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"I had another dream about you," Daeron says, leaning across the table to where Dunk is sitting, trying not to make the fact that he's nervously looking around for Egg too obvious. They're in some inn on the road between Ashford and Summerhall, and Dunk's starting to worry that the boy ran away again and it's his fault this time.
Aerion finally surfaced from the carriage he was resting in, and Egg got jumpy, and Dunk tried to follow him to wherever he was planning on hiding, because he didn't exactly want to see Aerion either, but Egg's a damn sight better at disappearing than Dunk is.
He's managed to avoid Aerion, if nothing else, and he thinks it might be because Aerion's avoiding him right back. Which, well, that's good, isn't it? He doesn't exactly need to inspect this particular horse's teeth.
He's preoccupied worrying, though, and has completely forgotten Daeron, still leaning across the table and staring at him quite intensely, his breath so wine-soaked it makes Dunk's nostrils feel sticky and burn at the same time.
"What did you dream, my lord?" he asks, dutifully. He doesn't really want to know. The last dream came true, and he'd prefer not to know where the undoubtedly poor decision to go to Summerhall is going to take him.
"A fire," Daeron says. "A terrible fire."
"Not here, I hope," Dunk says, laughing awkwardly, because the intensity Daeron is managing even through glassy eyes is frightening him some.
"I had another dream, too," Daeron says. "You show up in them more and more since we left Ashford."
"What d'you suppose that means?"
"That you'll remain…" Daeron trails off, clearly looking for a word. He crosses one finger over another, and slides a third under them both.
"Tangled?"
"Yes," Daeron says, nodding emphatically. "With us."
"Not Aerion, gods willing," Dunk mutters, and Daeron laughs.
"I think, sadly, with all of us," he says. "Father should've let you take Egg away. I have my methods for dealing with Aerion." He brandishes the cup he's been drinking from as proof. "Egg just has you."
"I'm not going to let anything happen—" Dunk starts, intently, and Daeron waves him off.
"I know," he says. "I just hope no one else dies in the process."
Dunk looks down at the table, rubbing his fingers against the rough wood in an idle attempt to feel pain, punish himself, again, for Baelor. "I won't let them."
"When I told you…when I told you about the dream I had, about the trial…" Daeron sighs. "I thought it was going to be Aerion or me that died."
"Doesn't matter now." Dunk shrugs, still looking down.
"I wanted it to be me," Daeron says. "But I suppose I knew it wouldn't be."
"You did a good job lying in the mud and not making anything worse," Dunk says.
"It's like I told you, that's my best and only skill," Daeron says.
"You dream the future," Dunk says. "That's your skill."
"Can curses be skills?"
"If you work at 'em," Dunk says, shrugging again.
Daeron laughs softly through his nose. "Alright. I'll try it. You should go find Egg—I think he's your curse to work at."
"Not a curse," Dunk says, shaking his head. "He's a good kid."
"He is," Daeron says, nodding absently. "You're well-matched."
*
Dunk's been at Summerhall less than a fortnight when someone knocks on his door before dawn. He's still getting used to having a door and a bed, and not sleeping nearly as well as he did before he had either, so the knocking doesn't bother him as much as it might've.
He opens the door to Daeron, leaning on the door frame and shuddering. "Uh, my lord, what—" Dunk starts, very softly, trying not to wake anyone else in the castle.
"Before I met you, I didn't have dreams very often," Daeron says. "Now I'm having them every fucking night."
"I beg your pardon, my lord, but I don't know how that could possibly be—"
"Oh, I don't blame you," Daeron says, looking a little surprised. "I think some of them are probably just nightmares, but I can't tell them apart anymore."
"They're all that bad?" Dunk says, even though he recognizes the ragged-edged voice and full-body shakes of a Flea Bottom street prophet. They can't be good dreams.
"The only bearable ones are of you," Daeron says. "The rest are…" He sighs, and sits down. "Aerion invites a dragon to breathe fire straight down his throat. Aemon's body decays over the course of a hundred long and dark years. Egg sets himself on fire, wrapped around a dragon egg. The gods smash my father's head with a rock as recompense for what he did to my uncle."
"…I don't think…" Dunk starts, searching for a way to put this that wouldn't make Egg give him that flat, disbelieving look of his.
"I don't think that's what's literally going to happen to any of them, no," Daeron says. "But I wasn't too far off last time."
"Would you like to come in, my lord?" Dunk asks, still nervously scanning back and forth down the hall for people he imagines might leave their rooms to chastise him.
"…alright," Daeron says, and Dunk steps aside to let him, closing the door behind them.
"I'll try to keep Egg away from dragon eggs," Dunk says, just to say something.
"I would say I hope you do," Daeron says, half-laughing, "but I don't think there's any hope of changing their fates, especially since he already has an egg."
"You just say that instead of really trying to change the future for the better," Dunk says, squinting at him. "Don't you still wanna know you did everything you could?"
"If you think I have the ability to make any impact on Aerion or my father, you are sadly mistaken," Daeron says.
"You're the eldest son, shouldn't your father listen?" Dunk asks.
"No, no, I'm the first try that didn't count," Daeron says. "Whatever my father expected me to be, I certainly wasn't it. Nor are any of us, I'm afraid. There's not much anyone can really do about centuries of inbreeding, aside from not continuing to inbreed, I suppose, which we're certainly making an attempt at."
"Well, even if Aerion and your father wouldn't listen, I'd bet Egg would," Dunk says. "He loves you. Still looks up to you."
"I hope you told him he shouldn't."
"I did, yeah," Dunk says.
Daeron laughs. "Good," he says. "I have to be exactly the person I am in order to survive my fucking life, and that's not a person anyone should admire."
"What were the less-bad dreams that were about me like?" Dunk asks, trying to change the subject because his thoughts are insisting on listing all of the lies he's told to survive, even though he'd prefer they didn't.
"Oh, they were still awful dreams," Daeron says. "They just weren't quite as bad as the others because they weren't about my family dying painful deaths."
"Wonderful," Dunk says, flatly, sighing and nodding. "Sounds about right."
"Don't suddenly turn pessimistic just because you think you're going to die horribly," Daeron says, his voice strangely light. "Where's the man who shouted 'are there no true knights among you' at several of the biggest bastards in the entirety of the Seven Kingdoms?"
"Egg told me if you count, it's actually nine kingdoms."
Daeron squints, silently counting on his fingers for a moment. "Fuck me, he's right. Why did no one think to count?"
"And, besides, I think I've learned my lesson about—"
"Hope?" Daeron finishes, and Dunk shrugs and nods. "Let me give you a lesson everyone burdened with a family name learns: Don't be so quick to throw something you have in abundance away."
"A-alright," Dunk says, startled by the intensity, blinking several times in rapid succession.
"I'm going to go and drink myself back to sleep," Daeron says. "Thank you for…well, for taking me seriously, I suppose. No one else believes me."
"I've met real prophets and a lot of fake ones, too," Dunk says. "Gets easy enough to tell the difference."
"I wasn't expecting you to be an expert."
"I'm no expert on anything," Dunk says. "It's just a feeling in my guts."
"A painful one?" Daeron asks, smirking. "Because that might not be your authentic-prophet alarm, it very well might be those fish from dinner."
"If you don't wanna go drink yourself back to sleep, you can stay here," Dunk says.
"Are your guts telling you that, too?"
"Yeah, actually."