Chapter Text
A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing.
— Maester Aemon, circa 298AC
—
The sixth decade of his life was laced with the unraveling of fire and blood.
His hair had lightened from greyish silver to ashy white as the years passed. The wrinkles upon his face were etched onto his features through many years of stern frowns, all too visible by his ghastly shade of skin. He hadn’t many excursions outside the Citadel since the day he came to it; fifty years had flown by, where he studied, researched and taught in this sphinx-protected sphere, surviving the cold world his siblings perished in.
They’ve all fallen like flies, rather than dragons. Vaegon had always known there was an utter weakness to his bloodline, one that his father refused to see, even when he had advised him to make the Great Council to pick his heir. He wondered, at some days, had he said anything else to father, would things have been different.
He thought he did the right thing. He remembered his father asking him in his solar, if he would be his heir, the wrinkled old man grasping at straws. His father already knew the answer would be a resounding no. Perhaps that’s why it was a discredited thought even in the records — how could the wise, old king still plead regardless?
Perhaps father knew he was a trapped fool too.
Vaegon had no interest in entertaining his father in any capacity, and most certainly had no interest in being King. His only credentials that had kept him as an option were his blood, features and sharper mind. He was not amiable, like Aemon, or brave, like Baelon. He was not kind nor well-liked, not like either of them. They were little more than dunces to him when they were growing up, but they were both well-meaning brothers and fathers. Even at days he hated them for not understanding his own plights, they hadn’t cast him entirely out of their thoughts, leaving him books and scrolls he would’ve never known lest they ventured out to the world to find them.
The realm needed them, the family needed them — how could they have gone so soon? Their own deaths undermined all their good deeds; how could they do this, leaving only smiling portraits?
The only smiling that remained to us all.
All his sisters too, died or fled. Saera had been ingenious, for escaping these slowly-breaking kingdoms; her own self-centeredness had been the one saving wit of hers. Vaegon never blamed her for leaving to begin with, but in hindsight, she was the only one with self-preservation, him aside. Maegelle, he had watched with his own eyes rot of greyscale, and she was the only sister he had been in any capacity able to see off before she grew cold. Alyssa, despite her ails after the birth of her third son, had never allowed anyone to assume her dead before she was certain to be cremated; in the letter announcing her death, mother wrote that her body failed her conviction. He had never gotten to see Viserra grow older than one and ten before he saw her upon her funeral pyre, and he had never known Gael much at all.
The one and only time he had been in the Vale was at Daella’s funeral. He watched her husband, Rodrik Arryn, beg his mother to lay her to rest at the Vale of Arryn. Daella’s daughter was held by his eldest daughter from his previous marriage, Lady Elys, who was rocking the girl in her hands with the most sour glare casted towards her father. Vaegon remembered that at the time, he felt the oddest sense of kinship to the scowling Arryn girl.
Daella was always small. People called her childlike not only because of her demeanor or learning struggles. She looked young, and had been frail in many capacities, one of which being her physique. She was over a head shorter than most, as well as bonily skinny. His studies at the Citadel included teachings of anatomy and health— from that point of view alone, she was barely at the age and certainly not in the condition to bear children when she did. Daella died at eight and ten, under the watch of a husband nearly twenty years her senior.
At their wedding, mother said he swore he’d protect and pamper Daella. It was something Vaegon previously scoffed at; she was his trouble to handle, then. At his sister’s funeral, Vaegon gritted his teeth as new realizations set in. Daella was never truly protected, when her husband reinforced a duty she was not prepared to undertake. Rodrik Arryn couldn’t protect her if he couldn’t look her in the eyes to recognize her as a child that needed time to grow, and perhaps he never wanted to acknowledge that much. He liked his sister as his toy-wife, because she was a smaller, bubbly girl. Because she was more innocent, because she was a simpler girl seeking some approval from anybody that would give it. He enjoyed his marital rights with a girl younger than his daughter and with lesser capabilities to fend for herself. He likewise enjoyed the affluence that match undeservedly gave him with Father, the way it strengthened the ties between the Crown and the Vale. Daella lost her life, and he had won with crops and fortune she opened the pathway for.
The known little love he had for his little sister was nothing compared to the utter contempt he had felt towards that sniveling Arryn Lord. He watched the flames reduce his sister to nothing, and bit his cheeks as guilt set in. As slow as she was, she was a kind and trusting girl. He had always felt burdened by her presence, but was that entirely her fault? She wasn’t the one who demanded him at her side. He wavered at his treatment of her as the fire danced, as well as wondered if Father, who she had trusted most, had the same laments.
When his niece, Daella’s daughter, became the Queen alongside Baelon’s son as King, he hoped things would sort themselves out. Perhaps they could all smile and bring back the ease to the Keep and the realm. It was the expected result of the Great Council, and what he had hoped would keep his siblings’ children from any trouble. And all had been well, for the longest while. But his niece had troubled births, just as her mother had, and her one daughter had been left in a situation even worse than Aemon’s daughter.
The war had been on the horizon from the very moment King Viserys married for the second time.
The war was now on the horizon of his window in the Archmasesters’ quarters. A blue dragon flew by only moments ago, nearly shaking the foundations of the Citadel — chasing after an already departed host that belonged to the Hightowers.
His fellow Archmaesters banged on the door of his apartments. They’ve been talking, for days on end, of how to prevent the catastrophe from occurring. They were philosophers, strategists, scholars — and panicking cowards, at the face of death.
It is only imminent the Citadel will burn to the ground, should the Blacks reach Oldtown.
Vaegon didn’t dispute that. It was reasonably probable.
These dragons need to be killed before they burn the Seven Kingdoms whole.
Vaegon didn’t speak against that either. The green fire of the raging Hightowers were already roaring at the beacon of the Hightower, eating at the anxiety of men. A true, merciless dragon, would burn and eat at flesh and earth easily.
What can possibly kill a dragon, Archmaester Vaegon?
Gazes had never before felt sharper. He could barely lift his eyes. He didn’t want to speak, but what was an Archmaester’s duty was if not to give answers to questions? That was all he did, all of his life. Deeply entangled in his vows and work, it was all he ever was.
Poison, he answered them. It’ll be poison.
The Archmaesters were left arguing approaches and possibilities in the Conclave after he left them with that crumb of knowledge. Today, as he heard them shouting from behind the door, he understood they had to be frightened, seeing Green Prince Daeron rushing off to war, inviting trouble.
His door was locked. Had been locked for three days, after he took a particular plant from the Citadel’s botanical conservatory. It stood within the Isle of Ravens, beyond the dying heart tree and the grove of different trees where black and white ravens alike perched on. There was much for the taking, from the simplest forest mushrooms to cloudberries that struggled to live so far away from the North, but he only looked for one thing.
A white baneberry . Or doll’s eyes, as many called it, for each berry looked like a socketless, dangling eye. Those uncanny eyes watched him as he was ruminating on his presence upon this earth, until he didn’t no more. He safekept the leaves, and grinded a mere one berry of it for good measure. The hearth in his own room roared, warming a pitcher of water that had been a constant in this room since he arrived.
Vaegon took it from the fire, minding the hot surface of the bronze pitcher as much as he had his fellow, screaming Archmaesters. None of it mattered, if he burned or not. The war will wage, and take its toll, should it arrive at Oldtown or not. The men of the Citadel can fret at the opportunity of imminent death — Vaegon had already lived through enough of watching it.
He was glad his siblings were not there to see the destruction of their house. It would’ve hurt them far worse than it hurt him. If he couldn’t bear to stay on this earth now, how could they? He was never a proper part of the family. He had left behind the Targaryen name the moment he had gained his initial title as a maester. Even in the eyes of the realm, he was never a true Targaryen; how otherwise could the Conclave ask him to be complicit in toppling their dynasty? Hinting at the death and suffrage of all of those that were left? He felt foreign between his flock, but he never wished for his family to wither.
He suggested the Great Council because he thought it would be best, because he thought it would keep them safe. Father was grasping at straws, calling for him, but Vaegon wasn’t any different. For once, he dared hoping, but now it was all gone.
He took the leaves as well as the fruity, bleeding paste into the boiling water, and brewed his concoction of tea. Vaegon downed it all in one, long sip.
He wished he could have made a difference. Wished he could’ve prevented more rather than avoided— it all caught up to him in the end. Half a century ago, he left the Red Keep without looking back, but now, he can’t help but find more and more regrets.
Vaegon felt a lurch from the depths of his stomach, as well as a bubbling within him, followed by a flare of heartburn. His pulse grew faster and faster before it grew weaker, withering with him.
His eyes began to betray him, spotting his vision and distorting the world. The glass candle upon his window almost seemed as if it was flickering, after years of attempting to light it, and he wondered if in death he was given a taste of his heart’s desire, just enough for it to hurt. Hah. He might just see his siblings now, if any afterlife did exist. It was a shame that they might just have to ask him — why didn’t you do more?
It’ll be poison, he said so assuredly. If only because he couldn’t quite bring himself to say heartache.
—
Odd, sweltering heat made him toss and turn as he woke up from his slumber.
It wasn’t from his surroundings, but rather from within himself. He even felt a slight breeze reaching him as he moved upon whatever he was laid on. If these were the fires of the Seven Hells, they were hardly any different than a sunny day in the Crownlands.
He felt feverish. Did I survive the poison? It was supposed to kill him within minutes. If he had brewed it as if he was a fleeing conspirator, he would’ve only used the leaves, and he may have had the chance to survive if someone found him — but Vaegon had no fear of being found guilty for his own death, and had used the berry as well. He never knew a person to survive ingesting the berry. There would be no time to prepare any antidote.
The darkness should’ve been final, but his eyes opened with only the most minute resistance of sleep crust.
The world was revealed to him again, and suddenly, he felt more disoriented than he ever had.
This place looked nothing like the Citadel. These were not his quarters there. The layout, furniture, floors and bricks were familiar but not remotely similar to architecture of the Citadel’s complex. The bed he laid in had silk, red linen, and when he looked out of the window, he had seen not even one hint of Oldtown’s Hightower.
He instead saw the Hill of Rhaenys — he saw the Dragonpit.
He shot up from the bed, rushing to the window. Was I taken to the Red Keep? The Greens had no use for him whatsoever. Why would he be here?
Before he could even reach the window sill, he was hit with another realization — his body didn’t hurt. Yes, he felt feverish, and he had a persistent headache, but he had no ache in his limbs despite the consistent pains he had gained across his years as an Archmaester; the pains of his spine, the weakness of his knees, were all entirely gone. His eyesight was better, too. It had been so long since he was able to tell details of a farther off landscape; now he saw perfectly well.
It was then, when Vaegon looked down at his hands, that he understood something else entirely was awry. His hand was not thickened with age and had no wrinkles nor sun spots decorating it. It wasn’t calloused and weathered by the blisters that marred his skin.
He looked around his room, and one glance at a faraway mirror had revealed to him a truth far more daunting than the window did.
The reflection did not present him with the visage of his six and sixty old self. It showed him the countenance of him as a young man, barely within his adulthood — a face that belonged to him fifty years ago.
Am I hallucinating? Did he become comatose and fell into some kind of sick dream?
It all felt uncanny. It couldn’t be true, but in every sense it felt like it was. His body felt light, nimble, every flex of his fingers letting him feel the stretch of skin, the click of bone, the rush of blood. This face was his, but also wasn’t, and as he touched it he felt the softness of youth and hints of barely-there silver stubble.
He was dreaming. He had to be.
He was wearing his old night clothes, the cotton tunic with embroidered dragons at its cuffs and the plain slacks with horrid stitching that had been his own work — he mended the hem when it tore. It was as if it was just another day in his childhood home.
These details were something that were long forgotten from his mind. Rather than imagination, was this landscape the fruit of his repressed memories? But this level of detail… Can the mind even retain it? Can it make it feel so real, if his true body had been on the brink of perishing? There was no other option, was there?
Vaegon had to see more. He opened his closet and every single tunic, jerkin and doublet were familiar. He grabbed a dark grey jerkin — his preferred choice at that age, placed exactly where he had always been — as well as dark trousers. Beyond them, he found books hiding at the corners. Although the walls of his rooms all had bookshelves attached to them, he never had enough space to store all his books; inevitably, some of them took the place of clothes, much to the maids’ chagrin.
The sense of dejavu nearly made him sick.
He laced the jerkin on top of the night’s tunic, and haphazardly dressed himself to get out. No matter whose, a man’s memory was not good enough to maintain this precise presentation of the past forever.
Vaegon chucked the doors to his apartments open — startling maids that had been walking by at the same time.
“Prince Vaegon,” the older lady of the two, he recognized; Alayne was her name, if he recalled correctly. Mother was fond of her and trusted her with her younger, more troublesome children, including him, as much as he disliked admitting to that. The second girl, he didn’t recognize at all. “Have you slept well? It will be a long day today..”
“Who is she?” Vaegon cut through her pleasantries, gesturing at the younger, dark haired maid beside Alayne. If she appeared before him in the past, his mind must remember for her to be here, but he had no recollection of it at all. The younger girl froze entirely. Alayne blinked at him, but eventually brought a hand to the girl’s shoulder.
“This is Myria. She’ll be working at Maegor’s Holdfast from now on. I'm showing her around. You needn’t mind a thing, she wouldn’t tend to your quarters, but Aemon’s,” Alayne explained.
“Aemon’s…?” he asked. Just saying his brother’s name felt foreign on his lips. Why would his mind make up a maid for Aemon?
Alayne’s lips lined flat, dark eyes examining him before answering. “As to help with young Princess Rhaenys,” she elaborated further. “My Prince, is everything alright?”
No. He had only heard a short while ago that his niece perished at Rook’s Rest. She was not young, she was five and fifty, and dead. Did his mind decide to plague him with ghosts?
“Yes,” he said half-heartedly, rubbing his temples. “Carry on.”
Alayne hummed, eyes kept on him until Myria bowed her head, waiting on Alayne to leave with her anxiously. The two maids soon left, and he remained by his door, inhaling deeply. His family had been on his mind at the moment of his death, but…
He ran a hand through his hair. Calm down.
Vaegon began walking down the hallways of Maegor’s Holdfast. It was just like in his room; it was as if he was walking through an avenue of his memories. The scent of food filling up the place with morning cooking, the sounds of steps and talk of maids, servants, kingsguards and family members all too clear. It used to peeve him endlessly, these minor distractions that didn’t allow him to read in peace.
He ended up by a window to the Holdfast’s private yard. While the Keep itself had its gardens, the royal family members had their own outdoor garden for themselves. He heard giggles, and turned his head to look outside.
He saw Rhaenys and Viserys playing with some grass and dirt. The both of them were small children; not the tall Queen that Never Was nor the pot-bellied King with his grandfather’s rainbow-gemmed crown. A squealing Viserra, only slightly older than them, yelped at young Viserys tossing at her some of the dirt.
The piercing laugh of Alyssa filled the yard, triumphing the hearty one of Baelon as if it contested it. Beside them were Aemon and Jocelyn with their held back smiles, that only grew tighter as Viserra loudly complained at a suddenly rather helpless Baelon for allowing himself to be amused at her so-called dirty peril.
It didn’t feel like a dream at all. It felt too vivid, and the heart he decreed himself to stop beating had drummed in his chest painfully. Baby Viserys, being the only one facing the window, lifted his eyes and saw him, letting go of a nearby grass and babbling excitedly until toppling backwards. Rhaenys came to his aid before his parents could, and she saw him as well — unlike the young boy, she spoke, or rather shouted very clearly.
“Uncle?” she called aloud. “Come!”
His siblings turned around towards the windows to look — he almost immediately stepped back from it. He knew he was no better than a coward, choosing to live and die at the Citadel rather than face his family as things grew troubled, but wasn’t this cruel? He’d rather his imagination of them be angry, hurt, anything else.
Why were they smiling at him, as if they were always so simple to approach? None of them got along with him. It was no complaint; he hadn’t got along with them either, and he had stopped trying to get along with them by the time he gave up his training with Baelon. The books his brothers gifted to him were from pity, manners, and perhaps mother’s instructions— why was he even seeing Alyssa stepping up from her seat to yell at him to come by?
They were all lost to time and fire already. His hand rounded into a fist and began hitting at his speeding heart as if to nail a stake through it. Stop beating and die already, it was the one thing he wanted, what he commanded the poison to do. Die! Let me die in peace!
“Vaegon?” a tentative voice called from the end of the hallway.
He turned his head to see Daella standing at the very edge of the corridor. The frightened wrinkle of her lips and her fiddling hands, the small form of her that shook life a leaf at the gentlest gust of wind. He was hyperventilating, feeling at the brink of suffocation.
This was hell. The seventh hell, the worst of all of them, the one Maegelle had said the worst sinners are condemned to. I saw your cold form, I saw your corpse burning— I saw mother crying over your ash!
“Go away,” he said in agony, falling back on the floor. Daella winced at the sharpness of his voice. He wanted to scream. You are a ghost— no, a demon. How dare it take his poor sister’s form? The one that shook so accurately in fear, even as she tried to put a frightened step forward.
“Vae–Vaegon, are you alright…?” she nearly whimpered.
“Go away,” he repeated, his too young hands rose to his head, digging into the hair that he had long lost. His old heart was about to burst again, and he couldn’t help it. He yelled at the top of his lungs. “Leave me be!”
Spooked beyond any imagination, Daella shrieked tearfully and ran away, leaving him to fall laying back on the floor no better than baby Viserys on the bed of grass.
He felt himself growing faint, and hoped that this was mercy. If to the end of his days he believed not in gods nor fate, he’d renounce his views whole if only the Stranger took him to truly rest now. He was tired. He was so, so tired — he wanted to see no light at the end of his tunnel. He wanted silence, and endless darkness to engulf himself with.
He heard rushing steps around him, the screeches of voices, as if he was on the battlefield himself. ‘Prince Vaegon!’ ‘Get a hold of yourself, my Prince!’ Voices called from all around him, and forms of men and women surrounded him, the clank of kingsguard’s armor and swipe of maid’s flax-fabric skirts too close to comfort. They dimmed the vibrance of these painful memories with their pale faces but it was still too much. They were human mountains around him, so alive as they touched and shook him. Leave me be, he wanted to beg them, but he couldn’t move his mouth. Let me die.
Darkness overtook his all too clear eyesight, eyes rolling back as he lost consciousness. Let me—
—
“—rest,” he whimpered. “Let me rest…”
“Grand Maester Elysar!” a sharp cry was heard from right beside him. He winced at the sound of it, his headache throbbing right behind his eyes. He felt so ill; if his fevered form felt bad before, now he felt at the proper throes of illness, his whole body sweating. There were steps around him again, and he felt the ever present need to hide from them.
He moved his head to the side, trying to burrow into whatever had been in front of him. Avoid everything else, if only he could. He felt something silk-like, but it wasn’t the linens of his bed or pillows. He didn’t understand what it was until he opened his eyes slightly to see a silk blue sleeve, spilling onto the red of the bed. From it peeked a few ringed, slightly weathered fingers.
The hand rose up to his forehead. “My poor boy,” his mother’s voice said witheringly. “Where have you gotten such an awful fever?” she exhaled shakily, before anger took over her tone. “How could no one notice he was ill? He had never whimpered like this. Even when he was a babe at my breast, he never did.”
Another voice came from beside her. “Please calm down, your Grace,” Grand Maester Elysar said. “If he is whimpering, it means he is gaining consciousness. It only implies he’s on the way to recovery,” he consoled her. “It is a failing of his attendants that no one had noticed, but the Prince hardly speaks to anyone of his own volition. We all know this.”
“You may as well command my heart to wither, Grand Maester,” Alysanne answered. “He is lonesome, but to be so lonesome others cannot see his pains…” she sniffled. “My poor boy. To have this happen on his own nameday, too. My poor boy.”
My nameday?
“Mother…” he forced himself to speak. His mouth was ever dry.
“Vaegon,” his mother immediately turned back to him, her hands holding his cheeks and temples. He groaned, and apologetic hands quickly loosened their hold. “I’m sorry, my darling,” she weaved a hand through his hair, instead, pressing softly against his scalp. He sighed in relief, at damp hair lifting and the touch of gentle fingers. “Are you awake? Do you want any water?”
Grand Maester Elysar sat by the bed and took his arm, peeling his sleeve upwards. “Don’t overexert yourself, Prince Vaegon. you have quite the fever,” he said, and then pressed his fingers onto his wrist. “Your pulse is steady. Good.”
He sighed out a wavering seeth. Might as well spit at me. If he had the power to snatch away his arm, he would’ve. Instead, he refused to address him altogether, and looked at his mother. “Mother, where am I?”
“In your room, my darling,” she hurried to answer, brushing through his hair with her fingers once more. “Ser Ryam brought you back. You’ve collapsed in the middle of the Holdfast. Scared me half to death, you,” she said, and he noticed a tear slipping down her cheek. Trying to gulp was a painful occasion with how dry his throat was, but he did so anyway. She was crying over her poor boy , when he was in fact her last surviving son. It wasn’t right — if anything, she was his poor mother, having to watch all her children die. If she watched him perish too, it would nearly be a complete set of them.
He willed himself to die, but the guilt had reared its face at him again, seeing her face.
“I’m sorry, mother,” he said. He never got to say that to her, not once in his life. There was much to be sorry for, but the words never came out. His letters to her and father, he wrote out courtesy. It was a chore for him, nothing more, nothing less. He had treated being a part of this family a hassle, but the true hassle had come now, the ghosts of them all looming over him like a lost boy. Emotions were not easy for him to decipher, but they became so vividly sharp within him over the years. “I’m sorry. ”
Alysanne inhaled shakily. “No , no, don’t say that,” she stressed in nearby tears, and looked at the Grand Maester. “What are we to do? He must’ve lost his mind. Grand Maester, he would die before apologizing, what are we to do?”
It was almost laughable, the wisdom of Queen Alysanne. How do you know me so well, mother? I left your side so early in this life.
“Please breathe, your Grace—”
The doors to the quarters opened again, the tall form of his father slipping in. Dignified and poised, he looked nothing like the withering man that remained of him.
“Your Grace,” Grand Maester Elysar bowed his head, while his mother looked to his father with worried wide eyes.
“How is he?” his father asked, his voice steeled iron.
“He only just woke up,” mother answered. “I think the fever wore down his mind, Jaehaerys.”
Father sighed, coming by him from the other side of the bed. “Foiled your own nameday feast and frightened your siblings and mother to their very core,” he said as he was sitting down. “I’d argue his mind is at its sharpest, and he did exactly what he wished for.”
Vaegon averted his eyes from him. It was true that he never cared for his nameday feasts. He had never been interested in fuss nor flattery. Any novice, acolyte or maester he taught would know as much— he was quite the harsh instructor, and any favors and compliments towards him swayed him none. He never wished to frighten any of his family, however; it only happened that he naturally upset them, and just about anyone else. One quality fed the other, and there wasn’t much option aside from being recluse from thereon.
“Jaehaerys, he had been burning up and whimpering in pain. It was no prank,” mother defended him with a most piercing glare towards his father.
Father stared at her for a few moments, and then turned back to him, reaching for the scrawniest section of his forearm. “What say you, my son? You can lay down and enjoy your books in peace, I’ll allow it. Have you any regrets?” he asked.
All too many.
“I don’t wish to read anything,” he spat weakly. He read the best books this realm has to offer from cover to cover several times during his lifetime. None would be able to soothe him now.
“Jaehaerys,” mother’s anxiety pressed on as she spoke.
His Father’s face tensed, but otherwise kept his cool. “Is that so? I’ll have you know, we’ve been speaking with Grand Maester Elysar. He thinks you may be fitting to be an Archmaester,” he said. The Grand Maester seemed rather pale at that moment. “You always loved the library so, that we thought of sending you to try. To succeed, in truth. I have little doubt you would manage.”
“He is not going anywhere in this state,” Alysanne interjected. Jaehaerys glanced at her, and sighed as his gaze returned to him.
“If you wish to go, you’ll have to convince your mother you are able to.”
And Vaegon suddenly understood where he was placed. When he was placed. He just turned five and ten, when his father announced to him he would be boarding a ship down to Oldtown, to become a novice of the Citadel. Back then, he simply accepted it, but the news gladdened him. He thought father and mother finally saw him for what he could be— what he should be.
But he was just five and ten. He loved to learn, and he succeeded walking that path, but it had plenty of its own difficulties. He wasn’t well-liked in the Citadel either, and being dedicated to research had often been a rewardless job. He thrived regardless, grew old between the pages he read and wrote, but at this young age, while the books spelled everything out clearly, he hardly understood himself and the world around him.
Why am I here?
Vaegon didn’t think it was a dream anymore. A dream would not be so consistent to continue on and on in this manner; if he lost consciousness here, wouldn’t the scene change? Mother running her fingers through his hair and comforting him, didn’t indicate to him he was in any Hell, either. His sibling’s living faces, welcoming and stepping forward to see him again… it was frightening to him. Yet, with him only being able to imagine them chiding him for abandoning them in the afterlife— to see them do anything but…
Who was he to abandon them again?
He couldn’t quite understand this reality yet, but if it matched the reality he had experienced, a war was on the horizon here too. Each of his siblings’ deaths had been a step towards it. Their waving toddlers would become victims of war, fire and blood, if nothing changed.
One part of his studies that had never been taken seriously by his fellow Archmaesters, was the study of arcane arts. Alchemy was scoffed at; sorcery was utterly ridiculed — the topic of magic as a whole was entirely disregarded as ancient if not myth. He was an Archmaester of sums and economics, but he couldn’t help but dabble in the Higher Mysteries as well, if only for himself. Perhaps it was his own blood that beckoned him to do so. Old Valyria was known as the last relic of the age of magic, and his family’s bloodline was a surviving relic of the empire. The Targaryen story had implications of truths incomprehensible all for the sake of the survival of the line.
Perhaps, only perhaps — years of rewardless research had led him to this point. Magic cannot be proven, cannot be quantified, but when it is in effect — it can change realities, bring up monsters upon this world, raise the dead. Save lives.
His fevered hand slipped away from his father’s grip, as he struggled to prop himself upon the bed to sit up.
“Vaegon, please be careful with yourself,” mother cautioned. “You need to rest.”
His heart refused to let its pulse die down. The blood pushed out from it was sustenance and fuel, rebelling against mortality. There was no rest to be had, mother.
“Have you arranged for my travels yet, Father?” he asked. Father never asked when he had come to a decision. Though Vaegon had been receptive to going to Oldtown, in truth, when Father told him, it wasn’t a choice. But if it was now—
“Not yet. It only came up as a topic today,” Father answered. “I understand that you would like to go?”
—it means I’m here for a reason.
The stars aligned; even if Father wanted him to go, mother wouldn’t allow it for a good while. Vaegon felt a cold shiver upon him, one that tingled all through him up to the very nape of his neck. It fought against the fire of his ill-body, invigorating something in him as a mystery grander than he could ever imagine was unveiled in his mind. Then…
This was his life now. His renewed life, as it stood. If tomorrow he’ll be woken to realize it was delirious dreaming, he’d concede to it, but he had the sense that it was not. The King and Queen before him were his real mother and father. The bed he was laying in, his own bed. This world, alive, vibrant and full of old memories — was his, and subject to his change. And if it was true, it wasn’t a fever dream. It was a second chance, and a responsibility.
He had to mind himself better. He had spooked mother enough. She as well as his father would get a clue that something was strange if he were to defy all their expectations in one go. He let himself pause, and gave out a tentative statement. “I am not opposed, but…” he began, lifting his eyes to his father. “I am not certain that is the path for me, Father. May I have some time to think of it?”
Father’s gaze examined him, if not pierced right through him, eyes gleaning every bit of knowledge from his movements. Vaegon read books, but father read men. They were both good at what they did. “Does that imply there’s another path that you may wish to take, son?”
He licked his dry lips, and nodded slowly. “I believe so.”
What can possibly kill a dragon, Archmaester Vaegon?
“I see,” Father said. “Restore your health alongside investigating that ambition, then. I’ll give you your time, so long as you find your conviction.”
Nothing. If it is up to me, nothing at all.
—
The fevered prince ailed for several, prolonged days, burning just as his late eldest sister grew cold. Queen Alysanne was frightened at his condition, but King Jaehaerys remained that in his son’s eyes he saw a resolution that was to last. “The Stranger cannot take a man unwilling to go. Our boy will live.”
—Archmaester Gyldayn, from Fire and Blood
