Chapter Text
Being born is a terrifying experience. It was a wonder children didn’t come out of the womb utterly mad. It is loud and confusing. You are pushed and squeezed from warmth into cold, harsh light. Your eyes cannot yet see and sounds make no sense.
To experience it with all the cognitive understanding of a grown man, one who had lived a life of wealth, battle and sacrifice, was vastly irritating.
Daemon Targaryen did not fully understand the madness he’d fallen into. Not in the beginning. He’d never truly believed in gods. He’d often mocked those who held to tightly to the idea of them, and not just because he hated that Hightower cunt his brother had wed and her self righteous piety. But he began to think this confusion was some punishment he’d been damned to in answer to the things he did in his life.
When he realized he’d been born anew, given a new life, he wasn’t sure what to think. Other than to be angry at having the mind of a man but be trapped in a new and tiny body that lacked the strength or coordination to do anything.
In time he was able to puzzle out some things. The woman who nursed him was a wet nurse, not his mother. His mother was dead and they carried her bones with them. A moon into their journey he could see things close to him, so he learned the long, solemn face of the man leading them. He heard others call him Lord Stark. To his infant vision it was a bit difficult to be sure, but Daemon thought he looked like a Stark. Grim and stoic. It could have been worse. At least the Starks could be trusted and they were brutal cunts in a fight.
There was another man who sometimes held him. He seemed small and odd. Lord Stark called him “Howland” and he called him “Ned”. Others called him “Lord Reed” and Daemon figured he must be one of those cranogmen from the Neck and its swamps. Tiny folk that would never be great warriors on the battlefield but were excellent at scouting, sneaking and stealth.
The mother whose bones they carried with them was Stark’s sister, so it was his uncle who sometimes gently held him. He heard mutters of a Targaryen who had stolen her, so he might still be of the dragon. The men seemed less than eager to gossip about such things so he didn’t hear much. Stark had a wife, he’d learned that already, and she’d born him a son and heir.
Shapes and faces and colors were still not easy to make out as young as he was, but Daemon’s mind worked just fine. This Stark who held him and started to sing some Northern song in a gruff, raspy voice was not his father. Not in this new life. But he was willing to claim him as his child. Like Laenor Velaryon had claimed Rhaenyra’s boys by Ser Harwin, though clearly not for the same reason. Since he couldn’t do anything other than eat, shit and sleep in his current body, Daemon listened and learned.
They shielded him from the cold of the North by wrapping him in their furs. At the Neck Stark bade farewell to Howland. He held him while speaking low. Reed said he would keep something safe. Something they had found with him and his mother. The cranogman offered to take Daemon as well, saying he could keep him safe and away from prying eyes. Stark declined, saying if he one day grew to resemble his father too much he might reconsider, but as long as he could pass for a Stark he would be kept at Winterfell like as Stark. Just as well. Daemon didn’t like the idea of growing up in a swamp.
He would find his way back to Kings Landing one day. He wasn’t quite sure why Stark thought to abscond with a Targaryen child this way, but he could do nothing about it as a babe. He would grow and reclaim his skills and prowess and he would be a prince again. Perhaps even a king.
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