was dead. He would lay there, still on the cold floor of their little bathroom. Pale lilac eyes open. Looking at him. 

Your fault. Your fault.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want it to be this way…I didn’t want to kill them.”

“But you did! You killed them for nothing!” Jace was yelling now, reaching forward with hate in what was left of him. Tears cascaded down his cheeks, pooling under his chin and dripping down onto the blankets. The salt of him forever there. 

The cats scattered at the noise with prickling fur and scratching claws, hiding under the bed in shadows of safety—or the semblance of it. 

It was no longer Cregan that scared them. It was him. 

Jace was breaking, the smoldering ashes that had once been his flame blown and scattered in the winter’s wind, the smell of cinders his ghost that haunts. 

“They would have reported what I had done and taken you away from me!” Cregan screamed too now. But his voice broke all the same as the boy he looked at, riddled with the tears that threatened to come up. 

“No Cregan! You took me! You! For nothing except for an infatuation with the boy you met once eight years ago—!”

“You don’t know me! And I don’t expect you to understand my reasons! Just know that they are there, I didn’t take you for nothing!” He paused, shaking hands lowering to his thighs. His voice became breathless, and regretful.

“I’m sorry…for what I’ve done, and what I have to do,” he muttered, while he unzipped his pants. 

“Cregan..?” The brown haired Targaryen went backwards on his hands, his back hitting the wooden frame of the headboard with a thud, the carvings leaving indentations in his naked skin. His heart beat like a thousand hooves, ringing out in his ears like echoes in the mountain as the mattress dipped from the Stark’s weight.

“No…” Jace tried to cry out, but he sounded weak, broken and left to the storm that threatened to swallow him up—as Cregan pulled him down by his leg to lay flat on his back, and the man with blonde hair climbed on top of him.

The sheets were soft, but Jacaerys’ body was frozen with dreadful fear, dull brown eyes stuck to the window and the snow that blew heavily in the wind, the gray storm leaving the room dark. The only sign he still lived was the pale freckled skin that rose and fell quickly with his breathing.

I am suddenly seventeen again, but I am awake. But he will not know that.

I will act as if I’m dead.  

Cregan touched him, large and unfamiliar hands drawing across his skin, leaving goosebumps in the wake of his fingertips. His arms and head were limp, unmoving as Cregan touched his waist carefully—like he was some ancient thing made of glass and crackling moss stone—his palm stopping over his stomach. 

Jace had imagined all the ways he would be touched like this for the first time, many times before. He had pictured a lover with a gentle touch and caring eyes who would dote on him and kiss his palms, a room with soft light and warm air, ecstasy and pleasure that left him breathless, and someone to hold him tight in the aftermath. 

He had none of that. 

Cold, pain, and abandonment. That is what he had.

This was closer to all the times someone would make a comment on his body, eyes behind a screen typing words of threats of what they would do to him if they got their hands on him. That scene would flash across his mind sometimes—behind the counter at the coffee shop, on the bench outside, on the bus—grabbing him and forcing him down. Ghosts of roaming hands would make him shiver and weep. 

But he wasn’t imagining it now. 

He could feel gray-blue eyes watching him, waiting for him to fight, to scream, something. 

But Jace did not move. 

He only let out a small sob as his tears welled and pooled over.

A cold drop fell onto his skin as Cregan spread his legs, metal pulling on his ankles. 

He cries the same as I do. 

His first love, that is what he calls me. All the love he bears for me, and yet he still could not save me from my pain. 

“I’m sorry…” Cregan whispered, despair plaguing his voice, his face only inches above his own. For a moment, Jace could hear the sweet boy from the north again. One hand held his upper body up, caging Jace in, and the other gripped himself below—Jace did not have to look to know, he could feel it poking at his thigh, and then his cunt. 

Jace did not take his eyes off the window. He only watched the winter storm, and hoped his rape would be over soon. 

He whimpered and tried to pull away, knowing it would not change anything. The thing still made its way inside of him, ripping him open and spilling him out like a sword in his belly. The size of it only added to his pain. He cried out, but the stinging pain still did not stop. He thinks the body above him made a sound, but he could not tell if it was of pleasure or discomfort. 

The thing moved in and out of him, leaving shocks of pain with it at every twitch and thrust. Sometimes it would hit something inside that sent heat pooling in his stomach.

Like tide pools warming in the sun back home. 

His brown eyes drifted from the storm to the body above him— Cregan, he’d almost forgotten—his gray-blue eyes closed, his blonde hair falling over his face and neck, his mouth closed tightly together, and his knees pressed to the mattress, his hips moving his cock in and out of him. 

Jace closed his eyes, sobbing as he tried to mask the pain with memories and dreams of what could have been. 

Lies, all of it is lies. 

But I’ll tell them to myself anyway, so my soul can be elsewhere, and the wolves will do with my body as they please.

I’ll lie, and say it is not my body. 

It is someone else’s. 

You are at home, with Luke and mom. 

You’re watching the stars—no…

I am made up of stars. 

A colorful nebula, a cloud of dust and millions of stars, an array of colors across the canopy of black and deep blue that is the sky. I am so far away, that nothing of this world can hurt me. 

But he…

He is a black hole. 

A void of blue and orange light with rings of everything it destroys, he is the thing taking me. Taking what I am into the abyss. 

I finally find words in my throat. 

“I…” Gray-blue eyes, like a winter’s icy sky, look up at me. His thrusts are deep and slow, like the tide. His hips hit mine with a slap, over, and over again.

I think of words, but I do not say them. I cannot bear to hurt him. 

I wish your cock was a gun…and I wish the load was not pale but silver, and when it goes off, I will be dead, not made to bear more life. 

“I want to go home…” I whisper to him in tears, a plea for freedom. 

He releases inside me, and I can feel warmth in my stomach, and the blood of my hymen on my thighs. 

“You are home..” 

Chapter Text

December 2nd, 2022

Or at least, that is the day Cregan tells me it is. 

If he tells the truth, I’ve been in this cabin, chained in isolation out in the mountains for a month on this day. Winter storms of heavy winds and snow rattle the windows most days, and I like to watch the plants get buried beneath the white canopy. And when the clouds part and the sun makes its way through, birds will sing and chirp on the branches of the pine forest. It is mostly crows and their squawking, but I still listen to them nonetheless. 

There is not much else for me here. 

I am writing in the little notebook Cregan keeps on the bottom shelf of the dresser, bound in leather and twine, with some pages stained in tears, and others with crimson fingerprints of dried blood. Cregan tries to bring me things to fill my days. He brought me things to crochet and a little book of instructions. The pages were faded and hard to read and my hands could not hold the hooks well. I gave Cregan half of a wolf that I tried to make. It was ugly, disfigured and unfinished, yet he still kissed my head and put it on the dresser to look at. I got frustrated eventually, and I broke one of the hooks. I think I gripped it too hard. I threw my unfinished dragon and the kit across the room, the clatter made the cats jump. The dragon had reminded me of home, and I had failed to make it. It is moments like these I can feel the coldness of the metal around my ankles. 

When Cregan came home to see me weeping and the mess I had caused, he put it all in the dresser and held me tight. I let him hold me, it is not so bad sometimes. 

Yet no matter how he holds and cares for me, I hate him every night when he climbs on top of me and forces himself inside me. I don’t think he likes it, he only steals glances at me every minute or so, maybe to see if I’ve given in to liking it. I wish he would enjoy it, so he would not last as long as he does. 

I do think about it sometimes—giving in to him. He is handsome, and he cares for me. It could be passion instead of hate, loving touch instead of empty space, it could be all I imagined it would be before. But every time I feel the cold metal digging into the skin of my ankles when he spreads my legs, I remember why I cannot. 

The other day he brought me a stack of books he thought I would like, and he said the bookstore owner recommended them. 

I tried ‘ The Handmaid’s Tale ,’ the bright red on the cover made me think of the velvet couches we had back home. In the book women were stolen from their families and enslaved by others to bear children for them. I could not finish it, for I saw myself amongst them. 

Nights ago, I woke up when the sky was still dark, and my stomach churned and bile rose in my throat. I had to keep it in my mouth till I managed to wake Cregan to set me free of the chains around my ankles, running to the toilet before I threw up. Cregan quietly came up behind me with heavy steps, holding my hair and running his hands along my back. I’ve gotten used to him touching me now. He brought me a test from the drugstore the next day, to see if I am pregnant. I am. It doesn’t seem real, there is no sign except for the sickness that wakes me in the night. There is no bump or flutter in my belly. When I’m alone, I’ll put my hand over my navel and think to myself, ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’  

Cregan has stopped fucking me now. I guess it was the goal all along, to get me pregnant. I guess he was lonely. 

He’s not alone anymore. He has me. And soon, he’ll be a father. And I will be too. 

Our days are simple. He wakes often before I do, makes breakfast for the both of us, and lets me walk around the house while he’s home.  The cats keep me company when he isn’t there. We try to talk sometimes. 

Any words we say, any actions we take now, we take hiding from the reality of things—that I am trapped here, and he took me from my real family. 

I’m his bed slave. An incubator for his happiness.

December 25th, 2022

It’s Christmas today. 

Snowflakes fall quietly outside when I wake up, and the dawn peeks out as orange light on the horizon beneath the clouds. Cregan has given me plenty of sweaters of my own to wear, and some sweatpants too. We have a small pine tree in the corner of the living room that Cregan cut down, right next to the fireplace. It has no decorations, but I guess the idea is enough. I do not need tinsel and ornaments to know that it’s a Christmas tree. Cregan found an old box in the attic with some warm string lights to hang around the house. They look like the ones Luke used to hang, the ones I took and put in my room. I wonder if all my stuff is still there, or if Daeron had to sell the house and move out. Maybe my stuff is in a box somewhere, or donated at a discount store. 

When Cregan is in town to deliver firewood throughout the winter, I read another one of the books he gave to me all those months ago. The cover is blue and gold, the lettering indented into the cover, ‘The Song of Achilles.’  It’s the story of Achilles and his lover Patroclus, and how their love is torn apart in war. Achilles was part god, Aristos Achaion they called him, ‘the best of the Greeks’—yet he still could not save his beloved Patroclus. 

They both die in the end, I suppose that is where love leads you. 

Cregan left before the sun shone over the horizon, before the mountains were basked in winter sunlight and the frost on the trees sparkled in the rays. He came back with some boxes, one wrapped in paper, another full of jingling ornaments. When the time came for gifts, Cregan gave me an espresso machine, so I can make the drinks I like instead of dealing with the cheap coffee he has. It’s silver, and now it sits on our counter, just by the window so I can look outside while I make a macchiato or whatever else. I did not expect him to get me anything, yet he still did, and I could see the soft smile on his face as I unwrapped the paper that kept it secret. And from the box of ornaments he gave me a bassinet, covered in falling glitter. 

‘Soon we’ll have one of our own,’ he whispered. My fingers traced over the little baby inside the ornament, then he took it from me, and placed the ribbon around the tree. Our lone decoration on the pine, glimmering amongst the branches. 

He returned to me, placing his hands on my flat belly and kissing the top of my head, his face pressed into my dark curls.

I like to see him happy, it makes part of this—my being here—worth it. This way it is not for nothing. 

I did not have a gift for him. So I let him hold me on the couch for a bit. He seemed surprised when I edged closer to him and laid my head against his chest. He seemed almost hesitant to put his arms around me, but he did, and combed my hair with his fingers. The fire in the hearth crackled and kept us warm, and Vermax laid on my lap for some time, Sunfyre only looked at us from across the room. 

I smiled for a moment, and suddenly I felt sick. 

April 2nd, 2023

I’ve been here five months now. 

My belly has started to swell, and I can feel the baby move sometimes. Cregan can’t feel them yet, so for now, it is just me and them. 

Cregan got a stethoscope so we can listen to the heartbeat. Sometimes my heart stutters a bit when we cannot find it. But it is still there, a little pumping sound, so small—and sometimes I will stare up at the canopy after Cregan has fallen asleep, and simply listen to it. 

Cregan listens before he goes outside to deliver some firewood to town—he’ll place his hands on my belly and listen, hoping to feel a little flutter on my skin. He thinks it is a boy, and so do I. 

He often neglects sleep to read in the kitchen, books on how to take care of a baby, books on home birth. I try not to think about the end too much. If something goes wrong, he will not let me die. He won’t. He won’t. 

He built a crib and a changing table for me, made of dark and shiny pine that smelled of wood and spring. It all sits in our room, just within reach of my hands, my nimble and pale fingers reaching out to touch it when the stars hang low in the sky.

I gave in to him. I can see how he wants to hold me at night, his fingers silently ghosting the sheets beside me, longing for my touch. So last night I laid on my side, and called out his name quietly, he heard me, and hesitated for a moment before he wrapped his arms around me, one hand cradled over my stomach, sheltering our baby. His lips softly pressed against my neck as he held me, I could feel his breath, and his icy blue eyes heavily lidded, looking at me. The voice in my head liked to remind me of what he had done, but I know he will not do that to me. 

What good is my stubbornness when it does not bring me freedom, and only makes this cage colder. 

I do not think of home anymore, it only makes my eyes well with tears and my heart ache. I will never go back, so it does no good to think of something I’ll never have. It does not matter. 

He does not keep me chained anymore, he knows I will not leave him. 

The days grow long and seem to blend together. It still snows most of the time, up here in the mountains at least. 

I wanted to go outside one morning, so Cregan let me come with him to chop some firewood in the backyard. He dressed me up in a heavy coat from the closet in the other room, but I had to leave most of it unbuttoned because of my swollen belly. 

There were long strands of black hair left in the hood, so it must have been his mother’s.

Sometimes, I think I see her ghost when the night is heavy in the sky, watching me from where her grave lies—she is silent, cold wind blows but she does not shiver and her hair does not move. She just looks at me, with black eyes and a distorted decaying face. 

If Cregan sees her, he does not say anything about it. He only closes the shutters and curtains with a silent breath.

When we go outside in the morning he helps me put on my shoes and caresses my face, his eyes soft and smile warm.

 The fresh air and cold spring wind bit at my cheeks, but I did not mind, it was nice to be outside of the cabin. I kept both gloved hands below my belly, feeling the baby move around to see if they like the cold, like their father does. I can see a large stone in the yard, clean amongst the moss and leaves with little markings on it. I can see thin and bony footprints in the snow beside it.

When we go to bed I shiver beneath the blankets, facing away from him, but Cregan caresses my belly and kisses my shoulder anyway. He’ll wrap his legs around mine and bury his head in my neck, holding me close in his arms, like he’s scared to let me go. Most nights we fall asleep like that, but last night it was different. 

I could hear the branches of the pine trees scratching at the window as they rustled in the wind, like nails on the glass. The baby squirmed inside me, feet kicking—maybe they could hear it too. I could not sleep, and Cregan could tell. His eyes were glossed over and his lids heavy, but sleep did not ebb him. Instead he rolled me onto my back and started kissing my face—my forehead, my cheeks, my nose—never my lips. Then my neck and chest, my fluffy sweater pushed up for him, my belly, then my thighs. They had filled out and left stretch marks on my skin, but Cregan did not flinch or shudder away, he kissed them, his gray blue eyes looking up at me. 

I think he waited for me to stop him. 

But I didn’t, I’ve given up trying to fight now.

He put his tongue inside me, the warmth and tingling of it unfamiliar. Shocks of pleasure went through my body at every swipe and suck, my belly pooling with heat—leaving my face flushed red as I couldn’t help but let out quiet moans. My eyes fluttered close as my legs shook, his large hands gripped firmly on my thighs as I couldn’t help but push my hips against his face. 

I felt possessed by him, as if all this time he had been poisoning me, tainted blood of his touch seeping into my brain so he could control me. 

My hands found their way into his hair, blonde tufts soft against my trembling fingers. I whispered his name, like a plea, mindless in my foggy brain. He hummed in response, the vibrations sending waves inside me that made the heat in my belly boil and spill over, liquid rushing onto the sheets as I found release.

I saw stars behind my eyes. I haven’t seen them in so long, and I can almost feel the cool night air of that night all those years ago. I reach out to them, hoping to grasp their warmth and safety—but they are too far. 

I come back to earth, and I am trapped again. 

Cregan put his calloused hands on my sides and flipped me over, I could briefly hear the sound of his pants being pulled down before he thrusted into me, his cock ripping me open and pulsing inside me—I felt like he was in my throat, so deep that I felt like a stuck pig on a spear. 

We had never done it like this, before it had always been with me on my back, my legs spread by his hands, a chain on my ankle, my body shivering and my mind somewhere else. Before it had only been to fill me with a baby. 

Now he was taking me like a lover would, his front pressed to my back, his face breathing heavily in my neck, his lips leaving marks in their wake, and his hands intertwined with mine. Each time his hips met the back of my thighs as he thrusted roughly inside me I let out a whimper into the sheets, from pleasure and pain. Sweat covers my skin, and my hair brushes over my face each time he goes deep into me. Overstimulated and tired, I felt as if two parts of me were tugging at each other, ripping me apart into two halves. 

One to take and love him. 

One to hate the pain. 

It felt so good, warmth and pleasure so enveloped inside me I could not even feel the chains. 

Only the chains are not metal but flesh and mind, fear and love I do not understand, or even deserve. 

With a drawn out muffled moan, he came inside me, his cock pulsing wildly against my insides as he stuffed what little space there was. Most of me was taken up by his baby. I felt the cool wetness on my thighs drip down and down as he pulled out of me, my body spent and shaking, ashamed and afraid to move. 

Cregan has collapsed next to me, spent and sweaty. 

My eyes fluttered for a moment, stinging with tears that threatened to pool across my flushed face. I could hear the sounds of wind howling and birds cawing, hushed snow crunching in slow footsteps. 

I could see scratch marks in the nightstand, a bear and her cub, a wolf and her pup, a doe and her fawn. 

One, two, three, four, five. 

There are five tallies in the wood. I do not know what they mean.

I curl into the sheets and pull the heap of blankets over my swollen frame, not bothering to try and find my pants. Then, in the quiet of my existence, I hear a sound.

There is a tapping sound at the window. 

I ask Cregan in a broken whisper what those things are— the things without names we do not speak of— the things that make us shut our windows and stay out of the woods. The things that have taken so many, their lost faces in missing posters plastered across telephone poles and news boards in the square. No one is ever found, those papers left to blow away in the wind and into the forest, where their bodies lay. 

There is silence. I think he does not hear me. Then he whispers back to me quietly, as if the name of them would bring them into our house. 

‘We call them yee naaldooshii.’’

I knew them by another name.

Skinwalkers.

I slept, but I found no rest, only nightmares. 

It is not a series of events or a vivid memory, only a single image on an old television screen covered in scan lines, like an old VHS recording. The image is silent, and I can hear only static, but there, I can see an open clearing in the woods, it’s nighttime, the sky a dark gray and the trees pitch black. And in the middle, rotting bodies. One has brown hair, one is auburn, another has silver. Their bodies are disfigured, their flesh eaten away by maggots, their bones pulled apart—their eyes are only hollow husks, yet they seem to be looking at me. 

Your fault. 

I shouldn’t have done it. 

Your fault. 

I gave in. 

Your fault. Your fault. 

They died because of me. 

Your fault. Your fault. 

I sold my body to their killer.

Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. 

My fault. 

Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.   Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.   Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.   Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.      

August 18th, 2023

The air has turned crisp and the winds cool, the mountains covered in trees of changing oranges, yellows and browns, and the deep green of the pines who never shift with the seasons. 

It was two weeks ago when I gave birth to our son.

When the morning had come that day, and frost laid over the mountains, my swollen belly started to cramp. The place beside me in bed was already empty and cold, Cregan’s presence long gone to the town for some deliveries. 

I stayed beneath the blankets, paying no mind to the growling of my stomach—thinking of the muffins laid out on the counter for me. At every movement and pain in my belly I longed to hear the gentle hum of Cregan’s deep teal truck with silent tears. I didn’t want to be alone. 

I didn’t know what to do, Cregan simply told me ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. You won’t have to worry about anything.’ 

With every minute I spent alone, I feared all the things that could happen to me, to the baby if something bad happened—if Cregan never came for us. 

It’s moments like this I remember I can’t live on my own—without him. I need him. 

I need him, I repeated it so many times in pained whines as my stomach tightened with every contraction, each one sooner than the last. 

I had made a mess of dark blood on the sheets by the time Cregan had come home, his voice calling out to me once he stepped through the door, rushing to me as if he knew from the food left on the counter that something was wrong. He quickly came to my side and kissed my sweaty head—paying no mind to the crimson that seeped between my legs and dried and cracked on my thighs—and said it would all be alright. I smiled weakly at him with eyes barely open, and simply whispered ‘you are here,’ in a broken voice. 

He gently scooped me up with gentle arms and took me to the tub of our little bathroom filled with half used candles and tiny fake plants, removing my blood and liquid stained clothes before filling the cast iron tub halfway with warm water that prickled and soothed my skin. 

The world felt like it was crumbling and fading around me, constant pain trickling through my body like the rising tide, blood staining the water as my body tried to open itself like a gutted fish. 

I tried and pushed for so long, but the babe would not come out.

I screamed and tried, but nothing was coming. As I breathed heavy and sweat pooled on my skin, I begged Cregan to take me to a hospital—I pleaded through tears and writhing pain that threatened to rip out my insides that I would not utter a word of what he had done, that I would come home—but he only gave me a sad look, with heavy tears in his eyes and a trembling body, he lifted my shaking hand and held it close to his face, kissing it. 

‘You can do it,’ he whispered to me, his other hand in my soaked curls, begging. He did not want to let me go, in one way, or the other. 

I nearly thought I was lost to the stars when our baby finally came out of my body, coming into the world with a shrill cry, and when Cregan lifted him from the water—I could barely see him through heavy and tired eyes, but even as he wiggled, covered in the liquid that was his home, I smiled and reached out for him with what little strength I had. Cregan placed him against my chest, and he was so small, yet so big for something that was in my belly, and so beautiful. 

We name him Rickon, for what I do not know, but I do not protest. 

I whisper his name as his sobs begin to hush, bounced softly in my arms.

Cregan is smiling with tears bubbling in his eyes, kissing my head and looking at our son with love that centers him in the universe and all its worlds. I can tell he desperately longs to hold him, but he does not pull him from my arms, he only brushes his thumb softly across his head as if he is the most fragile thing on this earth, as if he is made of glass and sand. 

He has little tufts of brown hair and bright blue eyes with tiny brown flecks in them that I cannot see till I kiss his face, his skin is so pale and soft, with little freckles on his nose. His gummy smile is like the morning sun rising in the dawn over the horizon of snowy mountains, it is warmth, beautiful and sweet. 

He reaches out to me and paws at my skin with chubby warm hands when I feed him at my chest, it is a strange feeling, but it is no less wonderful, knowing I am all he knows in these moments. He is my own, made within me and of my flesh and blood, and no one can take him from me—not the monsters who tap at our windows, not anyone who may come to steal us from Cregan. 

Cregan, who lifts our son up into the air as if he’s a bird, wingless, relying on hands to fly. Cregan, who holds and rocks him so gently in the morning before he leaves the house. Cregan, who lays on the bed with him on their stomachs, playing with crochet toys and hiding behind his hands. Cregan, who feeds him with a bottle late in the night when I’m too exhausted to move a finger let alone walk to the crib at the end of our bed. Cregan, who kisses my now flat stomach with the marks of my once swollen belly, worshipping me as if I’m a god constructed of marble and faith. Cregan, who holds me when I feel on the edge of insanity with rattling endless voices in my head. 

Cregan, Cregan, Cregan, Cregan, Cregan, Cregan. 

I could never leave him, I could not bear the thought of being without him. I love him. I love him. I do. I do . I do I do I do I do I do I do I do. I have to. I have to.