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The weirwood wept its red tears in silence.
Aenar sat with his back against the pale trunk, arms draped over his knees, fingers still trembling. He had nothing left to give. Every secret, every scar, every shame, he'd pulled them from behind his ribs and laid them in the grass between himself and his father like offerings at a sept.
He waited for Daemon to speak.
His father didn't.
Minutes stretched. An owl called somewhere beyond the tree line, a low, mournful hoo-hoo, and was answered by nothing. The wind had died. He swore he could hear the sound of the Blackwater Bay and the sound of a dragon flying far in the distance.
Aenar couldn't stand it.
"Say something," he said, almost shouting at him. "Tell me I'm mad. Tell me you don't believe a single word. Tell me I've lost my mind from the war, from Tyrosh, from whatever you want to blame it on. Just say something."
Daemon sat cross-legged in the grass, Dark Sister across his thighs, one hand resting on the pommel. His violet eyes hadn't left Aenar's face since the story ended. In the pale moonlight, his silver-gold hair looked almost white, and the angles of his jaw were carved from shadow.
"You talked for hours," Daemon finally spoke, but his tone was almost like they were having a normal conversation. "And in all that time, through an entire life's worth of war and loss and impossible things, white demons, dead armies, dragons made of ice, a city turned to green hellfire, you know what I keep coming back to?"
Aenar blinked, thrown. "What?"
Daemon tilted his head, and there was a smile on his face.
"You stood between a wild dragon and your dead friend's body with nothing but your bare hands and your grief, and you told him to fuck off."
Aenar stared at him in disbelief. "That's...that's what you took from everything I just told you?"
"That's where your story ended, isn't it? Not cowering. Not running. Standing in front of something you loved and refusing to move." Daemon's fingers drummed once against Dark Sister's hilt. "You keep calling yourself a failure, Aenar. You've been calling yourself that for the better part of the night. The man who lost everyone, who burned the city, who let rage kill the woman he loved."
He leaned forward.
"But I heard a different story. I heard about a bastard boy with no name and no house who walked into a dark pit and tamed a dragon that was chained in the dark, because the dragon knew his blood before anyone else did. I heard about a man who united three Targaryen rulers, conquered the Seven Kingdoms, and when the literal end of the world came marching south, he didn't hide behind his walls. He flew into it."
"And I lost," Aenar said, the words bitter as bile.
"Against death," Daemon said flatly. "You lost against death. Against an enemy that had been gathering its strength for eight thousand years while every king and lord in Westeros was too busy squabbling over chairs made of swords to notice. You didn't lose to a man, Aenar. You lost to something that the First Men and the Children of the Forest and the greatest builders in history could only manage to wall off, not defeat."
He waved a hand dismissively. "Maegor the Cruel had Balerion. The Black Dread. Biggest dragon to ever draw breath. And what did he do with all that power? Murdered his wives. Built a castle full of traps so he could feel safe while he slept. Terrorized smallfolk who couldn't fight back. The man had the greatest weapon the world has ever seen, and he used it to be a bully."
Daemon's voice dropped lower, harder.
"You had three dragons and you tried to save the world. Even when it was burning. Even when it was hopeless. Even after you'd lost your queens, your sister, your city, your dragon, you still stood up and said no. You stood in front of Cannibal and dared him to kill you rather than let him touch Rhaegal's body."
A breath of wind stirred the Godswood, carrying with it the scent of nightblooming jasmine from somewhere near the outer wall and the deeper, older smell of moss-covered stone.
"That's not failure," Daemon said. "That's a dragon."
Aenar's throat closed. He turned his face away and pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes. The tears came anyway, silent and hot, streaking down cheeks already raw from hours of weeping.
Daemon watched him without pity or judgment. He simply waited, not because he's indifferent, but because he knows interference would be an insult.
When Aenar's breathing steadied, Daemon spoke again, quieter now.
"I have questions."
Aenar let out a ragged laugh. "Of course you do."
"Your mother." Daemon's voice changed when he said it. It was longing. "Lyanna. In your other life...what happened to her?"
"She died," Aenar said. "Giving birth to me. In a tower in Dorne, alone except for her brother Ned and a few handmaidens. She bled out in a bed of blood and roses."
"Ned Stark he promised her he'd protect me. She made him swear it with her dying breath, at least that's what Howland Reed told me, Lord Stark was long dead by the time I returned in Westeros with Daenerys and Rhaenys." Aenar's voice was distant, saying the same words he had heard before. "He kept that promise. Raised me as his bastard son, let the world believe I was his shame, let his own wife despise me, all to keep Robert Baratheon from finding out that Rhaegar Targaryen had a living son."
"What was she like? Did people tell you anything about her?"
"She liked riding but I never heard her voice, and I saw her face only as stone." Aenar looked at his father.
Daemon was quiet for a long time. His thumb traced a slow circle on Dark Sister's pommel.
She died alone in a tower, Daemon thought. My wolf. In another world, she bled to death in Dorne with no one to hold her hand but a brother who had to hide the truth for so many years. Rhaegar, you imbecile, you should have never fallen. She never held her son. Never watched him grow. Never—
He stopped the thought before it could unravel him.
"In this life," Daemon said, "she laughed when she was angry. Did you know that? Most people shout. Your mother laughed. This sharp, wild laugh that made you feel like you'd already lost the argument and just didn't know it yet."
"She could ride better than any man in the North," Daemon continued, and the longing returned, but now he sounded soft. "Better than me, though I'd have cut out my own tongue before admitting it while she lived. She had this habit of braiding Ghost's fur when she was thinking. The wolf would just sit there and let her, patient as a septon. Anyone else tried to touch him, he'd snap their fingers off."
"She told me once that she'd dreamed of a life where she never left Winterfell," Daemon said. "Where she married some Northern lord and had Northern children and grew old watching snow fall. She said it was the most boring dream she'd ever had." His mouth curved. "Then she said she preferred the life she chose. Dragons and all."
Aenar's chest split along some invisible seam he hadn't known was there, love for a woman he'd held in this life and mourned in another, love for the girl who bled out in a tower with roses wilting on her pillow and no one to kiss the fever from her brow, love for the boy who spent his whole childhood pressing his palm against a cold stone statue in the Winterfell crypts and pretending he could feel her pressing back.
"She would have been proud of you," Daemon said gently. "In both lives. She would have been proud."
Aenar nodded, unable to speak.
Silence resettled between them like sediment in disturbed water. The owl called again, closer this time, and somewhere in the distance, the changing of the night watch echoed faintly, boots on stone, the muffled clank of armor, a guard's cough.
"There's something else," Aenar said. His voice had gone flat again, the way it did when he was preparing to deliver another wound. "Something I haven't told you. About what my existence in this world has cost."
Daemon's eyebrow rose a fraction. "You've told me about ice demons, dead dragons, and the destruction of the greatest city in Westeros. What could possibly be left?"
"Your children."
Daemon went very still.
"What do you mean, my children? You are my child."
"Your other children." Aenar's hands pressed flat against the grass, fingers digging into the cool earth. "The ones who were supposed to exist. The ones who would have existed if I'd never been born into this world."
Daemon's expression did not change. He was not a man whose face moved without his leave. But a stillness came over him that had nothing to do with calm. His spine found iron. And his violet eyes, which had watched his son weep and rage and confess to horrors beyond imagining without once looking away, grew very, very quiet.
"Explain."
Aenar took a long breath.
"In my past life as Jon Snow, I read about the history of House Targaryen. All of it. From Aegon's Conquest to the fall of the dynasty. Including a war called the Dance of the Dragons."
Daemon's head tilted. "A war between dragons?"
"A war between Targaryens. Greens against Blacks. Rhaenyra Targaryen against Aegon Targaryen. Alicent Hightower's son." Aenar watched his father's face carefully. "Rhaenyra was named heir as she did in this one. Once Viserys died. The Hightowers crowned Aegon instead. And the realm bled for it. Dragon fought dragon. Brother against sister. We lost the dragons from this war."
Rhaenyra against Alicent's whelp, Daemon thought with disgust, he knew those kids were not good news, after all, Otto Hightower and his daughter whore were nothing but leeches. His fingers tightened on Dark Sister's grip until the leather creaked.
"That war," Aenar said, "that's the future I'm trying to prevent. That's why everything I've done the alliances, the intelligence networks, the Red Priestesses, all of it, it's to make sure the Dance never happens."
"Good," Daemon said a little uncertainly. "It won't." He knew that was no true, everything Aenar had done, not all of it was because he wanted to prevent a war.
"But preventing it has a cost," Aenar pressed on. "A cost you don't know about yet."
He met his father's eyes.
"In the history I read, you never married my mother. Lyanna Stark never came south. There was no Aenar Targaryen. Instead, your life followed a different path."
Daemon's eyes widen, and he could almost hear the shouts of the people and the name they had used for him. The Rogue Prince. A name he had discarded a long time ago.
"Laenor Velaryon lived longer. I don't know exactly when he was supposed to die, or how, but he lived years beyond the point where we lost him. If I didn't exist in this world, he would still be alive right now."
Daemon understood now what truly was eating at his heart.
"And you," Aenar continued, his voice dropping lower. "In the original history, you married Laena Velaryon."
Daemon blinked. It was the first time all night that Aenar had seen his father look genuinely caught off guard.
"Laena," Daemon repeated, sounding a little baffled. He knew she was beautiful, and she was only ten years younger than him, and he knew she was fierce; her gaining Vhagar was proof enough of that, but he had never thought of her that way, maybe because he knew his son was in love with her.
"You married her. You loved her, from what the histories say. You lived together in Pentos for a time, and she bore you twins. Two daughters."
"Daughters," he said. He had hoped his second child with Lyanna would be a girl. Perhaps he wanted a bride for Aenar, or maybe he just wanted a daughter like he used to want a sister when he was very young.
"Baela and Rhaena." Aenar said with a smile as if he had known them. "Baela was fierce. A dragonrider. She bonded with Moondancer and fought in the Dance, flew against Aegon the Elder's dragon, Sunfyre, even though she was barely more than a girl. She was very brave."
He paused. Daemon had gone absolutely motionless.
"Rhaena was quieter. Gentler. She never bonded with a dragon during the war, but she carried dragon eggs and eventually..." Aenar trailed off, shaking his head slightly. "The histories don't say as much about her. But she survived. She lived."
The moonlight caught the moisture gathering at the edge of Daemon's eyes. He felt his eyes burn.
"And Laena?" Daemon's voice was rough. "You said she died."
"In childbirth. Trying to deliver a son. The child didn't survive either. Laena, she tried to reach Vhagar. Tried to die as a dragonrider, on her dragon's back, rather than in a birthing bed. She didn't make it."
A dragonrider's death, Daemon thought, and something inside him cracked along a fault line he hadn't known was there. She wanted to die with wings beneath her rather than sheets. A true dragon rider.
He said nothing for a long time.
"After Laena died," Aenar said, quieter now, almost reluctant, "you married Rhaenyra."
Daemon's eyes snapped to him. Why would I do that?
"In the history I read, you and Rhaenyra married in secret. You had two sons together. Aegon and Viserys — named after the kings before them. They were young during the Dance. Too young to fight, but old enough to suffer for it."
Aenar's hands curled into fists in the grass.
"Four children, Father. Baela. Rhaena. Aegon. Viserys. Four children who were supposed to carry your blood, your name, your legacy." He looked up, and his eyes were wet with a guilt that had no remedy. "None of them will ever exist. Because of me."
Daemon knew what his son expected to hear.
"Because you exist," Daemon said slowly, "Laena didn't marry me. She's with you. Rhaenyra is with you. And Laenor—"
"Died in the Stepstones. Years before he should have. Because I am here. Because my presence changed everything, the wars, the alliances, the marriages. I pulled the thread, and the whole tapestry unraveled." Aenar's voice cracked. "Your daughters will never ride dragons. Your sons with Rhaenyra will never be born. Because I took their mothers, and I took the life that would have made them possible."
He bowed his head, and his next words came out barely louder than the wind.
"I stole your family from you, Father. A family you don't even know you were supposed to have."
Daemon stared at his son. Who had just spent an entire night confessing to war, loss, madness, and death, and yet this was the thing that made his voice break. Not the ice demons. Not the burning of King's Landing. Not even Daenerys drowning in the Gods Eye.
The children. The phantom children who would never draw breath because a dead man from another life had been given a second chance.
Daemon rose to his feet. Dark Sister's scabbard scraped against stone as he moved, and Aenar flinched, a small, involuntary thing that broke Daemon's heart more than any tale of ice demons ever could.
Daemon crossed the distance between them. He stood over Aenar, looking down at the bowed, dark-haired head, the hunched shoulders, the hands gripping the earth like a man trying not to fall off the world.
Then he sat down beside him. Shoulder to shoulder, back against the weirwood.
"Look at me," Daemon said.
Aenar didn't move.
"Aenar. Look at me."
Slowly, as though it cost him everything he had left, Aenar raised his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, swollen, exhausted beyond measure. He looked like a man who had been flayed from the inside out.
Daemon held his gaze.
"I'm going to say something, and you're going to listen. Not argue. Not deflect. Not add another layer of guilt to the pile you've been building for seventeen years. You're going to sit there and hear me. Understood?"
Aenar nodded, mute.
"You did not steal my children." Daemon said. "You cannot steal something that doesn't exist. Baela, Rhaena, these sons you speak of, they are names in a book you read in another life. They are shadows of a future that belongs to a different Daemon Targaryen, in a different world, living a different story."
He leaned his head back against the weirwood, and for a moment, the carved face above them seemed to be watching them both with its bloody eyes.
"I am not that man. I didn't marry Laena in Pentos. I didn't lose her to a birthing bed. I didn't marry Rhaenyra in secret or father sons named after my brother and a dead king." His voice softened — not much, but enough. "I married your mother. I watched a wolf-girl from the North stare down a dragon and refuse to blink. I held you the day you were born, and you were the most beautiful thing in the world."
Daemon Targaryen smiled.
"Those are my memories. My life. The one I actually lived, not the one written in some maester's book in a world that no longer exists."
He turned his head to look at Aenar directly.
"You want me to mourn children I never conceived, never held, never named? Want me to grieve for daughters I never taught to ride, sons I never watched grow? I can't. Because they aren't mine. They belong to a man I never was."
"But they could have been yours," Aenar said, and his voice was threadbare. "If I wasn't here—"
"If you weren't here," Daemon cut him off, "I'd be a man married to Laena Velaryon watching the Hightowers poison my brother's court while that worm Otto whispered in his ear. I'd be a man who lost his wife to childbirth and married his niece in desperation. I'd be a man watching a war come that would kill half the dragons in the world, and I would be the Rogue Prince again."
He jabbed a finger at Aenar's chest.
"Instead, I have a son who bonded the Cannibal, the dragon that every rider on Dragonstone was too terrified to approach for a century. I have a son who conquered Tyrosh. A son who reads the future like other men read maps and is trying to prevent a war before it starts."
Daemon's expression grew serious again, the brief flash of pride banked like coals beneath ash.
"Are those phantom children a loss? Perhaps. In the abstract, in the way that every road not taken is a loss. But you are not responsible for roads that were never built. You didn't choose to be born into this world. You didn't ask to carry another man's memories. The gods, or whatever force put you here, made that choice. You are living the life you were given, and you are doing it with more weight on your shoulders than any man I've ever known."
He paused, letting the words settle.
"So I'll tell you this once, and I won't repeat it. You are my son. Not a replacement for children who never existed. Not a consolation prize for a different future. My son. The one I have. The one I chose to raise, and train, and fight beside. And no book, no history, no ghost of a life unlived is going to change that."
Aenar's composure finally shattered.
He pressed his face into his hands and wept.
Daemon moved before he could think better of it.
He pulled Aenar into his arms. One arm locked around his son's shoulders, the other hand gripping the back of his head, pressing Aenar's face against his chest.
Aenar went rigid with shock. In seventeen years of life, through training and war and triumph and grief, Daemon Targaryen had only once held him like this. A hand on the shoulder, yes. A grip on the arm. The occasional rough cuff that passed for affection among men who wore swords the way others wore smiles. But never this.
Then the rigidity broke, and Aenar collapsed into it, fists knotting in the back of Daemon's cloak, face buried against the leather and linen of his father's chest, seventeen years of unshed weight pouring out of him in wracking, silent sobs that shook his entire frame.
Daemon held him through it. Just tightened his arms and let his son fall apart against him.
You carried this alone for seventeen years, Daemon thought, his chin resting on the crown of Aenar's head. Seventeen years with no one to share the weight. What kind of gods give a boy two lifetimes of war and no one to hold him through the aftermath?
When the worst of it had passed and Aenar's breathing had gone from jagged to merely ragged, Daemon spoke.
"Your mother used to say that the dead don't leave us. That the Starks have known this for eight thousand years, that's why they keep their dead beneath their home instead of burning them. Because the ones we love don't go. They stay in the stone and the roots and the cold northern air, and they watch. The Kings of Winter still watch over Winterfell from their statues, waiting for the day to awake and bring a Stark to Winterfell."
"She's watching you, Aenar. Your mother. Through every battle, every loss, every night you sat alone with this weight and told no one." Daemon's voice cracked like glass. "And if she were standing here instead of me, she'd tell you the same thing I'm about to tell you, except she'd say it better because she was always better with words than I was."
He pulled back just enough to look his son in the face. Aenar's eyes were swollen, devastated, stripped of every defence he'd spent seventeen years building.
"You don't carry this alone anymore," Daemon said. "Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever again. Whatever comes next, Dorne, the Hightowers, ice demons, the gods themselves, your mother is watching, and I am here. And between the wolf and the dragon, nothing in this world or any other is going to break you. Do you understand me?"
Aenar nodded, unable to speak. His hand found the silver direwolf pendant at his throat, his mother's necklace, and held it.
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