Chapter Text
"There are truths the maesters record, and truths only the sea remembers."
— Unknown
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‘Mother…..she needs me’
It was an odd sensation, drowning. The overwhelming weight of the cold seas, dragging you down, into an infinite void of darkness. You could try and fight against it, as he had. And perhaps, had the blood pouring from his wounds not been so vast, he might have found a way out. Yet, the gods are cruel, and rarely fair.
This was death then, he had thought. Just an endless pit of darkness, cold and nothingness.
And it was cold, more so than he had thought. He could feel it whip across his body, in sharp biting snaps. Rumbling over him in waves, and each time it hit harder than the one before.
No.
‘This….This does not feel like death’.
That realization became more of a reality when through the darkness, a searing pain struck his body. Shooting up from his right leg, up to his arm, ending on his neck. Indeed, this was not death. For there was no Stranger to guide him into a soothing painless slumber, and there was no Mother to welcome him into the next life.
‘I’m alive?’
Slowly, he felt his senses coming alive. The soft cold breeze against his feet, the smell of salt and sea fluttering against the edge of his nose, and a faint sound. A faint, low sound of the waves, sloshing and turning. How was this possible?
He tried to open his eyes, but it was as if his body did not want to accept this overwhelming possibility. That he was alive still.
At last, he forced his eyes open. And through a vision blurry, he made out a few indiscernible shapes of grey. As he blinked, he started making out what his sight had landed on. A rocky ceiling. Moist, and damp, and wet with precipitation.
The possibility became an actual realization. The Stranger had rejected him, for this was not the land of the dead but for the living. As he tried to speak into the silence around him, no sound left his throat, nothing but a dry, rough heave followed by a cough. But he had always been stubborn, and so he tried again. And only one small word left his lips, in a faint whisper.
“Ver-.....Vermax?”
Silence. There was no roar, no screech of the creature he had grown up with, the dragon he rode and fought with. His words were whispered into silence, and silence answered back. The memories suddenly came rushing back.
Smoke.
Fire.
A flying bolt.
Drowning.
Pleading cries of his mount as it bled and drowned below the seas with him.
He was gone, his loyal companion. On whose back he had glided through the clouds and skies since the very first day. On whose back he had charged into the battle to defend his family’s birthright. On the back of the creature who made him feel like a true Targaryen, despite the insults and rumors of those who believed and wished he was not.
The pain wrecking his body felt like a small pinprick compared to the deep ache in his heart that came with that realization.
His mind was a whirlwind of emotions, and regrets but he gathered enough strength to shift his head around, to observe his holdings. And yet, everything he laid his eyes on only added to the fog in his mind. Slowly, fighting against his body’s wish, he pushed himself up. And took into account his situation. The rocky ceiling, walls of damp smooth rocks, shades reaching deep beyond inside from where he lay, and from the other corner of the cave, dim shafts of sunlight peeking through, and the sounds of the sea he heard before.
‘Where…Where am I?’
That was the only question running through his mind. As his eyes fell onto himself, he realized he was wearing only a pair of dark breeches, and a piece of cloth tied around his chest and back and nothing else.
After a few seconds of mustering his will, the lost prince pushed himself off the ground, doing his best to ignore the writhing sensation and pain in his right arm. It was a strange feeling, almost as if his legs had forgotten how to stand. His body found that out as the moment he had stood, his legs almost gave out beneath him and he went stumbling to the side.
Fortunately, he was close to the wall, which he held to support and steady himself. His breaths were fast, and uneven. His body felt unfamiliar, strange, and weak. Almost as if it was not even his own. And as he looked around the small bedding where he lay, he realized him being alive was not through a miracle. He caught the sight of a pair of folded clothes that he recognized as his own. The ones he was wearing as he had flown towards the Gullet. They looked worse for wear, torn in different places but they sat there washed and folded. He also saw water, and pieces of various fruit and food. Although much of the food showed signs of spoiling, as if they had been left there for quite some time.
The sight of the food made him pause. It was spoiled. Beginning to rot. He forced his mind to dispel any grave notions.
Someone had saved him. Someone with enough kindness that they healed him when even he thought himself dead. Had brought him here and nursed him back to life. Dragged him back from the hands of death. Whoever it was, they were long gone though. There were no signs of life, no beating hearts in this dark damp cave, except for his own. Alas, those questions would have to be answered at a later time, as the most pressing matter on his overwhelmed mind was only one.
“M-Mother…I need to find her” he whispered into the void. What had transpired had transpired, his fall, the death of his dragon, and the battle in the Gullet. He would have time to mourn later, at that moment, his mind settled on one purpose. Find his way back to Dragonstone, to his mother, to his family.
With that resolve, he pushed himself forward, but with each step he came into acceptance, that the wounds on his right leg were more perilous than the other ones, which had him limping as he walked towards his tattered clothes.
Picking his own pair of breeches, he had to make an effort to not fall as he balanced himself as much as he could on his left leg without putting too much weight on the other. And it took all he had inside him, to not voice out his groans of pain during the mere act of wearing his clothes.
The moment he was done wearing his clothes, he realized that the same garments he had worn into battle a few days ago, felt all too big on him. They felt as if they were meant for a man older.
He paused again.
For nothing but a moment.
Then he kept moving.
He laid his eyes on the spoiling food, and thought better then to eat it. Instead, the boy carefully took the water and let it flow down his hoarse rough throat. The cold water felt more divine than the oldest wines in the storerooms of the Red Keep. And it gave him enough strength to stay up.
Throwing the cup to the side, the young prince scraped his hands across the cold walls of the cave while moving forward, leaving his lodgings behind. Step after step, he did not merely walk, he dragged his body towards the light. The closer he walked, the intensity grew more. The warmth of the light that fell on his feet first was appreciated by his body, but he could barely keep his eyes open. As if the sun and its warmth had become foreign to his eyes.
Finally, after what felt like forever, the prince stood at the entrance of the cave.
The cold wind was the first to meet him, carrying with it the scent of salt and sea. His eyes washed over the waves before him, the sandy coastline shining with the light of the sun, the dense lush trees along the side glimmering like emeralds, the sounds of the seagulls flying in the vast clear cerulean sky. There was no man or woman in sight, he was in the middle of nowhere, nothing to help his disoriented self gain a sense of control.
Among this canvas of total serenity, his chaotic mind only grew more distressed.
And for a moment, the young prince just stood there. Breathing, and feeling his beating heart in his chest.
Then as his sight roamed and spread as far as he could possibly see, he suddenly caught sight of a very familiar structure beyond the endless waters. He caught sight of that fortress, a fortress unlike any other in the seven kingdoms.
He stood leagues away from the castle and yet, the giant tower stood over the coastline, rising so high from the cliffs into the sky as though it had been born from out of the land itself. He could make out the smooth walls, unimaginably high, no corners, neigh impregnable. For generations, man and nature had broken themselves against those walls, and for generations, that castle had endured.
The young prince knew it at first sight. There was no doubt in his mind. It was Storm’s end.
The ancestral seat of House Baratheon.
The last place his brother had been sighted. Before meeting his end, at the hands of his uncle. Just the memory alone sent a shiver down his spine, made his eyes swell with tears of anger and loss. Was what he saw now before him, also the last thing his brother saw?
The realization of where he was settled over, as heavily as the air itself.
He was nowhere near Dragonstone, leagues away from Driftmark, from his home, from his family.
The lost prince, Jacaerys Velaryon, had somehow been carried by the sea into the heart of the Stormlands.
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“Florence, where is she? I thought I ordered you to tell her to come here.”
The woman dressed in a deep dark blue gown asked as she eyed the serving girl standing before her.
“F-Forgive me, your grace, but I delivered your summons to her….she did not acknowledge me, I think.”
The woman let out a sigh of annoyance at the stuttering words coming out of the young girl. And promptly got up from her seat, and walked towards the exit of her chambers. She no longer held a position of any means or power, nor could she do anything without approval from the ones who had resigned her to this fate. There were no bows from the serving maids, or the guards who saw her walk by them, not anymore.
Even these chambers filled with lavish drapes and tapestries held no meaning, this holding was merely a gilded cage. The only bit of saving grace her captors had allowed her was that at the very least, she was confined close to where her daughter also was.
It took only a few steps, as she arrived at the foot of the chambers that held her daughter.
Slowly, pushing the doors open, her eyes fell on the far corner of the room, next to the wide windows that overlooked the rest of King’s Landing.
There her eyes rested upon the back of her daughter, her pale silver hair shone like diamonds against the beams of light seeping through, dressed still in her sleeping white gown, looking more ethereal instead of human. Her sweet, innocent daughter. Last of her children.
The mother walked up to her daughter, and without a word held her against herself from the back.
And from the courtyard of the red keep, a pair of maids looked up and caught the sight of Helaena Targaryen staring down from amongst the towers of Maegor’s Holdfast.
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