Chapter Text
His name was Jon Snow. How…ordinary.
At least Winterfell was a proper castle.
His uncle/father proved to be an excellent parent. Eddard Stark, though a great lord and thus always with demands on his time, was certain to dedicate time to spend with his children. When Daemon/Jon and Robb were still infants he came into the nursery before even the nurses to check on them and speak to them in his low, Northern brogue. He could not remember if Prince Baelon did so during his first life. To his shame he could admit that he did not do so as often for his own children. He had loved them, but when compared to Ned Stark, he fell short as a father.
The physical constraints of infancy taught him patience if nothing else. He had struggled with knowing words and what he wanted to say but being physically unable to shape the sounds. But with effort he started speaking before a more usual age. He pushed himself to stand and then to take his first steps, aggravated by the clumsiness of too young limbs. It would be some time before he reclaimed his previous grace and agility. And while Lord Stark and the servants native to the North praised his apparent precociousness, Lady Stark and those she had brought with her scowled.
It did not surprise him that Stark’s Tully wife did not like him. What woman would like her husband’s bastard? He did wonder if she had given her husband some reason not to trust her, because surely there would be greater peace in his house if he told her the truth. That his uncle/father did not entrust his wife with the knowledge of his true birth told him that he, too, should be cautious. The lady never directly harmed or tried to injure him, but she was far from warm or mothering. No matter. If he could suffer his Bronze Bitch for the years of his marriage, he could withstand Catelyn Stark.
He finally grew big enough to wrestle a book onto his lap and open it without risk of clumsy hands tearing precious pages. He again surprised all by seemingly mastering how to read with ease. He was limited in what books he was allowed at first, as there were things deemed too mature or upsetting for a child (adults could be quite frustrating with how protective they sometimes were) but he did find that even amongst the things ‘better suited’ for a young mind there were new things to learn. There were tales and histories in the North that he’d never been taught in the South.
In hindsight, it was perhaps foolish to think of Starks as ever noble and loyal. They had not ruled as the Kings of Winter for thousands of years with honor alone. There had been some fascinating members of House Stark. Ones with bloody pasts if you knew how to see past the gentled prose on the pages. It only made sense, of course. Weak men could not survive such a wild and hostile place.
Finally he and Robb both turned five. In truth, Robb’s fifth name day came, and since Jon was only a few moons younger Lord Stark saw no reason they should not start their martial training together. Though they were only given wooden practice swords, he was finally able to start reclaiming his skills. In this, too, he excelled. Ser Rodrick said something about bastards growing up faster and he’d had to tamp down the spark of annoyance it gave him. Let people think what they would, for now.
This time around he paid a bit more attention to archery. He still preferred swords, the up close struggle against another, but a bow was useful. Northmen also encouraged wrestling, as a sword could be lost in battle or you could be surprised when asleep or at rest. He’d been prepared to dismiss it until he learned of the Stark ancestor who had won Bear Island by challenging the Iron Born cunt who’d captured it to a wrestling match. He then bestowed it upon a house Mormont who were still their leal bannermen. It was also a greater challenge to his stripling body and, after years of being held back by youth, he was hungry for a challenge.
With growing up, proper lessons with the maester started and he was finally able to get a better insight to what had happened over the many years between his death and rebirth. The history and events previously deemed too mature for he and Robb to understand fully. What he learned saddened and horrified him.
His family no longer had dragons.
His family no longer held the Iron Throne.
The last Targaryen king had gone quite mad. Though Daemon had once told his brother that what the lords thought was of no consequence as he was the dragon and his word was truth and law, even he could admit Aerys had gone too far.
Burning people alive by wildfire over any imagined slight. Roasting the previous Lord Stark alive in his armor. Arranging for his heir to strangle himself to death trying to save his father. The deaths of Brandon Stark’s companions, all of whom were the sons of respected houses. Calling for the heads of Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon when arguably neither were involved past Eddard being Lord Stark’s son and Robert being his mother’s betrothed.
The Dance of Dragons, for that was what historians had chosen to call their fight for his wife’s birthright, had taught him that, yes, you did have to maintain good relations with your lords. Boros Baratheon had turned his back on the oaths his father had made in favor of the Greens. The Lannisters were never to be trusted. They’d had the Vale only by virtue of Rhaenyra’s blood tie to them because his own marriage to Rhea Royce had done them no favors there. The Starks were…well..the Starks. Though his current lineage being tied to the house might predispose him in their favor.
A king might be a king, but you cannot hope to remain so if you so blatantly disrespect the same lords upon whose armies you depend. As the lords proved, those same armies can be turned against you. Without dragons to maintain order and control, the Targaryens had needed to foster better relations with their nobles. Aerys had grossly failed at that. His father in this life should have acted sooner to remove him for the good of the Crown.
His father. Rhaegar Targaryen. There was another fool. He was hardly one to begrudge a man his lovers, he’d had plenty of his own, but there is a proper way to go about things. He had a wife, a princess of Dorne who had given him two children, and he’d lost his head over another who was barely more than a child. Lyanna Stark had been only five and ten. Not yet even of age and promised to another. A wiser action would have to let her marry Baratheon and then find a reason to bring them to court after she’d given her husband his heir. A discreet affair could easily be managed. Instead he’d let his cock do his thinking and set the already unstable political mess his insane father had made tumbling into utter chaos.
He’d found the books on their Dance and his children had won. But at too high a cost. Jace, Luke and Jeoffrey all lost. His precious Rhaenyra fed to her half-borther’s dragon. His own precious Rhaena wed to a damn Hightower! His Aegon had been so warped by witnessing his mother’s death that he managed to drive the final nail into the coffin of their dragons but his Viserys returned to become king as was his right. The Targaryens that followed were from his and Rhaenyra’s line, and their descendants had fucked everything over.
Was this why he had been reborn? Did the gods put him here to reclaim the throne?
He thought on this frequently. Old Nan, a wizened thing too old to still do heavy work but who was one of those servants that had been with a house so long they were as much as kin, often told him he was too young to brood so much. He would like to think on it more, but he was still a man’s mind in the body of a young boy, and often the adults about him urged him to act the age he appeared. He would be pulled from his contemplations into a game with Robb, sometimes including little Sansa who had been born with two years after his arrival here. Now there was Arya who was only a moon old yet and still tiny and new. Lord Stark had no trouble bedding his wife.
Then ravens came to tell of an uprising on the Iron Islands. The Iron Born cunts were stirring up trouble again. The banners were called and his uncle/father had to go to war.
Being a child during war was…odd. He preferred when he was fighting the war. This…this constant tension amongst those left behind was an irritation. Lady Stark was more snappish than usual and Daemon/Jon had to remind himself that there was only so far he should push back. Instead, he took every chance he could to not be in the fish wife’s view.
One place that worked better than most was the Godswood. She adhered to the Seven. Stark had even built her a little sept (that visiting a northern lords weren’t too happy about) for her prayers. He could usually be assured that he’d be left alone in the Godswood.
It was on one of these days that he found himself, now almost eight name days old, seated at the base of the heart tree. He looked up at the face carved into the bark as he thumped a random stick he’d picked up on the ground in an absent pattern.
“Was this you?” He looked at the face as though it might speak. “Did you do this? I died over the Gods Eye. Over the Isle of Faces. That would be your place before it would belong to anyone else. Did you send me here? To this time. To this family. For what purpose? The dragons are dead. My family is dead. What is it you would have of me? Or is this a punishment for the things I did in life?”
Wind rustled the leaves above him. His new father said the Old Gods spoke to them in the wind and the rustle. It was on them to listen.
He still wasn’t sure about the existence of gods, Old Gods, the Seven or the gods of Old Valyria. But if such beings existed, the Old Gods would be the ones who sent him here. Who else would have given him to House Stark?
“What do you want from me?”
The rustling grew as the breeze picked up. He stared at the face. No one knew for sure who carved them. Some said the Children of the Forest. Some said the Old Gods themselves. Though he didn’t know if the Northmen believed the Old Gods needed the faces to see them or if the faces were just there for adherents of the belief to focus upon.
He watched as the red sap seeped from the cuts in the bark. Red like blood, but brighter. Blood tended to go somewhat brown once exposed to air, but weirwood sap maintained its brightness.
Strange how the cuts that were used to carve the faces never fully healed. Even as old as this one must be, the sap still ran. And ran thick.
Daemon/Jon frowned. Too thick. And too plentiful. As he watched, the sap ran faster than before, as though the carvings were just made. He leaned forward, mesmerized as the red flowed down, stain8ng the white bark. It ran faster, like a fresh wound in flesh.
He reached out with one hand and pushed his fingers into the sap. It began to coat his skin, thick and oddly warm.
Taste it.
He brought his fingers to his mouth and touched the sap to his tongue. It was sharp and bitter. The flesh of his tongue tingled, like the spark that might dance along the fine hairs on your arm from wool running against it on a cold morning. The sensation spread from his mouth to the rest of his head which started to feel numb.
His vision began to grey out as his body fell forward against the heart tree.
~***~
“You have done better than I had thought you might, grand-sire. I half expected your arrogance to get the better of you before now.”
Daemon was still in the Godswood. The wind had stilled. The leaves had gone silent.
Standing on the other side of the hot spring at the base of the heart tree was a tall man with thin, aquiline features. His long white hair and pale skin gave him the Valyrian look, but the single eye was red rather than indigo or lilac. An albino, then.
“Who are you?”
“Come now. You have devoured ever history you could find as soon as you grew big enough to pull them from the library’s shelves. Hungry for every crumb of information you could find on our family. Can you not discern that for yourself?”
Albino. One eye. A wine red birthmark on the right side of his face.
“Brynden Rivers. Bastard of Aegon IV. Loyal to House Targaryen during to Blackfyre Rebellions.” Another act of foolishness on the part of his descendants. Legitimizing all of your bastards. They had enough trouble when strife arose between true born children. Adding bastards into things only courted more grief. “You were sentenced to the Wall after killing Aenys Blackfyre when under a peace accord for the Great Council.”
“A sacrifice I would make again if it meant keeping a Blackfyre off the throne and ensured a Targaryen sat upon it.”
“You rose to be the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, but vanished beyond the Wall on a great ranging.” Daemon frowned. “My sword was lost with you. You were the last one to have it.”
“I still do, though I’ve little use for it now. I will have it brought to you, when you’re old enough to wield it again.”
His frown deepened. “You speak as though you yet live. Did you do this to me?”
“Not many would consider my current state as ‘living’.” He was hit with an impression of an older and withered Brynden Rivers, seated amongst what looked to be thick tree roots. They grew around and into him. A hideous prison and throne.
And just as quickly, he was looking at the younger Brynden, standing tall and strong across from him.
“Do you know the most impressive thing about weirwoods? They do not die. Oh, they can be destroyed, but left alone they will not die. They will continue to grow and thrive. And they observe. They keep and store the memories of everything around them.”
The scene around them changed. They were standing in the gardens of the Red Keep. “They remember the tree that stood here until Baelor the Blessed had it cut down in his pious zeal.” Daemon saw himself. As he was before. Tall and fair. He was standing under the weirwood, his face turned up to bask in the sunlight as Rhaenyra, fresh and young as she was back then, walked towards him.
The scene changed again. He was no longer at the Red Keep, but standing surrounded by many weirwoods. “They remember your battle over them.”
Dragon cries made him look up. He watched as Caraxes collided with Vhagar high above. Watched himself as he launched from the saddle to close the distance between himself and Aemond, Dark Sister poised to strike.
Then the dragons were gone. The skies bright and clear. Two voices drew his attention back down to his level. Still on that patch of ground with the many weirwood faces looking on. People stood nearby. Not many. A Septon and three men dressed as kingsguard with a young couple before them. One tall with silver-gold hair and the other a lovely girl with dark curls. They spoke the marriage vows before their witnesses, the happiness in their faces as they held one another’s eyes clear.
“And they remember this. Rhaegar Targaryen and his Wolf Maid.”
This was no girl taken by force. “He married her. A second wife, like Aegon the Conqueror.”
“Not quite. That isn’t just any Septon, but the High Septon. He wasn’t keen on the idea of polygamy. Not even for a Targaryen. But Elia and Rhaegar only had one son and no spare. Not a second son, which history proves is the preferred choice at any rate. Elia could not risk another pregnancy so a compromise was made. Aegon and Rhaenys, his children with Elia, would remain Targaryens, Aegon would be the heir, but the marriage to Elia was dissolved. They did not love one another, but respected and cared for each other. They were friends, more than lovers, and she was willing to let him have his happiness as long as her children were not displaced.”
Daemon watched as his parents pledged themselves to one another and sealed it with a kiss.
“The vows of the Seven for the High Septon, spoken on the Isle of Faces for the bride’s adherence to the Old Gods.”
“Baratheon’s rebellion was based on a lie.”
“A lie. A tragic misunderstanding. Both are just as destructive if urged on by greedy men.”
Of course. “A crown prince does not set aside one wife and take another and no one know about it. Not without that ignorance being helped along.” He’d seen plenty of such machinations during his first life. Grasping cunts will do all manner of underhanded things.
“I did not do this to you, Daemon. I did not pluck your soul from your corpse and bring it forth. But I was aware that it had been done. And when your father was so certain his bride would bring forth a Visenya to go with his Aegon and Rhaenys, it was I who whispered your true name into your mother’s ear.”
They were in a room. Lyanna, pale and weak, lay on a blood stained bed. Eddard Stark crouched by her side, sorrow and pain in his eyes even as she begged him to promise that he would keep him safe. Daemon had been too new when this had happened. Still womb blind and unable to fully comprehend his surroundings as the lone maid his mother had placed him into his uncle’s arms.
His name…is Daemon Targaryen. Promise me, Ned. Promise me.
“A controversial name given more recent history, but it is yours. I thought you might like to keep it. Stark couldn’t use it, of course. Not if he were going to hide you in plain sight as he has done. Fortunate that you bear the Stark looks. A dire wolf’s coat to hide the scales of a dragon.”
He’d already puzzled much if this out. That the man claiming to be his father was his uncle. That he did so because, after the callous deaths of Rhaenys and Aegon Targaryen, speaking the truth would have condemned him as well. He had not known he was true born, however. Nor that it had been a love pairing and not rape or simple seduction. He knew Eddard Stark well enough by now that he doubted the man would have held such against him. He would have only seen an innocent babe who shared Stark blood. But knowing that his parents in this life had been together of their own will was…comforting.
“The Old Gods, then.”
“The Old Gods. Though I suspect R’hllor will try to claim you as well. But this goes beyond any one faith.”
Daemon’s brow furrowed again. “How so?”
“Because of Aegon the Conqueror’s dream. His vision of a great darkness from the North that would destroy all life.”
He grimaced. “This again. Rhaenyra told me of that dream. The one my brother told her about. I will tell you as I told her: Dreams did not make us kings. Dragons did.”
Rivers nodded. “True. But it was a dream that set Aegon on his path of conquest in the first place. Because he saw that what had happened before would happen again. Saw that all would be lost if steps were not taken.”
“What would happen again?”
Rivers shook his head. “You’ve been focused so much on reclaiming the Targaryen in you that you have neglected the Stark. You have the blood of the kings of Winter as well as that of the dragon now. You should pay heed to the wolf as well. You will need the gifts granted to you by both sides of your heritage if you are to succeed.”
The Bloodraven gave him a very Targaryen-esque smirk. “But you have done better than I had thought you might thus far. At least you are clever enough not to shout ‘I am Daemon Targaryen! Prince of the City!’ At the top of your lungs. Well, not outside of the occasional time you indulged Robb Stark in a bit of play.”
“And have Eddard Stark think me as mad as my grandfather? Certainly not.”
“Yes, well you were more cunning than your enemies were comfortable with. I did wonder at you being reborn with all your memories in tact. Though it does mean you are seen as a prodigy by many in charge of your rearing in this life. I trust you can use that to your advantage.”
“To what end? A Targaryen restoration?” The thought did appeal to him.
“If possible, but at least to become the kind of man people will follow and respect. You do need to learn your Stark and Northern histories and legends, Daemon. Dark things stir beyond the Wall, and the enemy gathers its forces. Right now you are a boy who has not yet seen a full eight years of life, regardless of the true age of your mind. You must spend these years making yourself ready, for the Long Night is coming. It is coming, and the living will need its Song of Ice and Fire if they are to survive.”
~***~
His head still felt oddly numb when rough hands gripped his shoulders and shook him, pulling him away from the heart tree. The sun had gone down and the bitter bite of Northern cold cut at him. He tried to pry his eyes open and saw the grizzled face of one of the guards left behind to watch over them just before he felt himself being lifted up into strong arms.
He watched the different types of branches as they passed under him. The Godswood was a good three acres in its own self contained area within Winterfell’s walls. A peaceful and beautiful place, really.
They passed into the keep, the person carrying him calling out that they’d found him.
“Where was he?”
“In the Godswood, milady. The lad must’ve fell asleep against the heart tree while praying. He were still kneeling against it when I found him. Forehead pressed right against the face.”
Slender hands touched his skin. Fever hot. “He’s cold as ice! Take him straight to the baths. And fetch the maester!”
He was dimly aware of someone wrestling him out of his clothes then being lowered into hot water. Perhaps he should have complained about them trying to boil him alive, but he was just too tired to do so. There were voices fussing over him. Lady Stark. Maester Luwin. Robb, before his mother shooed him away. Eventually it was just one voice, old and gentle even as it chided him.
“Scared us all something dreadful, little cub. We’re you worried for your father so much that you felt you had to pray yourself to death? Rest your mind over it. The raven came just after supper. The war is over. The Iron Born put back in their place. You da is coming home, safe and sound.”
He opened his eyes to look up at the old, careworn face with its halo of cloud-grey curls peeking around a woolen cap. “Nan?”
“What is it, little pup?”
“Tell me ‘bout the Long Night.”