Archive of Our Own

Look at you leaving again, it's all you know how to do

Go ahead, take the last of the drinks the world belongs to you

They all say you're a light, all I see is a shadow

And I'll see you again in six months, when you need your next song

-Noah Kahan, Willing and Able

Babes getting sick is not a strange thing. Every babe seems to collect colic or a night of harsh breathing.

But Daeron Targaryen is the blood of the dragon, and everyone knows that Targaryens are closer to gods than men.

The only time that Daeron Targaryen was ever hurt or ill was when his own cousin put his hand to the fire, burned him for the crime of his dragon burning one of the servants when moved from a cage to chains in the Sept after growing too large for a cage.

Gwayne doesn’t know if Daeron remembers that. If Daeron doesn’t remember a three-year-old boy sobbing over Ormund Hightower deciding that Daeron would learn the hard way what the price of any strong connection between Hightower-blood and a dragon. If Daeron doesn't remember sobbing into Gwayne's chest, begging Gwayne to do something.

Gwayne thinks it would be kinder if he doesn’t. 

Only Gwayne needs to remember taking care of Daeron afterward, treating his burns with honey and ice, going to the maester to ask for the proper dosage of milk of the poppy to administer to a three-year-old, insisting that Ormund use a whipping boy after the fact, forever blaming himself for the fact that the only reason why Ormund had been able to do such a thing was because Gwayne had left at his father's command to discuss matters with the once and future Hand of the King.

---

There is a plague sweeping through Tumbleton and the Crownlands and the Reach.

The number of battles that have piled up have left corpses and rats abounding.

Dragonfire prevents a lot of disease from travelling, but the dragons seem to be dropping like flies.

And the Riverlands are well-known for their water.

And what attracts pests better than corpses and standing water?

So when the first disease-ridden corpse ends up at the gates of Tumbleton, the siege begins early, in the dark, dim light of the pre-dawn morning, in the space between the hour of the wolf and the hour of the nightingale.

Ormund Hightower makes the orders to close off Tumbleton and to close off each building to prevent disease from spreading. 

No one in or out. No one allowed to get close to him and certainly not the King.

Outside of their walls, Daemon Targaryen and his forces hunker down to avoid the spread of disease themselves.

And thus, Ormund, Gwayne, and Daeron are stuck in close proximity within the Footlys' keep.

A golden cage. A kingdom of three, king, queen, jack, with Gwayne unsure which one of them is which.

Daeron cannot leave, now.

Well—not that he ever could.

Ormund is the protector of the realm. Protector of the King. That is what he has always been. He is here to make sure that Daeron is not hurt, that he can become king, that a little disease will not take him out.

(Ignore the fact that Ormund offered up Daeron on a silver platter to a collection of assassins and didn’t even realize who they were until it would have been too late. That he was crippled by the smell of shit.

Gwayne Hightower has no chance to go back to Oldtown—not that he wants to, anymore. Not since the assassins came in and got past Ormund’s guards and proved that Ormund’s knights were not strong or smart enough to recognize the imposters that they let into the town.)

And it is this forced proximity that makes Gwayne notices all of the lingering touches from Ormund to Daeron. Daeron barely reacts to them, which means that they must be normal to him, but Gwayne recognizes them all too well. Knows them all too well.

He knows what Ormund Hightower is like when he has a boy that he wants to control and keep close.

What did he leave Daeron with?

---

Autumn is arriving after a long summer. A war is cresting the horizon, close to the walls of Tumbleton, bringing a wave of blood with it, but perhaps the snow shall wash away all of the disease and blood.

Or perhaps it will just trap it within. 

---

Precautions can only get so far, because a servant quickly and quietly sweeps into Ormund’s makeshift council room to tell the Lord of Oldtown that the prince—the King, as Ormund insists on reminding them all—has come down with a cough.

Ormund rages, of course, his face twisting into a snarl, his sword carving into the table.

And Gwayne’s mouth thins. His nephew is sick. He understands being worried. He understands the way that concern burns beneath his feet and his breastbone.

But he would prefer to do something about it rather than let anger and fury take him over and make him into a creature of fury rather than of purpose.

---

Once, when Daeron was a child, he was having trouble sleeping. Gwayne couldn’t tell you if it was an illness or something else, but what he knows is that when he stoked the fire, when he made the room warm as a dragon’s fire, Daeron slept easier. Had sweeter dreams.

Gwayne doesn’t know if anyone else knows such things. If anyone knows Daeron as well as he does.

But he knows for a fact that Ormund's distaste for the smell of sickness means that even if he does know, he won't have the strength to push through and take care of him.

---

Daeron curls up in bed, body angled strangely to try and relieve even a little bit of the bloat and nausea in his stomach, his eyes near shut. The light through the window is too bright, blinding the back of his eyes, pain clamping around the back of his head with an iron grip.

Daeron can hear the voices at the doorway, Ormund giving Gwayne instructions. Daeron’s own head feels run over by the calvary so he can’t be sure what he’s hearing that’s right.

His body burns like wildfire. Like the sort of thing that devours without hesitation, without ending, without ever being satisfied.

Daeron is used to warmth. He is used to his blood running a degree or two hotter than anyone else he knows.

(There are few people that Ormund has ever allowed him to touch, but there are Ormund, Gwayne, Ormund’s wife Malora, Daeron’s cousins Ormund’s daughters. 

Ormund left the rest of them back in Oldtown, and only took a prince—later to be fashioned with the iron-edge of a blade into a king—with him along the march.

And thus, Daeron is the only one of Hightower blood that Ormund has been touching anymore. Without Malora, Daeron is what there is. 

And honestly—it’s not that bad. It’s affection, isn’t it? Proof that Ormund will never leave him like Gwayne did.)

But this? This is dragonfire. This is his insides being seared. This is burning him from the inside out.

His body is so hot that it is leaking water. Out of pores, eyes, sweat, tears—Daeron has no idea how he manages to retain any water. Is he retaining any water? Is he retaining anything at all?

When his head isn’t aching from thirst, when he can think past the mucus clogging up his nose and brain, when his body gives him a momentary break from shivering, he isn’t retaining anything.

What little food he can get in doesn't stay down. His body strips it away, in vomit, in shit, in all the rest.

Tumbleton has been a city at siege, he knows. A city on the verge of starvation.

Not even a city. A town, really, being bled dry and starved by the decision of the Lord of Oldtown, and Daeron is losing what little food he can stomach.

Daeron remembers a man that he had to gut like a pig. A man whose likely only crime was starvation making him reckless enough to wreck himself against Ormund’s ambitions.

Is mercy not a kingly virtue?

Daeron is sick. He is ill. He is fading in and out, and he might be used to his stomach being a bit too small for his own guts considering how they’ve had to tighten their belts for battle and for quarantine alike, the quarantine is a siege without an army even on the other side.

Nothing in or out.

Tell that to his stomach and the puke that is determined to make its way out of him.

Daeron had tried, at first, to bite back the nausea. To restrain himself just as he always has when it comes to the parts of himself that he knows that Ormund would not approve of. To tighten the iron bands around the ache in his stomach.

But he vomited a few hours ago—he thinks, at least, hours seem to be more bubbles threatening to pop when he doesn’t pay attention to them for even a snatch of time. He cannot keep track of them, considering the way that they slip away and pop any time he goes to look at them—and it was into the alleyway behind the Footlys’ keep, because Daeron knew he couldn’t get caught being sick, but perhaps a servant saw him. Maybe that’s how Ormund became aware.

But no servant has come in since, due to the rules of quarantine, and there hasn't been much that Daeron can do for himself.

Daeron wants to reach up, to cup his forehead, to curl in on himself, but his body feels so heavy, heavier than the fortress at the base of the Hightower.

Daeron's stomach is a famine. His lungs are a battlefield he doesn’t know if he can win.

And more than anything, all Daeron wants to do, now, is to curl into a ball and sob until his body peels itself open and turns itself inside out, because maybe then he can feel human again.

He can hear Ormund at the door, instructing: "Stay here and guard Daeron from any malcontents."

There is something in Daeron that registers that Gwayne would make a rather decent guard after his display with the assassins, that perhaps Ormund is sticking here because he trusts him, but he has a feeling that Ormund is just doing this so that Ormund can get away from the stench.

Because by the gods does Daeron know that he smells. That his body is a battlefield that stinks as much as a real battle does, full of bodies on the way to becoming corpses.

Gwayne scoffs. “As if I would do anything other than that,” he says.

“See that you do not risk yourself getting sick, either,” Ormund instructs.

Ormund’s heavy footsteps—Daeron learned a long, long time ago how to identify them as a point of survival—leave at a rapid pace away from the door, away from the stench of Daeron’s body betraying him.

And Daeron curls just a little bit on his side, expecting himself to now be left alone with at least no voices from the hallway to distract him from his illness.

Gwayne is outside of the room, Daeron is now aware, but he’s sure that Gwayne will leave soon enough. Why would he need to stay? Ormund is intimidating, but he is not everything. Gwayne proved that he can handle battle better than Ormund can with how he handled the assassins. There is no reason for him to be scared of Ormund and his consequences.

Gwayne can just go back to his room and get some sleep. Can just go back to his room and settle in and let himself rest.

Gwayne left once already. He said that he would leave again.

What obligation does he have to stay? What reason would he not take himself to an easier job?

Daeron cannot even bring it in himself to blame Gwayne for wishing to stay away from the vomit and the chills and the sweats and the like.

And hey—technically, it would be fulfilling the second of Ormund’s instructions to leave and not get sick.

It makes sense, really. Daeron Targaryen has always been the unwanted prince, the useless son, the abandoned child left alone because no one wanted him. His own mother didn’t want him. She sent him away when he was naught but a babe, guilty of nothing save his own existence.

Who would ever wish to guard him? Who would ever wish to take care of him?

Daeron had thought, once, that Ormund might care enough, but he knows that no amount of care can overcome Ormund’s aversion to hard smells and harder truths.

If Daeron was to pass out, to pass away, to leave— 

Would anyone care about him?

Yes, Ormund would hate to lose his king. Many would hate to lose their prince, their pawn, their source of power, he is sure.

But would anyone else—

But then, to Daeron’s blurred confusion, Gwayne doesn’t stay outside of the room.

He comes in and immediately heads for the fire, for the barrier against the incoming autumn, the brisk wintery wind, the shivers wracking Daeron’s body.

There is a pile of blankets over top of Daeron, but he is still cold. Still shivering. Still feeling more skeleton trapped in a coffin of flesh rather than anything more human.

But the flush of heat from the fire settles his bones at least a little bit, soothing away at least a little bit of the shivering and trembling.

And then Gwayne turns to Daeron and bites his lip. "Gods above, my boy," he says, and his voice is tender, even if he isn't reaching out to hug or soothe Daeron, "You are a wreck."

The words are harsh, but they're not wrong. Daeron knows that he is a wreck. He knows that he is falling apart from inside and out.

Then Gwayne swallows and says, "What is causing you the most ache right now that I can assist with?"

There isn't much that Gwayne can do about the nausea or the ache in his chest, but: "The light," Daeron says, "From the window. It is—gods, it is blinding me."

And Gwayne immediately goes to the windows and shuts the curtains, and in an instant, some of the pounding in Daeron’s head softens.

Then Gwayne putters around the room and somehow manages to find himself some rags. He dampens them in the pail of water that the servant had left by Daeron’s forehead, and he reaches forward to gently clean off the dried sweat on Daeron’s brow and the remnants of vomit around Daeron’s lips.

It is a tenderness that completely foreign to Daeron's body. Ormund touches him, of course, his hands grasping Daeron's shoulders, lingering against him, making their mark. That's what he is. That's what he's always done. He grounds Daeron, anchors him the ground, makes him as heavy as the Hightower itself so that he can plant himself and not be afraid of bending.

But this is—this is soothing. Gentle.

It's almost too kind.

There is a part of Daeron that wishes to become a ghost, that feels adrift without Ormund’s hands on his shoulders. Without Ormund anchoring him down.

It feels like a ghost is seeping from his body as the night passes in flashes. In glimpses of sensation, of blurred flickers of flame against coppery hair, of someone’s labored, worried breathing, of the rise and fall of his own chest, the ragged breathing that takes so much effort to get out, the way that his coughs start out heavy and hacking and slowly break down to the point that every time his chest heaves, the breath going in and out etches away at his throat.

Each breath is a labor. Each ache is impossible to soothe away.

Each ripple of fever threatens to drag him under entire.

Daeron loses time until new words, old thoughts, slip from his lips: “Your hands—" Daeron swallows, his throat scratchy, his tongue hot, his voice a wreck. “They’re gentle.”

Gwayne’s confusion curls across his face. “Thank you, Daeron,” he says, voice confused, but that doesn’t stop him from reaching up again to bring a rag damp with blessedly cool water to Daeron’s forehead.

Daeron’s thoughts are spiralling out too far for him to chase them, but he knows that he needs Gwayne to understand.

“They’re gentler than Ormund’s,” Daeron says, clarifies, and he coughs, he hacks, his throat rips itself open as his own breath etches its jagged path against the inside of his neck. “They don’t—they don’t take.”

Daeron's vision is sweeping outward in guttering gasps of shadow and light. He is losing what is going on around him.

He thinks that he can hear the tears in Gwayne’s throat as Gwayne begs him to stay, to hold on, to remain.

But it’s so hard. So exhausting.

Daeron cannot push any longer.

He is alone in the world. He always has been.

His stomach has been trampled by the entirety of the cavalry. His body is aching, a knockdown, drag-out fight.

His body is a war he cannot win.

Daeron knows—he knows is not supposed to die this young.

He is—he is terrified of dying this young.

But who is going to stop him? Who is going to keep him?

Who would want to keep him, not as a symbol, not as a face on a coin, a trophy in a war, but as a boy?

Who needs a third son, anyway?

Ormund claims that Daeron is a king, but he has no crown. He has not been ordained. The only anointment he has had in the Sept was in the blood that he spilled, a heresy against the Seven, the spilling of blood in the most holy of ground.

If he dies tonight, if he dies in the clutches of fire, of heat, of warmth—

He’ll be nothing more than a historical footnote. Mentioned perhaps alongside Princess Daenerys as proof that Targaryen exceptionalism is a foundational myth, that dragon blood might burn hotter than the normal person’s but that doesn’t help much when the issue is the spread of a fever.

Daeron is trembling. Daeron is burning.

This isn’t the Shivers, but it might as well be.

And—no one will care.

Why doesn't he let go?

Why doesn't he stop fighting?

“Just—" Daeron’s voice is a whisper. “Just let me go. You left me, didn’t you? And you don’t want to stay. You—you don’t have to. You don’t need to remain. Tumbleton—it’s a lost cause.”

“I will not leave you again,” Gwayne swears, and it is half-snarl, half-oath. The confidence in his voice burns as much as Daeron’s body is burning, burning, chilling, he is so hot, he is so cold, he is shivering, his great-aunt's blood trickling through his veins, because how could Gwayne say such a thing? How could he make a promise that Daeron knows he would never keep, no matter how much he wants Gwayne to stay?

And yet— 

Here he is. Here they all are, with Ormund having left, and Gwayne having stayed, and the fire is flickering orange and gold, and he has nothing left in his stomach. Nothing left in his heart or soul.

And so Daeron closes his eyes and he floats. He floats on the sea of sick, of nausea, of a memory of better times, of Tessarion’s scales beneath his fingers, of Gwayne's laughter and teasing, of the memory of the fire coming in and searing his fingertips and curling up against someone's warm chest as his fingers were dipped into ice, into honey, his pain slowly being leeched from his body.

Daeron floats because he has spent a lifetime alone, because for the past several months he has been just treading water instead of jumping off of a cliff, because the water is right there and the crown on his brow is heavy as iron and why not let himself drown?

Because it is so much easier to let go and let himself sink than it is to keep fighting for his own survival.

If there is someone who doesn't want him to drown, they will pull him out, but otherwise—Daeron can't think of a single reason not to just let himself be swallowed.

So the darkness takes him, and he doesn't fight it, because how could he fight it? How could he struggle?

The end is here. Let it swallow him whole.

---

Daeron's fever climbs and his words slur and his breath rasps and there is no mother’s milk that could help. No milk of the poppy that could fill the void.

Nothing that Gwayne does seems able to soothe his ache. To chill his fever.

Daeron is on the verge of meeting the Stranger.

And no matter how kind the Stranger might be, Gwayne is determined to be kinder. To give Daeron gentleness that he doesn’t get elsewhere.

Your hands are gentle. Gentler than Ormund’s. They don’t take.

Gwayne knows that taking all too well. He knows the feeling of theft. He knows the feeling of hollowness left behind after Ormund has his fill.

And he can only imagine what Ormund was capable of doing while Gwayne fulfilled his duty elsewhere.

Gwayne wishes more than anything to go to Ormund, to confront him, but the maesters say that if Daeron makes it through the night, he is likely to keep living, but that his life is currently hanging by a thread.

Daeron has every chance of dying on this eve. He has every chance of meeting the Stranger well before his time.

If Daeron were to die alone Gwayne could never forgive himself.

And thus, his priority cannot be confronting Ormund; it has to be taking care of Daeron himself. Making sure that Daeron is treated well, that he lives, that he recovers.

So Gwayne sits here and he keeps the fire going and he replaces the damp cloths on Daeron’s head and he prays.

He prays to gods he’s not sure he still believes in after all of these years, the gods who consider him unnatural, the gods that he thinks he stopped believing in the moment that he started dreaming of kissing knights in tourney tents in King's Landing, what it would be like to have Criston Cole's dark hair spilling through his fingers—

To believe in the Seven is inherent to growing up in Oldtown. To growing up in the shadow of the Hightower and the Starry Sept and the beacon at the top of the tower, letting Ormund win the races because Ormund's anger and status as the future lord of Oldtown meant that Gwayne had to measure himself in order to protect the future.

But that day at the tourney, the days since, and Rook's Rest—

The dragons burn. The dragons burn and the world trembles before them.

Daeron is a dragon. He needs fire. He needs warmth. He needs light.

But even with Gwayne going back and forth to stoke the fire, to keep the room so hot that Gwayne is dripping with sweat, Daeron still deteriorates further.

And when Daeron speaks what might be his final words, and finally, blessedly, his breathing collapses into sleep, slowing just enough to halt the jagged coughing for just one moment, Gwayne cannot breathe. He cannot choke.

He has to be here. He has to watch. He has to hold vigil, because if he doesn't, if he leaves, if Daeron dies alone—

Gwayne sits here and he twists every tear out of himself. He sits here, with his ghosts, with the shallow rise and fall of his nephew’s chest, and he stays.

You’ll stay, won’t you?

And do what? Bear witness whilst Ormund marches our house to its doom? I’m second in line. I shall return to Oldtown and prepare to pick up the pieces.

Just let me go. You left me, didn’t you? And you don’t want to stay. You—you don’t have to. You don’t need to remain. Tumbleton—it’s a lost cause.

“I will find you,” Gwayne swears even though he knows that Daeron cannot hear it, “I know that you don’t want me, that you don’t believe in me, but you don’t have to. Because I believe in you, and I would follow you down to the afterlife to bring you back.

This world—it’s shitty. I never expected to have a life where I got to be truly happy. But you came into my life, all squawling and screaming, and I knew what it was to love someone unconditionally." Gwayne cannot help but smile fondly at the memory of baby Daeron, loud and smelly and everything that Ormund refused to deal with until he was older and more controllable. That unrestrained babe was the first person that Gwayne ever got to truly love without strings attached. "Ormund might have raised you more, over the years, took charge of your training and your etiquette and your meals, but those first few months—you were mine, because he couldn’t stand the idea of having to smell your diaper, and—" Gwayne lets out a small, aching laugh. "And, well, I could. And when I left you—"

Gwayne swallows. "I dealt with so much shit in the Riverlands. I lost the man that I was—" Gwayne grimaces. Falling in love with is far too romantic a notion, even for the teenage boy that he once was at that first tourney in King's Landing, the Rogue Prince throwing him to the ground in front of the rather dashing Criston Cole. He'd squashed that memory down, beneath the resentment that some steward's son had managed to become Lord Commander, become Hand of the King, take Gwayne's father's position, but know he remembers the way that Criston had pulled off his helm to ask for the princess' favor, the dark hair cascading in the sort of the way that made Gwayne's teenage heart hammer.

He'd thought about that again, after the dragon on the field where Criston had urged their men to the forest and saved their lives, after Rook's Rest, in the Riverlands, when Gwayne had made the offer to bring Criston back to Oldtown with him.

Not just the handsome man that had brought Daemon Targaryen to his knees, but the man who made Gwayne reconsider his duty to the Hightower cause. To the ambition of his family.

Criston might have meant for them all to die, but it was his speech about not serving those who did not deserve it, dying a free man, that had convinced Gwayne to leave the field. To come back to Daeron, the one person that was worth serving. The one person that mattered.

Lost cause, Daeron said, but Gwayne has met the patron saint of lost causes, and he refuses to let his nephew go the same way that Criston Cole planned to.

“So please, Daeron. Live. If not for me, then for yourself.”

So Gwayne holds a vigil. He beats back the dark, if only for one night. He holds off the Stranger.

You are not allowed to have my boy, Gwayne swears, digging in his nails, digging in his aches.

Criston Cole might be the patron saint of lost causes. The man that you should pray to when walking off to your death.

But Daeron Targaryen will not be a lost cause. Not if Gwayne has anything to say about it.

His boy is going to live. He will not let Daeron slip away.

“You’ll have to go through me if you wish to die,” Gwayne instructs Daeron, and it is a threat, it is a promise.

Gwayne will not leave Daeron again. He refuses to. All of the Seven could not pull him from Daeron’s side.

---

By the end, Gwayne passes out, hand clutching Daeron’s, head pillowed against Daeron’s side, but he doesn’t sleep well. He just dozes fitfully, waking again and again, his fingers reaching to check Daeron’s pulse before he can settle back down into his sleep.

But he is awoken before the dawn even reaches him. In the dim gray light of the early morn, the hour of the nightingale beginning to peak over the horizon, Daeron’s fever just beginning to break beneath Gwayne’s fingers, Gwayne reaches out, groggy, to grab a rag and dampen it to help clean the salt from Daeron's brow and to put some water against the skin.

Daeron’s forehead is sweaty, his hair damp and matted. Gwayne. He cards it back as well as he can without disturbing Daeron’s rest. He needs the rest in order to recover, Gwayne is well aware, and Gwayne is determined to give it to him.

Then Gwayne heads for the fireplace to stoke it, to kindle it higher, to return the warmth to the room.

His nephew is a dragon and he needs the heat. Needs to feel cradled by the warmth of a room as hot as a dragon's stomach.

Gwayne has seen the dragons. Has seen the destruction that they’ve wrought.

He knows that Tessarion could be as destructive, as much of a problem, as Vhagar or Sunfyre or Meleys one day.

But in this moment, Daeron is a fifteen-year-old boy who is shivering, who is sick, who is Gwayne’s nephew above all else.

And if what Daeron needs is a dragon’s heat, then Gwayne shall give it to him.

And then the door opens and Ormund Hightower enters.

His nostrils scrunch in distaste at the smell, at Gwayne's own efforts.

And yet, Ormund says, "It is time for you to go scouting."

Gwayne’s breath goes sharp in his throat. Daeron’s fever has just begun to break. They haven’t even had the maester check on him. How in the seven hells does Ormund think that he can just get Gwayne to leave right now, at this precarious moment, when his nephew is sick, when Gwayne knows that Ormund wouldn't dirty his hands to do the same necessary, smelly work that Gwayne has done so far.

And so for once in his life, Gwayne actually argues back. Not the coded sarcasm that usually sustains him when pushing back against Ormund, the sort of thing that would allow him plausible deniability, but rather a clear, simple refusal. "I cannot leave to scout," Gwayne says, leaning forward and wiping Daeron's brow with the rag in his hand. “I need to stay by his side."

“To play nursemaid?" Ormund scoffs. "You are sworn to the Warrior, Gwayne, and yet you seek to play the Crone. Daeron is a King. He does not need you flitting about him like an old septa, especially if it means risking the health of a knight dedicated to his cause."

Gwayne bites his lip so hard that he thinks that he tastes iron. Seven hells; maybe he does. Maybe he tastes the iron of the sin that bound him to this place, to Ormund’s side, for all of these years.

"You are needed on the field." Something in Ormund's eyes flashes, something in his mouth curves, as he says: "And I told you not to enter the room, did I not? Not to risk getting sick?"

A boy does not need tenderness, Ormund had said, once, when they were younger, when his hands were lingering on Gwayne's shoulders, when he was instructing Gwayne on how terrible a job he was doing in the sparring grounds, how much of an embarrassment that Gwayne had been in King's Landing. He needs discipline.

Ormund had been unafraid of showing Gwayne exactly what sort of discipline he knew that Gwayne needed to improve in the tilts. How much of a punishment was needed for Gwayne to toughen up, for him to improve, for him to stop shaming the Hightower name.

Ormund is meant to stay in the Hightower. Meant to be the head of the house, the sturdy hand of discipline for all Hightowers.

Hobert Hightower is dead. Otto Hightower is dead. Alyrie Florent, Aegon Targaryen, Aemond Targaryen—they're all gone.

Yes, Ormund has his daughters. Gwyneth, Olenna, Martyna, Bethany.

But Ormund has been very clear as to how he feels about girls inheriting.

So the lord of the Hightower stays, and they are what remains.

And Gwayne disobeyed him, didn't he?

Otto taught Gwayne first about what sort of punishment a boy receives when he disobeys, and Ormund is just continuing that lesson.

“It would be treason against your king to refuse an order from his Hand,” Ormund says.

Who in the seven hells said that you would be Hand? Gwayne wants to spit back, but he’s seen how much Daeron trusts Ormund. He’s seen how much Daeron looks to Ormund for approval.

He's seen how much Daeron doesn't trust him. How much Daeron thought that Gwayne would leave him.

Even if Daeron sees through parts of Ormund, there is still some part of him that is a child that wishes to be loved.

And Daeron clearly considers Gwayne someone that abandoned him.

"If you wish to keep your nephew safe, scouting is important to bringing in information. And you wouldn't wish for me to send you against the Rogue Prince and his abomination of a dragon, would you?"

The back of Gwayne's eyes burn in fury, but he knows that he has to leave. That he has to listen. That to be sent out to scout is less of a suicide mission than being sent directly out into the field against Daemon Targaryen, that to scout will technically protect Daeron if it brings in information that impacts his safety and the potential of a siege once the quarantine breaks.

If this is what it takes to keep from abandoning Daeron forever, then he will swallow back his protests and bite his tongue and give Ormund the bragging rights for taking care of Daeron, as long as it means that Gwayne will make it back to Daeron eventually.

---

So Gwayne leaves reluctantly but leaves a note behind, and he is sure that his face is hard and white as stone as he saddles his mount and heads out, but Ormund is the commander of the forces here.

And Gwayne has never been in charge. Criston Cole led their men in the Riverlands. Ormund lead them here.

---

Ormund Hightower comes into the room and he peels open the small scrap of parchment that Gwayne had time to write. It’s just a couple of lines—Ormund has ordered me to complete scouting missions for Tumbleton. I shall see you home soon, I swear I would not leave you otherwise.

But in the end, it doesn't matter what it says, does it?

Because the note burns. The proof crumbles into ash.

---

When Daeron wakes, it is to a body that feels like it has been wrung out at the center of a hurricane, stretched and pressed and ripped beyond its limits. It is empty of everything save hunger and the feeling that something has been stolen from him.

But it also feels less wracked by nausea before. Less bloated. 

The emptiness is a relief, in a way. He no longer fills too full, too much, too close to the grip of the Stranger.

But more importantly, Daeron awakens to a hand on his shoulder and to the memory of copper hair haloed by the candles in the room.

And for a moment he thinks that Gwayne actually stayed.

He thinks he has a memory of Gwayne tending the fire, the flicker of the fireplace throwing the worry in his features into stark relief, carving the years deep into the wrinkles on either side of his eyes.

But then Daeron's vision clears and the hand is heavy, firm, almost too heavy, because it is Ormund, because of course it is, of course Ormund stayed, because it has always been Ormund that stays.

Gwayne leaves. Gwayne abandons him. Gwayne did it once, and he told Daeron that he would do it again, and why would Daeron ever let the hope burn that Gwayne wouldn’t do it again.

(Sure, there is some voice in the back of his mind that reminds him that Ormund never could have stood the scent of sick, but he has the proof to the contrary.)

Still, Daeron can't help but ask: "Where is Uncle Gwayne?"

Ormund's voice is almost soothing as he says, "Your uncle went on a scouting mission. Something about that Dornish friend of his. Do not worry,” Ormund says, and there is a small smile curving his lips, all encouragement, all soothing, “I have stayed with you and taken care of you."

Daeron’s head feels full of soup, sloshing between his ears with a roil that threatens to send him to vomiting again.

But that lack of ability to think clearly doesn't stop Daeron’s heart from collapsing in his chest.

Daeron is full of ache. Of hunger. He is ash-weary, the cinder remnants of a dragon barely out of the battlefield.

He is nauseous and hungry and alone, because Gwayne left him again. Abandoned him, when he was on the verge of meeting the Stranger.

But Ormund stayed, because Ormund cares, and Daeron shouldn't have been foolish enough to hope otherwise.

---

Gwayne rolls back into Tumbleton a full week later, absolutely exhausted.

The scouting information is a devastating blow: Criston Cole's forces were defeated in the Riverlands at what the smallfolk are calling the Butcher's Ball, just south of the God's Eye—perhaps he'd been heading towards Aemond, who knows? Daemon Targaryen and his forces cluster a mere couple of miles from Tumbleton, just far enough away that the plague shall not hit them but close enough to begin the siege.

Criston Cole is dead. He would not have abandoned his men like Gwayne did. Criston Cole is many things, but one thing that Gwayne admires about him most is that he is not a craven.

But the pure level of devastation in the information hit with a dull thud in the middle of a stomach that was already heavy with nausea.

When Gwayne swings himself off of his horse in the courtyard in front of the Footlys' keep, he nearly collapses to the ground in dizziness, in nausea, in ache.

Over the past week, as the nausea mounted, as it became harder to hold onto food and his own spot in the saddle of his horse, he has come to the conclusion that he might have caught something working to take care of Daeron. He would not be shocked of it, that is for certain.

No matter how he caught whatever he has, no matter what he has, one thing is for sure: he thought that the state of his body could not get any worse than it was in the Riverlands, and yet, here he is. Aching. Possibly feverish. His face feels clogged up and his throat is dry and his nose will not stop leaking and it is taking everything he can not to vomit.

At least in the Riverlands, the points of ache could be narrowed down. A leech on the shin. An exhaustion in the bones.

Now, it is everywhere. Everything. Burning through every inch of his flesh, trying to make a pincushion out of his bones.

Gwayne wants nothing more than to collapse into a feather bed.

But he does have important information for Ormund and, by proxy, Daeron, who needs to know the chances of battle are slipping away by the moment. Not only does Rhaenyra have more dragons, the green forces have been crippled by the sickness sweeping through them, knocking them down.

And above that—he needs to see Daeron.

So he hands off the information to Ormund in the courtyard, keeping his grief tucked away behind teeth that are just begging to let the nausea out, and he expects Ormund to crow his triumph over Criston Cole—that "Dornish friend of yours"—being dead and gone, but Ormund doesn't linger in the chance to show Gwayne how he has no friends in the world other than whatever affection that Ormund rations out and deigns to dole out to him, the sort of thing that Ormund has always been so skilled at.

Rather, Ormund tells him, smile curving triumphant: “You can go see Daeron.”

It is a strange thing, to be offered up a conversation alone with his nephew.

Gwayne knows better than to think that it's just that Daeron is still sick, that he fell to vomiting again and Ormund just can’t handle the smell of sick—Ormund’s smile would not be so sharp a smirk, so triumphant a downward tilt of the nose, if that was the case.

So what sort of plan does Ormund have in place?

Has he somehow taken a victory when Gwayne wasn’t paying attention?

There's only one way to find out, Gwayne knows.

Gwayne doesn't even bother changing or discarding his sword in his room before he makes his way through the Footly's keep to Daeron's room, where he finds Daeron sitting at his desk, looking a sight better than he did when Gwayne left.

Wintery-silver light washes over the room. He almost looks a Targaryen in this moment, the pale skin, the silver-tinged hair, but those bright eyes match Gwayne’s own, and those round cheeks could only belong to Alicent Hightower.

Daeron looks better than he did when Gwayne left him a few days ago. He is still pale, but what Hightower or Targaryen isn’t? Some color has returned to his cheeks. Even the light through the window could not wash that away.

And Gwayne’s shoulders slump in relief. Daeron’s fever and nausea have broken, it looks like. He is recovering at least somewhat.

Gwayne had been so worried, out on the road, out on the march, checking on Daemon Targaryen and his Riverlanders, but at least Daeron is recovering where Gwayne's gut certainly isn't. (Gwayne is sure that he looks like death warmed over, if his face at all reflects how his stomach feels.)

Daeron looks up at him and for just one moment hope breaks across his face, a boy aching to have an uncle return home—

But then his expression shutters and his lips press into a thin line, because that hopeful boy is half-gone.

“You left,” Daeron says, an ugly, nasty edge to his voice, an accusation, a condemnation, falling from his lips to drag Gwayne down into the ocean.

Gwayne’s brow furrows. “Because Ormund ordered me to.” That's what he said in the note, did he not?

Daeron scoffs. “You expect me to believe that you stayed?” he says, and there is something in his fingers that are trembling, but there is nothing but rage in his voice, slamming forward into Gwayne’s senses, an accusation that Gwayne cannot turn his face away from.

Gwayne’s eyes cast around the room, desperate to find his answer in a slip of parchment that he left for Daeron to find, to understand, to know that Gwayne would never abandon him, not again. He made an oath to himself. He swore that he would stay by Daeron’s side. “I left a note—"

But Gwayne cannot find the parchment anywhere, cannot see a slip of yellowing off-white that could save the last threads that tie him and Daeron together.

And it is clear, in the flint-strike hard flare in Daeron’s eyes, that something must have happened to get rid of the note, because Daeron’s eyes darken and he spits, vinegar on his tongue: “There was no note. Do not make excuses, Uncle. I thought you respected me enough not to lie.”

And Gwayne's heart falls as his gaze flickers to the fireplace, naught but ash and cinder as some other servant had let it burn down to lumps of Gwayne's devotion.

This was Ormund's triumph. This was Ormund's cruelty. 

A note of ash. Nothing that can be read by a boy polluted by the remnants of smoke filling the room after the fire has gone out.

And now Daeron has lived several days with the notion that Gwayne abandoned him. That Gwayne did not care enough to stay by his side.

The hope in his chest gutters, a candle snuffed out of existence by Ormund Hightower and his schemes.

Gwayne had promised himself that he would not leave, and yet—here he is. He left. He abandoned Daeron again.

The backs of his eyes burn. The tears begin to leak out, in frustration, in despair.

His head is swimming. The nausea souring his tongue tastes of regret. He doesn’t know how to answer.

“I stayed,” Gwayne says, repeats, insists, because it’s the only thing that he can think to do, the only thing that he can swear by. “I swear I did. I took care of you, until Ormund came in and ordered me away—"

“And you went,” Daeron says, and it's not just the silver light through the window washing him out—his face is still pale, he is not fully recovered, he is nauseated—not just by the illness clinging to his bones, but by Gwayne's actions.

Gwayne’s stomach feels filled with too much air. He feels more a pincushion than a person.

“Please,” Gwayne prays for Daeron to understand, and his voice is splintering, his body is shivering, he doesn’t know what to do, he doesn’t know what he can do if Daeron believes Ormund over him, even though he knows that he has no evidence to the contrary.

Gwayne made a mistake to leave. 

He made a mistake to leave Daeron here, sick, he made a mistake to leave Daeron in Oldtown, alone, he made so many mistakes to leave Daeron and Cole and Alicent, all of those years ago.

Gwayne should have stayed. He should have stayed, and because he didn’t, because he let Ormund anchor himself and root himself down.

His breathing is a ragged thing, jagged against the inside of his throat.

All he wants is to sleep. All he wants is a moment to breathe.

All he wants is relief.

But he cannot ask for relief when he left Daeron behind, when somehow Daeron didn’t get his message, when Daeron believes Ormund over him, when Gwayne deserves every doubt because he was the one that left in the first place, wasn’t he? He was the one that told Daeron that he would leave.

Gwayne is the one who made the first cut. The blood trickling out, the infection seeping in to linger, to fester, to rot away at Daeron's trust in him—that was his fault.

But that’s not just the burn of guilt, the sour of shame, on his tongue, is it?

Bile is rising in Gwayne’s throat. His chest is collapsing in on itself.

He is trying to hold on, trying to dig his nails in, trying to stay, because he promised, because he told Daeron that he would, because he needs to, because Daeron deserves it.

But the world is slipping away, because Gwayne's insides are a battered thing.

His knees are going out. 

To fall to one’s knees is to pray. To offer oneself up to the gods above, the faces of the Seven, to slip a prayer to the Warrior and the Mother and all the rest.

But all that is reaching his lips is the name of the Stranger.

Gwayne cannot find his way to a coherent thought. He cannot climb out of this well on his own.

The world is going dark. Daeron is speaking, but Gwayne cannot make out the words. Daeron's breath is shrapnel against his ears, but Daeron speaks as if from a distant dream, far across the sea, his words smudged and echoed against themselves.

Gwayne can see the ripples on the water in the Whispering Sound, in the Riverlands, can see himself standing at the edge of a cliff with Criston Cole staring at the lack of a bridge before them and the knowledge that they failed bitter and final against his tongue.

Gwayne's voice is thin as he pleads, the words slurring in his mouth, stones hitting the water and sinking instead of skipping: “I did what I could.”

And then his legs go out from under him and he falls. Falls forward, against the floor, against the water, against the face of a fate that he should have known was coming the moment that Ormund ordered him away.

---

The burn of whiskey on the tongue. A splash of milk of the poppy. The etching of bile in the throat.

A hacking, heaving cough.

Darkness swoops in, the light flickering in and out.

The air rushes in and gutters out. A heart rattles in a chest, battered between one breath and lack of the next.

Time bleeds. 

Gwayne loses most of what happens next.

He thinks it might be kindest.

---

Gwayne next wakes up with his gaze filled with sapphire blue, dragon’s breath curling around him.

His eyes flutter open to the bright flicker of candles in a Sept and a dragon wing curled around him.

It is impossible, Gwayne decides. He must be dreaming. There can be no other answer. 

Because Tessarion is curled around him, her scales warm against his skin, the smell of ash in his nostrils, a strange balm to his senses.

And when she adjusts just slightly, Gwayne finds that Daeron is beside him, tears in his eyes.

“They say that dragonfire in the veins helps with sickness,” Daeron says, “And I know that it can’t entirely be true, because Daenerys Targaryen still died of the Shivers, but I thought—when the milk of the poppy was only helping so much—I brought you here."

“There is no way that Ormund approved this,” Gwayne rasps.

"No, he didn't," Daeron admits, his tone neutral as can be, giving away nothing as to how Ormund reacted to such a healing program.

Daeron reaches forward with a cup of water. Gwayne sips at it with a greedy thirst, the sort of hunger that doesn’t feel quite right. He needs to slake the ache of his parched tongue. He needs to give himself some sort of focus so that he can help Daeron.

His head is still a mess. His thoughts still a tangle has no idea how to unravel. His limbs too heavy, too uncoordinated, to feel his own.

Gwayne has no idea what Daeron has done to help him heal. What Daeron has done to get Ormund not to pay attention to Daeron managing to get Gwayne into the embrace of a dragon.

But it's hard to bring himself to focus, to care, when there is something about here, about the warmth, about the dragon, that makes him feel, for just one moment, safe.

It’s a strange feeling. A foreign land that he finds himself in.

He has no idea where Ormund is, where the monster that has plagued his and Daeron’s entire lives is, and yet, somehow, he feels safe.

How is that possible?

Gwayne doesn’t know, and he can’t find the strength in himself to carve down into his gut to find it. All he wants is to curl into Tessarion’s side.

But in this moment, his body slumps, heavy and tight—though growing looser the longer that he is wrapped in Tessarion’s warmth, the slight trill of her breathing so close to his head.

“You caught this illness from taking care of me, didn’t you?” Daeron asks, voice small, smaller than Gwayne can stand.

Gwayne swallows. “I abandoned you too many times before, and I could not stand it again.”

“And I—" For the first time, Daeron’s voice cracks. Wobbles on the precipice. “I believed Ormund over you.”

“I did leave you,” Gwayne admits, a confession of his sins, and his voice rasps against the inside of his throat. "I abandoned you, once. But I swear—I did not want to do it a second time. I swore to myself—"

A cough rips itself out of Gwayne's throat and Daeron is immediately moving forward to rub the back of his tunic, to help Tessarion curl her wing around Gwayne further.

“Just—" Daeron’s voice is tight. “Just rest, okay? You spent the night taking care of me. Let me take care of you."

“How long has it been? What is going on with Ormund? I need to make sure—I need to take care of—" A yawn cracks Gwayne’s jaw, interrupting the words that he had been meaning to speak. 

Tessarion curls in closer and warmth seeps into Gwayne's bones, coaxing him to sleep, and Gwayne thinks of Rook's Rest, thinks of the Riverlands, thinks of the sun beating down on them as they trudged through the Riverlands, about how the only thing that brought him any sort of relief was the small sense of comraderie that he managed to develop with Criston Cole before the end.

Gwayne thinks of what could have been. About the fact that he has failed everything that he's tried: to be a knight, to stop Rhaenyra's forces in the Riverlands, to stop Criston Cole from marching to his death, to make Daeron believe in him.

"I wish that the gods kept an eye on us all," Gwayne murmurs, half-delirious, as his eyes fall shut again.

---

Gwayne dreams of the sky. Of the feeling of warmth beneath him.

Of a flash of auburn-copper hair.

Of the moonlight against sapphire blue scales.

Of what it means to fly away from Tumbleton and the ashes of its burning corpse.

It's a nice dream, he supposes, even if he knows there is no way to have it.

---

The next time that Gwayne’s eyes open, they are sitting in a garden.

Okay, it’s more of a clearing than a garden, but there are flowers, and it is outside of the walls of a city like Tumbleton, and there is a creek nearby, trickling, a steady melody against the trees that surround them.

Daeron sits next to him on the grass, sorting through the inside of a large leather bag.

And Gwayne tries to struggle up to sit, to pull off the cloak that Daeron has draped over his shoulders. “What in the seven hells did you do? You’re still recovering—"

“And you were on the verge of death,” Daeron says, voice plain, and his face is still a little peaky, but the color has mostly returned to his cheeks—the smallest of blessings. “Of meeting the fucking Stranger. I had to save you as you saved me. If this is going to work, you’re going to need to believe me.”

Gwayne swallows. “And the same has to be true in reverse."

"After what just happened these last couple of weeks?" Daeron asks, "Trust me, I believe in you, uncle."

It is a warmth that blooms in Gwayne's chest, the fire that supports Daeron's belief in him—

There is a crunch of a boot on a branch, and Gwayne immediately sways up to his feet. Daeron did not take his sword from him when he took care of him and brought him to Tessarion, so Gwayne pulls it from the scabbard and raises it to whatever might be coming after them. He refuses to let Daeron die. He refuses to let Tessarion be attacked for helping him heal.

"Uncle—" Daeron protests, and he's reaching out to brace Gwayne, despite the fact that Gwayne should be bracing him—

But then the trees open to reveal just who has been stomping through them and Gwayne's jaw drops.

"Where did you fly us to?" he murmurs, because he cannot possibly be seeing the sight in front of him.

"The Riverlands," Daeron says, "South of the God's Eye, I think. You'd said, before you fell asleep—"

The Butcher's Ball, Gwayne thinks of the news he discovered on his scouting trip, which means that Criston Cole should be dead, that he has to be hallucinating, and yet—

"You raise your blade at me, Ser Gwayne?" Criston Cole asks with an arch of the eyebrow, but his voice isn't scared, isn't worried, and that might be because Criston is known as one of the strongest swordsmen in the Seven Kingdoms that Gwayne would hardly be a challenge to in best health, and Gwayne is not exactly the picture of good health right now.

But it also might be because the patron god of lost causes doesn't exactly have the self-preservation instinct needed to survive. Why else would he not be fazed by the dragon standing behind Daeron and Gwayne?

Gwayne's heart shudders. It is cruel to tease him with such a possibility. He prayed and he prayed for Criston to leave that suicidal march, for him to survive, for there to be a chance—

And someone answered. 

“Not the patron god of the lost cause after all,” Gwayne murmurs as he drops his sword to his side.

Criston almost seems to start to smirk, to maybe even smile, the corner of his mouth turning upward, but then his gaze falls to Daeron and something in his expression unfurls. "You look like your mother," Criston says, and something in Gwayne goes tight—he refuses to have another Ormund situation on his hands—but then Criston goes to one knee before Daeron. "Your Grace."

Daeron is gaping at Gwayne, at Criston, at yet one more person that sees him as a king, and he has a dragon and his mother's hair, it isn't exactly hard to identify him. They're likely going to need ink to dye his hair if they wish to pass him off as a dragonseed or something similar.

But Gwayne does take pity on the situation.

"This is Ser Criston Cole," Gwayne says, "Lord Commander of the Kingsguard."

“I thought you said he was dead,” Daeron says.

“In my defense, I was sick and possibly delirious," Gwayne says, unable to tear his eyes away from Criston, Criston who is moving his shoulder strangely, Criston who is still dressed in the same stained gambeson that he last saw him in, Criston who is blessedly alive, because maybe the gods really do exist.

“You're still delirious,” Daeron says, reaching out a hand to check the temperature of Gwayne's forehead.

"So what is a Kingsguard doing alive instead of dead in battle where they can sing of him?" Gwayne asks, unable to keep the hope from breaking through his voice.

"Someone convinced me that it might be a better use of my life to live for myself rather than dying for someone else's cause," Criston says, and there is a gorgeous stubbornness in his voice that Gwayne can now admit that he did fall in love with while on the path, but there is also something fond in the curve of his mouth, something so full of faith, and Gwayne knows a thing or two about how powerful it can be to place your faith in someone. How precious that faith can be. "I don't want to die for the dragons, anymore. I don't wish to die for someone else's glory. But I think—I would not mind living with you two, if you do not mind avoiding glory."

"We want to be forgotten as well," Daeron says, adjusting his grip to help Gwayne stand just a little bit taller, and Gwayne had known that, but it still a relief to hear, "I have no fear of insignificance, Ser Cole."

Criston smiles, now, and there is something almost sweet in his smile, and Gwayne remembers Criston mentioning that he'd helped train the other princes in the sparring grounds, remembers Alicent's letters about how Criston was far more present than Viserys ever was in her son's lives, and he wonders if Criston sees something of the boys he once raised in Daeron.

And if Criston is willing to help Daeron live as well, then Gwayne has no desires for glory, either. As a matter of fact, he thinks he has the only two people that matter to him right in front of him. "Come with us, Ser Criston," Gwayne says, and this time, he knows what Criston wants. What Criston needs. Not service, not the Starry Sept, but just a life for himself. "And I shall pledge my sword to you as much as I do to Daeron."

Criston looks helplessly intrigued, and Gwayne's smile sharpens, beckons.

Criston's gaze drops to Gwayne's mouth, and Gwayne thinks—for the first time in my life, I can make something out of this.

---

In the end, the three of them do not remain here. They find a way to build a life for themselves, three dead men and a dragon in a house they manage to build for themselves deep in the mountains in the Eyrie, and they are forgotten, nothing more than a footnote to the battle, a Kingsuard betrayed and two men turned to ghosts by the dragonflame.

They are forgotten, because they are happy rather than powerful, and that might be the kindest.

Cross my heart and hope to die

Imma keep you up at night

Haunt you everywhere you go

Making you believe in ghosts

I'ma have the last laugh

'Cause the second you forget me

Is the second that I come right back

-FLETCHER, Last Laugh