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ππ―π¦π°π’ π«π¬π΄ πΆπ’ πππ―π«π¦π°π₯π’π‘ πΆπ’ π‘π’ππ‘ π΄π₯π¬ πΆπ’π± π©π¦π³π’
βif you and i are both still alive and miserable,
i propose we begin to hunt each other for sportβ
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As easy as it would be to stick a knife in his uncle's ribs, the sudden invasion evokes a flinch at most — if only uncertain as to where this was going. A flash in his eye cries offense, breath seething in protest as he stills under Daemon's manhandling.
As irritating as he finds it, his anger isn't placed in his uncle. They could fight, it would be more thrilling than the one they just emerged from. Would it be satisfying? Mayhaps. Aemond touches the back of his wrist against Daemon's arm. Not yet pressing to shove him away, it diffuses to a tentative warning as he feels his warm breath dancing across his skin.
The prince's jaw tightens. Not repulsion, embarrassment. This is coming from the boy who lost an eye. Who sat in a room day after day with a league of maesters that put him through all sorts of agonies. Taking stitches out, putting stitches in, routine disinfection, mangled eyeball retrieval. Not a single moment was his father at his side to see it through, but it's nothing new that Daemon has given him more attention in death than his sire might have his entire life. But gritting through it is what he knows.
He doesn't know this. A part of him wants to read it for a taunt. By looking Daemon in the eye, he can't discern the truth either. Hmph, fine.
"It can wait." His hand doesn't push him away, but instead slides to curl lightly over his uncle's arm; a gentler way of dismissing. Let him butcher a horse first.
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Aemond squirms in that stiff way of his, and Daemon holds them still. Watching his face, the way he tenses, as though he can see the thoughts rolling around in his nephew's head. (Maybe he can. Maybe the missing eye's made a hole all the way through, and he's just reading.) Daemon's deep violet gaze is unflinching, and there's always something sardonic about him, but there's no mocking. Little shit's better than most men with both eyes, but he's still got to have compromised depth perceptionβ if they're going to travel and fight together more times than not, Daemon has a responsibility to look after him, which includes bullying him about mending.
And they're blood.
And they've fucked.
Another moment, and Daemon rolls his eyes away, withdraws his hand with the movement, and rounds to look at their horse options. In the end, he spares the ones they've been using, choosing instead the most skittish of the remaining bandit mounts. Quick about it, not wanting to spook the rest of them into poor behavior later. Quicker, then, to winch it up against a tree, before anything spoils internally. They don't have to take their time with this, just harvest enough for now and some to pack away in leftover salt for the next meal or two. Carrion creatures can have the rest.
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He thinks wine and poppy to be similar sorts of poisons too, but that never stopped him from sinking himself into those either. He's dead, he can fuck his uncle as a treat.
The pause in Aemond lifts with a gentle exhale as the elder prince releases him and turns about his business. The crankiness in him now diffused, oddly enough. He resists the temptation to touch at the burn and joins in on the necessary slaughter.
The valley they're in will be swarmed by nightfall by those horrendous giant singing bats, drawn to the copious amount of blood that's soaked into the earth beneath their feet. This world can feel so quiet and empty. A gentle breeze brushing through the trees is the only company that greets them. The sun has yet to reach its peak, but plenty of other things could come sniffing around before then.
Aemond abandons his peripheral watch to help carve out their rations. Horse meat isn't his favorite thing in the entire world but there are much worse meals. It smells decent once they get it over a fire, stirring the hunger in his belly as he rummages for the salve in his pack to make due against reticence for aid.
"Returning to the manor will be swifter if we find a site of grace." Breaking his silence with more shop talk. Their hunt is done, where else would either of them press forward?
no subject
Dry.
Daemon sits down beside the fire, and tries not to think of anything in particular. He turns his knife over in his hands, black leather hiding horse blood, as it will hide horse grease and strings of horse muscle fiber; better to ruin an accessory than pick it out of his nails on the walk back to the manor (or to the little fair fire pit, whatever those fucking graces truly are). What was the last creature he butchered to eat, at home, in life? Daemon finds he can't remember. Some unimportant detail burned away by the all-consuming storm of grief and anger.
He misses hunting with Caraxes. Scaring and herding game, deciding between careful bolts or the overkill of dragon jaws. Canny deer and boar and the occasional bear in Westeros, warped basilisks and enormous, agile felines in Essos. A small whale, once, and Daemon had almost drowned laughing from the absurdity of being unceremoniously dunked to accomplish it.
"I suppose it was too much to ask that the lost cult of dragon worshipers were headquartered in the volcano."
Big snakes and the freaks who want to eat them. Close and leagues away at once.
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It reminds him of Aegon's mulishness at times. He's certain his uncle would adore such comparisons.
The elder prince isn't wrong, but it's not the first thing that goes awry to reason within this world. Dragons which do not associate themselves with fire, but the heat of their lightning seems to burn just as brightly. The wyrm that guards the mont is not seen as dragon at all despite its wings, it prefers to crawl around on its belly. The whole place is blasphemous, as they seem to take pride in.
"A seat can be flipped," the young prince notes casually as he fishes out the correct tin. Another joke, or is it another idea to gently float by, mayhaps even one Daemon could be less caustic towards. His words are just as dry, if not more.
His violet eye draws up to where Daemon sits as he sinks an elbow to his knee. The tin turns slowly between his fingers; is he going to help or will Aemond be forced to ask for what's already been offered?
"It's not as though you haven't done it before."
Only Aemond would hold the audacity of pitching the idea to overthrow the great blasphemous praetor and his depraved snake god, but are they not descended from a conqueror? What else do they have to fucking do here?
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Mildly offered. Daemon could have stayed, when he and Laena brought the girls to court when they were small. It would not have been all that difficult to press a takeover, seeing how ill Viserys already was in those years. He had enough support, and a capable blade waiting to meet Otto's neck, and the excuse of only being regent while Rhaenyra settled into her role. And of course he would have never abdicated, because of course she couldn't have been heir with her brown-haired children, and what might have become of Alicent's children, then.
In retrospect it's foolish. Daemon never actually wanted to be Maegor. He should have been. (What, did Aemond think he was going to rise to bait about being an usurper? Dickhead.)
Too late now. He turns the knife over some more.
"Come here."
Maybe he'll poke the other eye out, maybe he'll put the salve on.
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After a scrutinous squint that relays confusion, Aemond's eye rolls as he shuffles to push himself back onto his feet. If this ends anywhere other than him receiving aid, he will certainly be trying to roll his elder into the embers and leave a mark that would put both their brothers' to shame.
"You took Harrenhal, did you not?" He corrects, sinking into a seat beside him. Because he has to be right, if there is one thing Daemon is right about him is that he is still a little shit. The tin remains aloft between them for the taking.
"Not that it was a particularly harrowing undertaking, I gathered. Merely harassing an old stout man onto his knees. I suppose it should not rightfully make a fair comparison."
Now that was a needling.
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At Harrenhal.
No comment on his own actions. Still mild. Not much of a needle, from his end. If he didn't have to fight, he didn't, because it was a waste of time; that's half the point of the dragon. A deterrent. And he doesn't have a fucking deterrent here. If he wanted to go and claim the weird old manor for himself, he'd have to personally murder everyone in there, and then go hunting for whatever's in the pit beneath it, because something is going on there. He can feel it like an agitated nerve beneath his feet. The volcano rolls and roils, and whispers of strange magic.
Anyway. He thought Aemond meant King's Landing, on account of how all he did at Harrenhal was bully an old stout man.
Daemon sets the knife aside and pulls his gloves off, before taking the tin. He pops it open, and begins to work a bit of ointment through his fingers, aiming to strip at least some lurking bacteria off before he goes and sticks them into his nephew's face.
"That place is sinking. Into madness, and into the fucking ground." Aemond's seen it. Half the village below the manor's keep has been consumed by rising lava. "If anything, best to strip it for parts."
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A dull grunt gravely acknowledges what's implied and abstains from dragging them into something truly unpleasant. He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth to stop it wagging too deeply over sore wounds. Is there much room for righteousness these days? With a dead man's horse roasting on a spit before them and a pocket full of trinkets and runes peeled from another.
As Daemon works the ointment, they young prince draws his hair out of the way. It's grown, which is a strange revelation to find in death. It should probably be braided to protect it. Constant exposure to the salty wet air has left it looking worn and curling towards his nape. He doesn't want to chop it off, but one of these days it will slow him down.
Daemons answer is exhaustingly rational.
"You could apply that to anywhere in this moldering realm," he argues and works loose the first couple clasps of his leathers to give access to his neck where the irritation has spread. The worst is a beating red mark that spreads out behind his ear. The burned from the "vitality of stars", of all things. If he hadn't pivoted, it'd have reopened the hole his uncle left him with.
"...how bad is it?"
Not like he's concerned or anything. He's merely not in the market to keep losing pieces of himself.
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Sometimes they remind him of Valyria. Not the Freehold in dreams, but the ruins. The edges of which he should never have touched (but was always going to).
What should he say? I don't want to settle here. It's admitting defeat to find a home.
As if there's any fucking way back. The dead, if they do not simply stay dead, do not return to where they left. They are never going back to Westeros, or any other place in that world. Daemon will never know which of his children survived, if any. Aemond will never know if his siblings can fill Vhagar's void with their dragons, crippled and untested.
Daemon scrapes his hands as clean as they're going to get, collects a bit more of the balm, and reaches out to attend to his nephews face. Cradling his jaw with one hand to stabilize him, poking around with the other. Magical injuries are still baffling, to himβ but it must burn, especially since it's still squirming, and it makes sense enough that potions and such, supernatural in kind, can soothe them.
"It seems half-alive, still," he muses, and carefully slides fingers along it. Pauses, to see if it's actually helping. His skin feels overwarm, like a burn.
"Do you wish for a home, here?"
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Is it what he wants? Home doesn't feel like an appropriate word that can be applied to any corner of this place. Nothing here can replace what they've lost and it would be foolish to seek it. He can corner the feeling in his heart and press his thumb to its pulse to try and understand what it is, but he cannot begin to know how to describe it.
Free falling is one of the last things he remembers. It's a bit like that. Beyond the God's Eye in the Riverlands; houseless and desperately trying to find a means of carving around his fate. No matter what he'd done, Daemon was still waiting for him. He couldn't escape it. He couldn't get his wind back beneath him to spare them from hitting the water. Perhaps it's the lack of control and stability that disturbs him so. He has no order of purpose to cling to here and rejects the one he's been given. Perhaps in the end, he will be driven towards it.
A few beats of silence as he thinks. The tensing and relaxing of his jaw within his uncle's hand is the only indication of the pain as new territory is paved by medicine. He can't tell if it's cooling the mark or numbing it, but it's doing something.
"I wish to not live on the ground like a horselord or roam the country like a sellsword." There's a tinge of bitterness, knowing there is little to his circumstances that can be changed. No amount of ambition will raise him to what he thinks he deserves here. It doesn't exist.
"Does such a way of life content you?" It's not one meant for their kind, Aemond thinks. They are lords, they are dragons. "Don't you think you deserve better?"