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The first time he woke up again, not im a caravan to Lys but in the temporary quarters his family held while on their way to Ashford, Aerion had assumed that everything had been a dream. A particularly vivid one, yes. But still just a dream nonetheless. Which- well, ofcourse it was! The tourney, that puppet player whore, the hedge knight, his uncle….it seemed pathetically laughable at the time looking back. There was simply no way for a mere peasant to be besting a dragon. It was a simple impossibility, a childish jest that held no true meaning. Who cared about the phantom ache in his limbs where his injuries used to be? What did it matter that he could have sworn it was real?
Aerion would not be the first to dream in his family, though he most certainly would not be as pathetic about it either.
So instead he'd simply gotten up, yelled for a servant to bring him some breakfast and went on with his day. Pointedly ignoring the sinking feeling in his stomach as he chose the clothes from his dream.
Things changed when he met that peasant Hedge Knight. He recognised the sun-golden hair and those startling blue eyes, that stupid smile of pearls he should have kicked to pieces, the horrible gentleness in his voice as he addressed the prince. Like a concert of annoyance designed to target him specifically.
“I have the honour to be a knight, m'lord.” The fool said. And Aerion frowned and said what was on his mind. “I can see knighthood has fallen on sad times.”
The back of his mind tingled and swirled with deja vu. He paid it no mind and went on with his life. Again, his first thoughts from when he'd woken up repeated in his mind. After all, why should a prince concern himself with the matters of peasants? A dragon with those of humans? Surely, there was no way that some lowly ox could ever come to defeat someone as grand as a Prince of the Blood. Any other notion would have been simply ludicrous.
Then that whore's puppet show happened.
Then the trial happened.
And suddenly Aerion was nursing injuries he knew he had before. Skin littered with bruises and blemishes while his blood left ugly crusts on his face. The shape of the Hedge Knight's fists seemingly imprinted on his body as every movement hurt. Being told by his father that his uncle had died again, struck down on accident. Having taken his last breaths mere moments after the fight had concluded. His father didn't say it outright, but Aerion felt the gaze of disappointment and sorrow burn into his soul as he was told to go to Lys. Blood of your blood, a voice had said, dead. Slain. Spilt on your hands as well as mine. All while he watched that Hedge Knight limp away the victor all over again.
He did not fight his father's decision this time. Didn’t scream or yell or accuse the man of taking a stranger's side like he would have anytime else. Instead he simply sunk back into his pillows, silently wondering if perhaps this was how Daeron always felt.
XxX
The second time Aerion woke up, he knew what he needed to do.
By now he'd understood that it wasn't a particularly vivid dream he'd seen. Nor were it legendary visions or predictions that played behind his mind's eye. The phantom pains in his limbs and the thrumming behind his eyes- none of them was truly as fake as he'd first thought them to be.
It was only right, Aerion thought, for the seven to grant him another chance. For that was what this whole ordeal must be: Another chance. An opportunity to avoid the humiliating fate forced onto him by that peasant Hedge Knight and his stupid companions. It was only fair. It was the only way.
So he accepted a simple trial by combat this time.
That Hedge Knight only won for the valour of his seven men fighting. Used them to tire Aerion out so he might strike the final blow. The strategy was smart, no doubt, but easy to predict and even easier to counteract. Part of him could not help but smirk- even just slightly- when he thought about it. Perhaps the oaf hadn’t been as stupid as he originally assumed him to be. Even a blind chicken manages to hit a corn sooner or later if they try long enough.
Not that it would give Aerion much reason for mercy.
The knight ended up dying at his hands on the battlefield, just how he predicted he would. His horse was impaled by the prince’s lance (How could he not have foreseen a strategy he’d already used before), and his throat was quickly slit in the moment of distraction. Such a poor, idiot Hedge Knight. Aerion thought he’d put up more of a struggle after what had happened the last two times, but he’d simply been too distracted trying to comfort his dying steed even when faced with the likes of him. Foolish sentimentality that cost him his head in the end, perfectly fitting for the foolish sentimentality that had him save that whore in the first place.
Everything ended as quickly as it had begun. Any protests or outrage from the smallfolk bearing witness was quickly put out by Lord Ashford’s men and the Kingsguard while Aerion enjoyed his win. He made sure to boast about his steadfast defence of their house’s honour to his brothers and cousin at dinner that evening. And while Valarr didn’t say anything outright, Aerion found himself satisfied seeing the frown of unspoken displeasure on his face.
He smiled with pure, happy satisfaction that night. Savouring the memory of watching as the red crimson seeped from the Hedge Knight's throat felt exhilarating. So exhilarating in fact that he’d barely even noticed Aegon sneak in his room. Nor the knife he’d held in his tiny, shaking hand as he approached his brother’s bed.
In the end, the victory Aerion had earned mattered depressingly little. He’d yelled in the ensuing struggle, pushed and punched his brother, who had practically no chance against him usually. Still the boy fought. He clawed and screamed and bit at him with his dull teeth and nails, wailing his hedge knight’s name and insults alike until their father and uncle rushed in. Aegon did not stop, even when their father attempted to calm him down. Aerion had stopped taking him and this childish tantrum seriously a while ago. The boy could not even win against him. What could he possibly do against two adult men?
What could feeble little Aegon ever really do?
Ram his little knife into the side of their uncle’s head, apparently. Little arms swinging without goal or effect as he struggled, somehow managing to angle just right with just enough force to pierce bone and make him drop. He barely had the time to hear his father’s screams before Aegon had freed himself and stormed towards him. Ever determined and almost equally as ruthless, he stuck the bloodied blade into his throat, just as he’d done to the hedge knight not too long ago.
The last thing he saw was the red-brimmed and tear-stained eyes of his younger brother, filled not with regret but with justified fury.
XxX
When Aerion woke up for the third time in a row, he did so with a gasp.
It was the first time he had awoken from death instead of simple sleep after a mishapen trial, and he’d found it to be a wholly uncomfortable affair. The iron taste of his final moments still rang thick on his skull, his lungs still burned from where he choked on his own blood. His throat- unslit and whole under his shaking hand- felt like closing up and wretching out ragged screams at the same time.
Dying, he thought, was a horrible thing.
His brother, he continued to think, had to pay for it.
That was why he’d gathered a group of men to scour every inn and road towards Ashford while they were still on the way. He’d come up with some sort of excuse about bandits and needing to ensure the safety of everyone present, not that it mattered much when his men inevitably picked up Daeron and the little rat at an inn not far away. His father was far too busy reprimanding Daeron for his attempt at skipping the tourney to pay his son’s strange behaviour much mind.
Aerion could not help but laugh when he realised that his failure of an elder brother hadn’t even cut the little rat’s hair yet. Only made better by Aegon’s face when, in a faux air of filial piety and kindness, he’d offered his father to take his youngest brother as his own squire. Since the boy wanted to serve a knight so badly and Daeron seemed unwilling.
The boy protested of course. Though as always the older got what he wanted. Aegon wailed bitter tears that night and Aerion through no sweeter sound. Dragging him off and away in the morning to push and prod him into doing this or that, laughing at his despair even as the memory of the last cycle lingered fresh in his mind.
He avoided a trial completely this time. With no little Targaryen prince around to step in on his behalf, Aerion made rather quick work of the hedge knight’s face. The sound of a shattering jaw and teeth was rather ugly, though the sight of the man’s head on a pike was rather pretty. Little Aegon didn’t even want to look- despite the fact that he hadn’t known the knight in this version of events- but he forced him to look nonetheless. It all felt wonderfully perfect.
His second death was at the hands of an angry peasant mob. Stirred awake and enraged by the fate of that whore puppeteer and her idiotic defender, they stormed the castle in such masses that there was barely any time to react. Queer as it was Baratheon was the one to lead the angry crowds alongside some minor Fossoway cousin.
“Your family has taken a good man.” They’d told his uncle, bleeding and injured but still trying his best to protect his family. All huddled and forced together into some castle tower as below chaos reigned. “Ser Duncan would have pleaded for us to show some mercy. He cannot do that any longer on behalf of your prince.”
Aerion didn’t see how Uncle Baelor died, but Baratheon was the one to drive his sword through his chest.
XxX
By the sixth time Aerion woke up, he’d figured out that it was a distinctly awful idea to get on Ser Duncan’s bad side.
He’d also figured out that the only through line in all of this was the fact that one way or another, his uncle would always end up dying.
Aerion had settled for letting the tourney happen normally this time around. After all, what could possibly go wrong? If he did nothing, then he couldn’t do anything that would cause unforeseen consequences. Maybe then fate or the gods or whatever caused all of this to happen would be satisfied and release him from this constant cycle to continue with his life. Undisturbed, easy and just how it was always meant to be.
He’d taken a step back. Kept to himself, kept quiet. Didn’t complain or make a noise even when his father eyed him with suspicion. When jousting began, he didn’t even kill Ser Humfrey’s horse- even if it would have been easy to do- and defeated him fairly after two sets of lances broke. Aerion didn’t visit the commoner’s market, didn’t set foot into the puppet show and let that whore and Ser Duncan proceed despite knowing of the treason they were committing with the act. When Daeron returned, he didn’t rat him out for his lie or tell his father about Aegon hiding in plain sight. Instead, he waited a few days so none might call him a coward and then declared himself too sick for the tourney. Choosing instead to sit and watch as other knights rode and the time washed by with nothing else important happening.
The monotony of it all nearly drove the prince insane, but he’d already chosen to bear it for the sake of ending this foul joke of time. He was a prince, a dragon, and he could take a bit of boredom if it meant that his goals would be achieved.
Only it didn’t achieve his goals.
And it barely even changed anything.
His uncle died on the eve of the trial if it had actually taken place. The joust that had been postponed to make way for the event got carried out as planned, two knights Aerion didn’t know and didn’t recognise going against one another for a morsel of glory. He’d watched, of course, and turned his head just in time to see the splinter of wood sticking out of his uncle’s eye socket in a simply grotesque manner.
A freak accident. Wayward debris from the lances that had broken, which flew too fast and too far and into a direction that was utterly off from where it normally should have gone. And still it hit his uncle and ended his life for all to see, his cousin’s horrified screams for a maester and the scrambling of the Kingsguard drowning out even the rushing of blood in his ear.
The blood that had sprayed on him felt horribly wrong on Aerion’s skin. He made sure to take a bath before going to bed that night.
XxX
The eighteenth time Aerion awoke, he already knew what to expect.
The temporary quarters on their way to Ashford, the ride on his horse, the realisation of Daeron’s and Aegon’s absence. The foul mood of his father, the grand arrival at the tourney, the fanfares, the introduction, the cloudy sky above, the deep ocean blue-blue-blue of Ser Duncan’s eyes as he stared up at him curiously.
His eyes truly were innocent in the most painful way possible.
Aerion remembered how the eyes looked, filled with hatred and fear. He knew how they looked when dead or ripped from their sockets. He even knew them when they felt betrayed- from the cycle where he revealed his squire’s identity that moment and had Ser Duncan hung as a kidnapper -and yet he’d barely ever taken the time to gaze upon them in such a state. Whole and happy and trusting, lacking any reason for malice or even a hint of anger. The prince must have seen them a hundred times before; how come he’d never noticed them until now?
“M’lord?” The other tried. Huh, he must have noticed his staring. A bitter sort of irony washed over him. ‘Boy, stop gaping’ and ‘see to my horses’ or something like that.
“Don’t bother asking about your entrance on the lists,“ Aerion said instead and noticed too late that he should not have known about these kinds of things yet, “You won’t find it here.”
Ser Duncan gaped, probably wishing to say something in reply, but was cut off when Aerion rode away. It did nothing to help this time either; his uncle ended up poisoned to death at breakfast with foam coming from his mouth and his body twitching in unnatural patterns.
XxX
Aerion did not bother getting out of bed when he opened his eyes for the thirty-fourth time.
Haste seemed useless, not when everything would end up just the way it started anyway. His muscles ached and his mind felt tired. A sensation bad enough to make it feel like a special sort of hell.
The maesters called it a passing travel sickness. They didn't bother looking much deeper.
Baelor Breakspear died of a bleed in his brain on the third day of the loop. They only found out after he'd collapsed and the crimson began to soak into the whites of his eyes. Aerion didn't bother going to the funeral either. Surely he could spare a singular cycle to rest.
XxX
It was not often that Aerion came to contemplate the words of his knighthood.
In the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave.
In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just.
In the name of the Mother, I charge you to protect the young and innocent.
It was a normal part of life for a noble, really. It was always expected of him, so he always expected it of himself. Aerion Targaryen, son of Maekar the Anvil, would become a knight. A dragon. Prince Aerion Brightflame of House Targaryen. Grandson of Daeron the Good. A prince of the blood. A noble. A royal. A being that stood above the common plights and worries of the smallfolk and ordinary nobility. A beast among men none could ever hope to tame or defeat.
In the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave.
In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just.
In the name of the Mother, I charge you to protect the young and innocent.
He’d been proud of himself when he was made a knight. Or, well, he had always been proud of himself, really. He’d just been especially proud at that moment when he knelt in front of his own master, expecting and receiving the praise he knew he was owed. Aegon had been even smaller back then, and Daeron was not yet so deep in his cups. He thought that his youngest brother still loved him at least a little bit when it happened, too. At least enough to gift him his favourite useless wooden sword toy as a ‘good luck charm’. As though he could defeat armies with a mere piece of tree, as though it could possibly measure up to the fine steel armour made especially for him.
Aerion had burned it before his eyes and laughed that very eve, mocking the small child for his foolishness.
In the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave.
In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just.
In the name of the Mother, I charge you to protect the young and innocent.
Now he stared up at the velvets and silks of his tent for the sixty-sixth time in a row and couldn’t help but think….had he ever truly held those vows? Even once?
Had he ever chosen to be brave? To go against a foe where he didn’t know he would surely win already? Without trying to weasel or cheat or somehow come out on top?
Had he ever been just? Known to pick right from wrong and choose to do what was good above what wasn’t? Had he ever taken anyone’s side not out of duty or force or possible gain, but simply because their side was the right one to take?
Had he ever protected anyone besides himself? Had he ever looked at Aegon and didn’t see the sheer terror only a child could produce? Did he ever give his maids and servants a reason to not hurry in and out of his rooms while praying that he hadn’t noticed them?
Perhaps, Aerion thought, perhaps this was a punishment. A cruel prison of his own making that the gods locked him in after one transgression too many. Inevitable fate that would repeat on and on with nothing that could truly stop it to imprison an oath-breaker. It was the sort of poetic justice he thought fitting for the gods at the very least.
He was not one for feeling guilty or regretful very often. Though tonight the prince couldn’t help but think that he may. This time, uncle Baelor tripped down the stairs. A death so laughable that Aerion would have thought it dishonourable for a man of his uncle’s status, if only it weren’t for the fact that it did everything to show how the world intendet this to go.
In the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave.
In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just.
In the name of the Mother, I charge you to protect the young and innocent.
XxX
“No!” Aerion yelled, frustrated and angry and desperate all in one, “I am leaving, and you cannot stop me!”
His father and uncle Baelor looked equally as helpless as confused. “Aerion, nephew, please— whatever it is, let’s talk inside. The storm is picking up and—”
Whatever the older man wanted to say, Aerion long since stopped listening. This was not the first time he’d tried to run, and it wouldn’t be the last, though he’d prefer for his one hundred thirty-first cycle to not end in death for him as the other ones did. The rain plastered his silvery white hair to his scalp and made it turn a muddy cream. Below him, his horse neighed uncomfortably as if it felt the emotional state of its rider.
It was an odd thing that a storm picked up now when it hadn’t before. Still, Aerion did not stop and did not relent even as the older two men pleaded. “You go back if you will! But I’ll ride.”
“And to where, pray tell, would you go!?” His father half-yelled back over the rain and thunder. “All alone, no luggage, only on a horse with not a single coin!? You’d die trying! Stop this foolishness and come back inside, boy. I am warning you, or else I will—”
A landslide took all three princes before the elder could finish. Uncle Baelor went first from a boulder to his head; he’d lost sight of his father and Aerion himself died suffocating alongside his animal under wet dirt and ripped-out bits of forest. His last thoughts were that this was the first time he’d gone out this way in particular. Drowning in a sudden river flood, however, was better than suffocation; the water tasted better than the dirt.
XxX
It took until his two hundred fifty-fifth time waking to attempt something like this.
“I don’t know why the lad seems to hate you so,” Ser Duncan sighed, exasperated. “He’s kind usually. Or polite at least. Are you sure that the two of you have never met before?”
Aerion shook his head no. Aegon- or Egg, as the boy preferred to be called- did so too. His own movement was much more stilted and forced than that of his older brother, to whom lying came like breathing.
The hedge knight, objectively stupid oaf that he was, still sighed and accepted without much more questions. Instead, he offered Aerion a spot closer to the fire once he saw him shiver. “It seems like we orphans gotta stick together, ay?”
“Yes, together” Aerion agreed and was glad for the fact that his ancestors had bastards enough that his own cover story seemed plausible. Still, disguising yourself as the illegitimate child of a whore and a royal felt…odd. Demeaning. Weird. But not enough to cause the prince to recoil as he would have in the past or a few cycles ago.
Besides him, his brother did his best to hide in Dunk’s side. Tiny arms curling around his far too wide hips and little frame almost drowning in the roughspun wool coat of his master. It reminded Aerion of animals and their young. A little dragon that curled itself into its mother’s side to feel safe and protected. Or maybe a little cat trying to mark its territory in a faux attempt at adulthood. Bearing its underdeveloped and weak fangs at Aerion as though he’d need to fear their bit even a tiny bit.
If Egg didn’t feel the need to keep his true identity hidden Aerion was sure that he’d have long since started to yell at him already. Alas, right now they were nothing more but strangers. A bastard and an orphan that found each other by chance, both taken in by a hedge knight with a heart too big for his mortal chest to fit.
All Aerion had needed to do to get the man to share his fire with him was ask. He was not aware that it would have been that easy. Call it a whim; perchance it was desperation too, but something just drew the prince to this odd pair camping under a simple elm tree.
“It is a beautiful night.” Ser Duncan exclaimed with satisfaction, “It will not rain. I don’t believe so.”
The blue-blue-blue of his eyes was swallowed by the darkness of the world around them. But his beautiful white smile still stood out against it all. Another thing Aerion had never noticed.
Below them in the distance, the group could hear castle guards coming awake, small lights indicating the torches they held. Either his uncle had died or they’d noticed his absence from where he snuck away, either option seemed equally as likely to Aerion. Neither seemed particularly important.
“That is a good thing,” he came to agree with the knight.
XxX
Aerion had awoken for the four hundred eighty-eighth time and could not help but seek out Ser Duncan.
Between boredom and the endless cycles of death, he’d quickly found that spending them together with the peasant knight usually meant they’d make for the most bearable of them.
The oaf, by now more affectionate nickname than anything else, was a good and kind man. Honest and pure, a little slow but terribly sincere. He could understand why his brother had murdered him for the sake of this man, oh so long ago, the prince thought, for he would have probably done something similar.
His uncle died from a foul egg eaten during lunch. He’d come to cry into Ser Duncan’s shoulder shortly after finding out. Partially for Uncle Baelor, partially because he knew what it meant for himself as soon as he got to sleep.
The other had a very comforting hug.
XxX
“You should call me Dunk,” Ser Duncan said sometime during the seven hundred ninety-ninth cycle, “I really just go by Duncan because it sounds better. And since we are friends now….”
XxX
A fire, this time. That’s what would take Aerion and his whole family. A sudden fire that broke out in the thousandth cycle. Uncle Baelor had found death already when a beam crushed his skull, hot blood soaking the floor and everything below them.
It was a horrible way to die. The smoke stung his lungs, and the heat from the flames was unbearable. His eyes watered. Maybe he should try to flee, maybe he should stay. He wasn’t sure. Life seemed so easily given when you knew it wasn’t permanent. And with his uncle dead, it wasn’t like he had much of a future in this particular version of events anymore anyway.
Then something grabbed his arm. “M’lord!” A voice yelled; someone manhandled Aerion into a pair of shoulders. “I’ve got you! You stay- there’s a way out! Just hold on a little longer, I’ll surely—”
XxX
It surprised him he managed to count up until the one thousand five hundred eighty-second tourney at Ashford, if Aerion was being honest. Days started to blend together and hours felt like minutes, every piece of time that passed seemed more worthless than the rest by virtue of their endless repetition.
Gold or diamonds are only more valuable than dust and stone because of their rarity. Time, the prince found, showed much of the same qualities.
“Lay with me, Ser.” He slurred one night, half drunk and too delirious to speak. He’d a story of being a merchant from Lys to cover for his appearance this time and thought the story quite a good idea. There wasn’t much to be done for the rest of the cycle anyway. His uncle had already found his end in the form of a window and a simple stumble, as soon as they’d lit the fire in the morning and Aerion decided to sleep all would be undone. “Lay with me.” The man requested again and did not care for dignity, “I feel like I need companionship for this night.”
Dunk looked at him with concern, frowning and trying to hold him steady with wonderfully large hands. “You reek of wine,” he said as though Aerion needed to be told. “I’m not sure that’s something to request of me when drunk, ya know?”
He wanted to laugh. He should have known. Of course he should have known! Good, honourable Ser Duncan the Tall. Dunk of Fleabottom. Who hit and kicked a prince in defence of a girl and fought a trial of seven over it, whose valour and honour convinced even the crown prince to fight by his side– though the last actual trial had happened over a thousand cycles ago and none really remembered it. Aerion should have expected it from him not to take someone drunk to bed.
Anyone else would have jumped at such an opportunity. But not Dunk. Never Dunk. And Aerion didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or to go search for another or to stay. The wine his system made everything blurry. He wanted to have fun. He wanted a distraction from the endless torture. There were plenty of whores and he had plenty of coin. Still, he found himself sitting beside a hedge knight begging.
“I promise I’d make a good bed partner.”
“That I do not doubt. Let’s get you something to drink besides that cup.”
Little Egg was off to the side and fast asleep, curled in his master’s cloak. He’d given it after the child complained about being cold without a second thought, rough palms tucking the boy in and telling him to rest well. Those same palms held him up now, gently pried the bottle of alcohol from his grip and instead handed to him a pouch of water. They were complete strangers as far as the knight was concerned; still he offered his own so readily.
Aerion did not get his bedmate. Maybe for the better; the wine did more than it should have.
XxX
“Your name is Ser Dunk the Tall, though you mostly go by Ser Duncan the Tall because it sounds better. Your master was the hedge knight Ser Arlan of Pennytree. He took you in after the death of your friend in Fleabottom and you became his squire. He taught you how to use the sword and lance as best as he could but not as much as you wished. He has died on the road some days ago and you buried him there, inheriting his horses, sword and shield. You’ve come to this tourney seeking glory for yourself and perhaps a lord willing to take you into his service, though you struggle with entering the lists as you’ve found no lord will vouch for you yet. Recently you’ve taken in a little bald orphan boy named Egg as a squire. You think he’s better off being the squire to another knight but he simply will not leave. He’s a good kid and you already value him more than anything else.Nothing is more important to you than you oaths, maybe you’ll join the City Guard if you can. Since you have little coin and no tent you currently sleep under an elm tree.
My name is Aerion Brightflame of House Targaryen. You do not know me. This is the eight thousand nine hundred fifty-fourth time I’ve lived this tourney however, and I need your help to try and stop my uncle- Baelor Breakspear of House Targaryen and heir to the Iron Throne- from dying a gruesome death. Will you do that for me, Ser?”