Chapter Text
“Your grace, I am your man”, Dunk promises. It feels inevitable. “Please. Your man.”
“I need good men,” the prince agrees, the warmth of it sitting golden in Dunk’s chest. “The kingdom-”
The agreement settles something in Duncan. His pain is tremendous, unignorable, but it is tendered by certainty and purpose. Raymun and Steely Pate work together to remove the prince’s helm and despite the heaviness of his limbs Dunk has the thought that he should assist them somehow - it is his prince after all. The notion takes a moment to register as ridiculous when it feels so right, and then Dunk is pulled from his pained daze by Pate’s quiet exclamation.
“By the gods.”
Dunk squints up at them. His sight is blurry, but he can tell prince Baelor’s strong figure is swaying. That is wrong. He should not-
The prince touches the back of his head, and then he falls. Dunk lunges forward to catch him, all instinct. His fingers meet a wrong softness in place of a solid skull, silky fine hair edging a horrible wound.
“No! Your Grace-”
His fingers shift, and something sings golden within him. Dunk finds himself aware of prince Baelor, every part of him, and despite every horrible thing that has happened everything feels bright and well. The pain from Duncan's wounds is simply gone. There is such a profound sense of relief that Dunk cannot help but surrender to it.
There is nothing but pieces, after: a hand on his arm, wrestling with the mail shirt, quiet curses. A wrapping for his wound and a hand under his arm, shrugs and protest and a knife, pain, a stumbling walk, all jumbled into a mess of distance. When Dunk comes to in truth, it is day again and he is under his elm tree, greeted by the sight of Lyonel Baratheon and a black-garbed maester standing over him.
The lord slumps down to sit against the tree next to Dunk.
“Home is brutally dull,” he announces. “I would have liked to invite you. We could’ve hunted, and hawked, sailed, made merry-”
Dunk squints at Lyonel when he breaks off mid-sentence. Before he can formulate a response, the maester speaks up.
“The man is dying, my lord,” he pronounces, “the wounds have mortified. It’s beyond my abilities.”
“An itchy arsehole would be beyond your abilities,” Lyonel retorts. “The wounds haven’t mortified. And even if they had-”
He turns on the maester. “Fuck off now. Witch.”
A hasty bow sees the back of the maester, and Lyonel turns back towards Dunk.
“Your wounds are fine. Now. The skin had grown over the chainmail, in places. Had to get my men to hold you while the maester cut you back open - did a worse job of it than the princeling, if you’ll imagine.” Lyonel spits into the grass. “But the rest of it is well enough.”
The lord stands up. Dunk’s head swims with questions. The wound hadn’t been older than a day - why would they have needed to cut it?
“What-”
“Even with all of it,” Lyonel cuts in, making a vague, encompassing gesture with his hands. “I would see you welcomed at Storm's End. If you are allowed that far.”
“Allowed?” Dunk asks. “Never mind that. How can you talk about hunts, and - and making merry, when Prince Baelor-”
“He was not the only one who fought for you! Me, Beesbury, the fucking apple boy - we fought for you, too. Prince Baelor fought men sworn to protect him - and the gods saw fit to reward that, too!”
Dunk can remember the give of the prince’s skull beneath his fingers far too well, and calling such a reward seems cruel.
“Stop talking about him like that,” he demands. “He’s dead because of me!”
“He’s like as not lying snug in a feather bed because of you, and many thanks for that!” Lyonel retorts.
Feather bed? But-
“What are you talking about?” Dunk demands. Lyonel stares back at him.
“Fuck me. You really don’t know.” It’s not a question. “The prince is still alive.”
“Alive?”
Dunk remembers the horrible feeling of prince Baelor’s crushed skull beneath his fingers, soft and wet with blood. Alive should be an impossibility.
“All thanks to you,” Lyonel says, wriggling his fingers. “A soulmate's touch will do that.”
“That can’t be true.” The denial is true and immediate. “I’m not-”
Soulmates are rare, and the effect of their touch near mythical. What the Seven have put together they do not like asunder, some half remembered voice preaches. A soulmate’s touch may heal almost anything. But that is not for people like Dunk.
“Surely someone else - that is-”
“Your wound closed fast enough the chainmail was still inside of it,” Lyonel denies, “and the prince still draws breath despite the apple boy telling all of how he saw the insides of his royal brain. No, my friend - you’ve done us all a disfavor and saved a dragon.”
Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall. It echoes in his mind.
The notion of soulmates has always reminded Dunk of death. It is perhaps natural, growing up in Flea Bottom. There are maesters for the nobles, when they get ill, herbalists and hedgewitches for the wealthy merchants. But when illness and injury comes for the smallfolk crowding the dredges of the city, there’s nought but prayers and the hope of a soulmate's touch.
There was an open square by the sept, he remembers, lined with mud and gravel, where those seeking a soulmate - a last resort - would gather. Dunk had always passed through in duty and horror. A hundred gaunt, decaying faces belonging to men and women who were sick, injured, dying, rotting from the inside and grasping out at passers-by in the hopes of salvation. Rafe had insisted they avoid the place.
“It’s the quickest way to catch your death,” Rafe had insisted, “and beside, no one’s ever been saved that way.”
Except someone had. A prince. The notion of it rings wrong in Dunk’s head - Prince Baelor and him? - except there is no reason for Lyonel to lie.
“Why would the gods favour me?” he asks, looking up at Lyonel. Certainly Dunk doesn’t know the reason for it. The other man laughs, wild but without much humour.
“This isn’t favour,” he returns, “it’s mockery.”
Dunk feels sick. A moment later he is retching into the grass, the wound in his stomach aching fiercely from the sudden movement.
“Me?” he asks again, incredulous, and throws up again for good measure at Lyonel’s nod.