Chapter Text
Duncan had remained in bed for only a single day at the maester’s insistence.
The wounds had not been grave; a deep cut along his side, his shoulder pierced by a blunt tip, and enough dark bruises spreading beneath the skin to make even breathing too deeply painful, but nothing that justified the other three days shut away in his chambers because the wounds were not truly the problem.
The problem was that the world continued to exist without Lyonel Baratheon within it and Duncan still did not know how to endure something like that without feeling as though the air were being torn from his chest.
The room had become unbearably silent although Duncan felt that life itself had grown quieter. More than once he had turned his head upon hearing heavy footsteps crossing the corridor, with that automatic reaction born of years spent expecting Lyonel to burst in unannounced, filling any space with his voice too loud, his absurd laughter or some theatrical complaint about the manners of the court because although Lyonel spent half his time grumbling about King’s Landing and its nobles, he still always ended up appearing only to spend a few days beside Duncan before dragging him back to Storm’s End for a few weeks.
Even asleep he still searched for him, Duncan waking with a start, still half trapped between dreams, stretching an arm toward the empty side of the bed before remembering all at once that nothing remained there now except cold sheets and empty space.
And then the pain opened again inside him with a fresh violence, as though the body itself refused to truly learn loss because it did not matter how many times the maester insisted the wound had been impossible to save.
Lyonel was dead because of Duncan.
Egg had tried to soothe the situation from the very beginning, sending carefully written letters, vague promises and insufficient concessions that seemed written by someone who had never truly known Lyonel Baratheon. As though the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands were the sort of man who would quietly accept that the crown prince break a betrothal sealed before half the realm simply because he was in love.
Duncan had told him more than once.
Since the death of Lyonel’s wife, there was no one in Westeros who knew him better than he did. Duncan could distinguish perfectly when Lyonel was merely furious and when there was something far worse hidden beneath that easy smile he wore as armor, he knew how his shoulders tightened when he felt wounded and he also knew that the more joking he became, the closer he was to doing something irreversible and foolish.
Egg had not wished to listen to him, or perhaps he had listened and had simply decided that it was still preferable to yielding.
More than once Duncan had ended up crying himself to sleep without realizing it, waking hours later with his face damp, his throat burning and the horrible sensation of still remaining within that arena.
And always, inevitably, he ended up returning to the same moment: Lyonel laughing. Not a bitter or forced laugh, but an enormous and warm burst of laughter that shook his entire body while he let the sword fall upon the sand with a heavy blow and raised both hands in surrender as though it had all been merely another ridiculous tourney between friends after removing his helm and carelessly letting it fall upon the sand as well.
—Then I surrender —he had said, almost singing it.
Even now something inside Duncan twisted at remembering how out of place that lightness had sounded in the midst of a trial capable of deciding the fate of the entire realm, but he knew Lyonel far too well not to see what hid beneath the smile: the exhaustion, the weary rage and the pain of a man who no longer knew how to keep fighting without eventually destroying himself.
Duncan remembered having let the sword fall almost immediately afterward, incapable of continuing to hold it while watching Lyonel collapse seated upon the sand. The armor weighed so heavily that moving had been difficult, yet even so he ended up dropping beside him with a tired grunt, kicking his own helm aside with his foot.
And afterward they simply began to talk, like two idiots incapable of finding it within themselves to care too much where they were.
Duncan barely remembered what exactly they had said, small things about what new foolishness Lyonel intended to drag him into when Duncan went to Storm’s End a few months later, some absurd joke about the unbearable heat inside the armor or whatever stupidity spoken only to prolong a few more minutes of that absurd feeling of normality before someone remembered what had truly just happened.
What he did remember was having absentmindedly lifted his gaze and noticing that the stands were beginning to empty little by little while they still sat upon the sand, still speaking between exhausted breaths. The sun descended slowly over the yard and tore golden gleams from the white plates of his armor, and Lyonel had sand clinging to the sweat upon his neck and damp strands stuck to his brow, but even so he still smiled with that tired and warm expression that always managed to make Duncan forget everything else.
Duncan often thought it might have been easier to endure if the principal memory had been the blood or the screams or the maesters running toward them.
But every time he ended up returning to the impossible calm with which Lyonel had looked at him while dying, because Duncan did not understand that something was wrong until Lyonel sought his hand and slowly intertwined his fingers with his after tearing off his glove and Duncan’s as well.
Only then did he notice how pale he was. The color seemed to have drained completely from his face while a dark stain began to spread slowly across the metal of the armor, already soaking the cloth beneath it.
—Listen, darling —Lyonel had murmured with a strangely soft voice, still warm despite the weary tremor of his breathing—. I do not want you to torment yourself... it is not your fault.
Duncan could still feel the exact weight of that hand weakly clutching his own.
—I love you, Dunk… I am happy that your pretty face is the last thing I will see.
And afterward Lyonel had collapsed against his chest with the full enormous weight of his body, as though he had simply fallen asleep… Only he never opened his eyes again.
Duncan remembered having screamed until his throat tore apart while trying to hold him, remembered the blood seeping hot between his fingers, the frantic sound of metal clashing when the maesters tried to pull him away and the horrible helpless sensation of continuing to order them to do something even when he could already feel how Lyonel’s body was beginning to grow cold.
After that the memories became blurred and repetitive.
Someone had separated him from Lyonel, someone had tried to remove his armor while Duncan continued staring toward the arena as though expecting to see him rise at any moment. Later a maester ended up stitching him while he remained seated completely motionless, still covered in Lyonel’s blood.
The following days barely existed for him.
When he finally left his chambers and crossed once more through the halls of the Red Keep, the white armor felt different upon his body. Never before had he truly noticed the weight of the plates nor the stiffness of the cloak falling over his shoulders, but now every step made the metal creak against the wounds and the sound churned his stomach.
He had once loved that armor but now he could only feel trapped inside it.
Duncan advanced slowly through the corridor until stopping before the king’s chambers, but before he could announce himself he heard Egg’s voice on the other side of the door.
—...the Stormlands were already on the verge of rising up —Egg was saying from the other side of the door with a weary voice that sounded far older than his years—. Lyonel would never have accepted another outcome after the public humiliation, if I sent armies, this would not have ended until half the realm was burning and Lyonel had personally ensured dragging every Targaryen down with him.
Duncan closed his eyes for an instant upon hearing that voice. He could still recognize Egg within it if he tried hard enough but each time it became more difficult to find him.
—With any other man, Lyonel would have fought to the death —Egg continued after a brief pause, as though he were still trying to explain something to the Grand Maester or perhaps to himself—. He would have turned this into a long and bloody war before agreeing to retreat, but he never would have killed Duncan… With Duncan there existed a chance to stop it before it went too far.
Duncan felt the cold spreading slowly through his chest while he remained motionless before the door, listening to Egg speak of the duel exactly as he would have spoken of moving troops or closing trade routes before winter.
As though Lyonel had not been a man they had both loved in their own way, as though they had not shared entire winters beside the fire while Lyonel insisted on throwing on more wood because he was convinced they would freeze before dawn. Or as though Lyonel himself had not helped raise Egg nearly as much as he had, teaching him things Maekar had never possessed enough patience to teach his sons.
As though Duncan still could not feel the warm weight of Lyonel’s body collapsing against him within the arena or the blood seeping between his fingers while he shouted desperately for help.
He braced a firmer hand against the stone wall because suddenly the entire corridor seemed too narrow and the air trapped beneath the armor had become suffocating. The weight of the white cloak upon his shoulders felt different now, heavier than he had ever felt it in all those years, as though every steel plate and every thread of cloth were reminding him exactly what it truly existed for.
—...there was no other choice, Maester —said Egg after a brief silence that ended up turning Duncan’s stomach far more than any shout could have done—. Lyonel was furious and I could not allow the realm to bleed itself dry over my son’s marriage, Duncan renounced the crown for love and I was not going to destroy his happiness merely to satisfy the pride of the Stormlands… We have already lost too much to duties and crowns in this family.
The exhaustion in Egg’s voice was real, Duncan could hear it clearly and perhaps that was what made everything far worse, because Egg did not sound cruel nor ruthless in the simple and obvious way Duncan would have known how to hate without effort. He sounded like a man who had spent too long convincing himself that he had made the correct choice.
—I thought they might stop themselves —Egg continued more quietly after a pause—. Lyonel would never truly have tried to kill Duncan and Duncan... Duncan would not have wished to grievously hurt him either.
The words made something twist violently within Duncan’s chest because Egg had known. He had always been aware and had known exactly what they were to one another and even so he had placed them inside that arena trusting that the love between them would be enough to make safe something that never should have happened.
And perhaps the worst thing was that he had never doubted the outcome either, not the duel but Duncan.
—Even so, the Lord Commander could also have died —said the Grand Maester cautiously.
Egg took several seconds to answer.
—Duncan would have given his life for me since he was sixteen years old, that was never what concerned me.
And that was what finally broke something within Duncan.
Not because Egg sounded cruel, Duncan would have known how to endure open cruelty better, indifference or even anger but Egg sounded completely certain of what he was saying, certain of his obedience, of a loyalty so old and so absolute that it had never even occurred to him to question that it would continue existing even after this.
Then he released a weary exhale.
—Duncan understands sacrifice better than anyone and he has always been strong enough to carry the weight of my decisions.
Duncan felt something sinking slowly within him as he heard it because Egg truly believed it, believed that it spoke well of him, that turning Duncan into the man who obediently carried the pain of others was a sign of trust and not a cruelty.
The nausea rose violently into his throat.
Duncan had to lower his head slightly while trying to recover his breath because suddenly the heat trapped beneath the armor became unbearable and the constant friction of the steel plates against his body produced a strange sensation, suffocating, almost filthy; as though the white cloak had ceased resembling a promise long ago and he were only understanding it now.
Egg had known.
That Lyonel would lower his guard before Duncan, that Duncan would obey even while feeling his heart breaking apart inside his chest and that, after all of this, he would still remain there just as always because Duncan always ended up forgiving him everything.
And it was then, leaning against that stone wall with the bitter taste of bile slowly rising through his throat, that he thought of Ashford.
Not of the tourney nor the absurd glory of the songs, but of Humfrey Hardyng collapsing upon the earth, of Humfrey Beesbury dying for an unknown boy who scarcely understood the rules of the game into which he had just been dragged and of Baelor Breakspear being the only prince willing to bleed beside the rest instead of hiding behind them while they spoke of honor.
Duncan had understood something that day, although then he had still been too young to truly put it into words: the Targaryens played their games and it was other men who ended up paying the price for them.
If Baelor had not died at Ashford, the dragons would have emerged untouched from all of it. Aerion would still be a monster and Duncan would have survived only to carry the corpses of good men who died defending a cause that had never truly belonged to them.
And now Lyonel was dead as well... Dead because Egg had fully trusted that Duncan would obediently gather up the pain afterward, just as he always did.
Duncan slowly lowered his gaze toward his own hands, large and calloused, still marked by poorly closed cuts and dark remnants of blood trapped beneath the nails despite all the desperate attempts to clean them during the past days.
The same hands that had held Lyonel while he bled out trying to calm him.
And for the first time since he had donned the white cloak he understood with a slow and nauseating clarity that kings never truly carried the pain they caused. The pain always descended onto other men, accumulated in other bodies, in other graves, in other hands covered in blood while the Crown remained untouched upon someone else’s head.
And men like Duncan spent their entire lives calling it honor, the habit of obediently gathering that pain for them.
Slowly feeling the anger beginning to force its way through the numbness and grief that had kept him nearly motionless during the past days, Duncan ended up understanding something that turned his stomach far more than any wound: for kings, men like him and Lyonel always ended up becoming reasonable sacrifices so long as the realm continued functioning afterward.
He stepped away from the door before anyone inside could notice his presence and began walking back toward his chambers with quick but silent steps, scarcely aware of the heavy echo of boots upon the stone. Two guards tried to approach upon seeing him turn down one of the corridors, likely prepared to ask him something or announce some order from the king, but Duncan barely turned his head toward them before ordering with a harshness strange even for him that he did not wish to be disturbed.
He did not wait for an answer.
When he finally crossed the door of his chambers, he closed it with too much force, making the iron hinges tremble against the stone. The sound remained vibrating within the room while Duncan stood still for only an instant, breathing with difficulty.
The armor of the Kingsguard suddenly felt unbearable upon his body.
Not heavy as it had always been heavy after combat or an entire day of training, but suffocating, as though the metal itself were slowly closing around his ribs.
He tried to loosen the buckles with clumsy hands, but his fingers still trembled too much and he ended up losing patience almost immediately. He drew the dagger Lyonel had gifted him years before —the same one he always carried hidden at his belt although he never truly needed it— and began cutting the leather straps when the knots resisted opening.
The dry sound of leather tearing filled the room. One plate fell to the floor, then another and Duncan barely paid attention to the metallic clamor while he continued ripping the armor from himself as though he were trying to escape it before running out of air.
Only when he finished, left in gray hose and a light tunic, did he manage to brace himself against the edge of the table and take a truly deep breath. His chest still burned. He could feel the heat rising along his neck and spreading beneath his skin like fever while he tried to regain control over something he no longer knew how to name exactly.
Because all of it had been for nothing… For nothing.
Duncan had reunited with Lyonel only a few months after Ashford, during another tourney, and at first everything had been awkward in an almost ridiculous way. Lyonel still refused to leave him alone for even a second, but at the same time he barely spoke or looked at him, forcing him nonetheless to sit beside him during meals and constantly keeping him at his side with a silent stubbornness that had ended up fraying his nerves. Duncan still remembered the exact moment when he finally lost patience: “Gods, Lyonel, stop behaving like a spoiled and unbearable noble brat.”
He had blurted it out before half the tent after two entire days enduring Lyonel’s foul temper and the uncomfortable silence that had settled between them, and the silence that fell immediately afterward was so absolute that Duncan came to wonder whether he had just condemned himself once again.
Then Lyonel had looked at him for the first time in nearly two complete days and a second later had burst into roaring laughter, leaning over Duncan to embrace him with such force that he had nearly knocked him to the ground while rubbing his curls against his temple like an idiot happy to have recovered something he believed lost.
After that things had simply fallen into place.
Lyonel had understood why Duncan wished to continue traveling the roads beside Egg, why it was important to him that the boy see the world beyond castles and halls before becoming completely another Targaryen prince incapable of understanding how the rest of the realm truly lived, he had understood that Duncan needed to prove to himself that he was capable.
And Duncan had understood as well that Lyonel’s offer had never truly been a matter of loyalties or castles. He did not have to swear anything to the Baratheons in order to belong to Lyonel.
So even when Lyonel ended up marrying —more compelled by his family and his counselors than by true desire— nothing truly changed between them. The woman had been Lyonel’s childhood friend and seemed to possess as much romantic interest in him as Lyonel himself possessed in her, so Duncan continued spending entire winters in Storm’s End or appearing there suddenly during the year because it was well known that he had a place reserved for him within that fortress.
And that did not change either when Duncan swore himself to Egg and ended up settling first in Summerhall and later in King’s Landing after the coronation. It only meant that now Lyonel also began appearing unannounced at the Red Keep.
For some years, when Lyonel’s children were born, Duncan was the one who traveled most because the idea of the man spending even less time with them stirred something uncomfortable within his chest, especially after the birth of little Elenei. The girl’s mother had died giving birth to her and that had left Lyonel widowed with a boy barely two years old and a newborn constantly crying in his arms besides the grief of losing his best friend.
The children ended up awaiting Duncan’s visits nearly as much as their father and Duncan loved them with the same absolute ease with which he had loved Egg years before, because they too were children born directly within his heart.
For that reason a part of him had understood Lyonel’s fury immediately when the news of Duncan the Small’s marriage arrived, although he had never said it aloud.
Although he had buried that anger for months because it was not his place to question the king, because he was nothing more than the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and because men like him were not made to voice opinions about the decisions of the crown.
But now all of that was beginning to rise within him again, slowly mixing with the pain until it became something far more bitter because Duncan had truly believed that Egg understood certain things. He had believed that all those years together had served to teach him that there would exist moments where duty would demand sacrificing precisely that which you loved most and that honor did not consist of protecting only the people close to you while other men carried the consequences of your decisions.
Duncan had thought, for far too long, that Egg understood that being king could never mean finding ways to avoid one’s own pain while the rest bled in your place; that the value of a man was not born from the family into which he had been born nor the name he carried upon himself, but from the decisions he made when doing what was right began to cost him something truly his own.
And yet Egg had ended up doing exactly the same as the rest of his family. Covering the sun with one hand from the safety of his castle and expecting that miserable shadow to be enough to end whatever drought was afflicting those they called “their people.”
Before realizing what he was doing, Duncan ended up kicking the table against the stone wall with brutal force, the wood crashed violently against the wall and the thunderous noise filled the room while plates, scrolls and a metal goblet flew toward the floor.
Something shattered against the stones, but Duncan barely managed to distinguish what it had been because the shout tore out of him at the same moment, ripped from somewhere so deep within his chest that it ended up leaving his throat burning. And even so it was not enough because the anger was still there.
It had continued growing beneath his ribs for entire days, rotting slowly beside the pain, the guilt and the exhaustion until becoming something heavy and nauseating that he no longer managed to swallow without feeling that he was going to choke on it.
Duncan remained bent over the overturned table while trying to recover his breath, bracing both hands against the splintered wood with such force that his knuckles began to ache.
He had sacrificed so much for nothing… He had given entire years of his life for nothing.
He had obeyed, bled and buried parts of himself again and again sincerely believing that all of it served to build something better, something different from the cruel, selfish and blind kings who had ruled before Egg. Duncan had traveled the realm beside him precisely because he wanted to believe that Egg would never end up becoming another prince incapable of understanding the true price of the lives surrendered for the Crown.
And in the end he had ended up hurting Lyonel exactly like them… And for nothing.
His breathing still trembled while he squeezed his eyes shut, but the moment he did he still saw the arena bathed in the light of the afternoon sun, the blood slowly seeping between the plates of metal and Lyonel smiling at him even while dying because he remained more concerned with comforting Duncan than with himself.
Lyonel had been right from the very beginning. Even in Ashford. Even when Duncan had still been too young, too naïve and too desperate to believe in good knights and different princes to truly understand the kind of game into which he had just been dragged.
Princes played with rules written by themselves while other men ended up burying their dead afterward.
And Duncan understood now that Ashford had never been justice either, although for years he had tried convincing himself that some true honor had indeed existed within it. In the end Humfrey Hardyng and Humfrey Beesbury were still dead while the dragons kept crowns, castles and songs. Baelor Breakspear had ended with his skull crushed upon the earth for having been the only one willing to bleed beside the rest while Maekar and his sons could still return to their castles and continue calling all of it honor.
And now Lyonel was dead as well...
The nausea rose violently through his throat again because the worst part was not even the manipulation of the duel or the fact that Egg had used Duncan’s loyalty and Lyonel’s love just as a man would use a rope or a sword to solve an uncomfortable problem.
The worst part was understanding that Egg had never seen any of it as a monstrosity. Only as an unpleasant necessity, a difficult decision someone had to make, a reasonable sacrifice to avoid a war and protect his son and Duncan had spent so many years believing that Egg was different.
He had slept upon straw beside him, had endured hunger, cold and muddy roads beside him, had seen the boy cry for people no prince should even notice and had thought, like a complete idiot, that it would be enough to prevent him from ending up becoming another king willing to distribute the suffering of others while protecting his own.
But perhaps Lyonel had understood the truth long before he had… Because in the end Egg was still a Targaryen.
Not in the simple and absurd way the singers spoke of dragon blood and madness, but in a far worse way. Egg had been born believing that the pain of other men was a natural part of the burden of ruling while his own had to be avoided at any cost, even if to achieve it he had to slowly destroy the people who loved him most.
Princes used men like Duncan just as they used shields of flesh in battle and afterward called the disaster they left behind honor or justice.
And perhaps that was the part that truly ended up destroying him, not only Lyonel’s death, but realizing that Egg had never doubted Duncan would accept carrying all of it afterward. The knight loyal enough to destroy himself before allowing the Crown to bleed.
And for the first time in all his adult life, when he thought of Egg, he no longer managed to see the skinny boy who had slept beside him upon piles of damp straw nor the child who had insisted on traveling the roads with a poor knight because he wished to understand how the realm he would someday inherit truly lived. He could only see another king sitting comfortably behind men better than himself while deciding which of them were acceptable sacrifices.
Duncan remained bent over the overturned table for a long while after the scream died within the room.