Work Text:
Red
In His Heart Of
Black
*-*-*
Her mother died giving her birth, and her father and her brother, Rhaegar even before that. She would never have known so much as their names if Viserys had not been there to tell her. He is the only one left of her family. She is Daenerys Stormborn, the daughter of dragons.
When his sanity crumbles, so does her unblemished castle with a red door on it. Then on, he remains in a foul mood and is often busy hitting her or hurting her. He once cared for her, fed her, kept her safe, taught her the ways of the world. He had also told her she will be his Queen, bear him trueborn children with purple eyes and pale hair, and they shall take and rule Westeros together. She is a Targaryen.
He has sold her so that he can have his large army. She’s a little girl and her dreams may never come true. She watches her wedding with the eyes of a stranger; she is a princess of the greatest dynasty the world has known and her Khal is a horselord.
Beneath the stars, her Khal bends her, his hands bruise her back, and her cries are lost in the sounds of crickets and the gurgling waters of the nearby stream. She bleeds red on the green grass of the banks. But she is still alive, that must be something, isn’t it? In the coming moons, she wishes she weren’t.
The slave girls teach her what it means to be a Khaleesi. Learn their words, ride a horse and please her Khal. She was to be the bride of dragon and she charms the horselord Khal with her servitude. She looks towards the infinite stretch of the Great Grass Sea and dreams once again. The dreams that come to her are dark and foreboding and she begins finding comfort in the bronze, gold and red ripples of her dragon eggs. Only she feels the heat while others find them cold to touch.
They say her son will be the stallion who mounts the world. She says, you’re a dragon, just like your mother and her mother before her.
Then one day, Viserys is crowned in gold and she is all that is left of her House.
You hurt me. You frightened me.
Only when you woke the dragon. I loved you.
You sold me. You betrayed me.
She is truly alone when her unborn child is cruelly plucked away from her womb.
She snuffs the air out of her lifeless Khal’s lungs and gives the witch to the fire. She is Daenerys Targaryen and red is her color; the color of blood on her thighs when she was carried inside the tent where death danced, the color of blood of her never-born, the color of fire.
She is the daughter of dragons and she will earn her wings. Opening her arms to the fire, she embraces it, lets it swallow her whole. The priestess sings her songs and she burns all night.
No, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don't you see?
Cloaked in black soot, she is reborn in fire and blood, and the day comes alive with the first song of dragons in over a century. The bronze, gold and red pairs of eyes stare at her and she knows she has chosen her dragon and he has chosen her back.
I am the daughter of fire, the blood of Aegon the Dragon, and those who harm my people, will die screaming.
She bends the slavers to her will and in her quest for peace, forgets that she is a dragon. Her new husband’s lips are blue and bruised, and when he thrust himself inside her, his manhood is cold as ice. She is the mother of dragons and she will never bear his child. Her mate is a shadow and she shall find him in this life.
The fire of the beast she rides is red, red are its eyes, and when she towers above them all, the Dothraki kneel before her and declare that she is the stallion who mounts the world.
I’m a dragon. It’s a lesson she won’t forget.
She leans into the man in her feather-bed and shivers in grief. He draws her to him, catching the tear in her eye with his lips, cupping her face between his hands, he kisses her cheeks. Her hand rests on the flat planes of his scarred chest, and tucking her face between his shoulder and collarbone, she asks, “And what’s your story, King in the North? The truth for your future bride, not the one for the bards.”
He’s not the enigma that had walked into her throne room, the man clad in black, who seemed to belong and not quite. The memory is vivid as daylight; she didn’t want to stare and neither did he. But their eyes kept flicking to each other’s faces, and as they moved closer, the dark gloom he carried, faded in her light. His grey eyes had smiled before retreating back into nothingness as he turned around and left her with a question. Am I your prisoner or are you mine?
He had heard her solemnly. The bitterness is too much to endure and the need for violence is singing though his veins. But he cannot ignore what she’s doing; weaving her fingers with his (slackening his clenched fist with her love), breathing hot against his neck, covering him with small kisses; allaying his rage and filling him with passion.
“I’m a lord’s bastard.” He tells her, “We’re born of lust, lies and weakness. Wanton and treacherous. And black of heart.” He scoffs. “It was almost a relief when I left the only home I had ever known.”
He says the wise nobles and septons may have been right, for he has broken most of the vows has taken. Except the ones that matter anyway. For you, I’ll be happy to find my own way to the seventh damned hell. He pulls her up on him and kisses her hungrily, his fingers curling above her hip.
“I have seen death and doom and have won crown and glories. I have known the touch of a woman. I betrayed her and it was Gods’ justice when I was betrayed by my men.” He searches for disgust in her eyes; it’s not to be found. Her sadness is not feigned and the kiss she plants on his lips is an elixir.
He tells her that he bled red when his heart was pierced and it was a Red priestess who brought him back. He says that the vile scar above his heart doesn’t hurt, unaware how much it aches in her chest. In the same breath he reminds her, “I’m a Snow, they call me the White Wolf but black was always my color.”
She opens her lips to protest but he pulls her sheer peignoir above her head and whirls her beneath him.
“What more do you wish to know, my love?”
“Everything. But now, I rather forget.”
She gasps when his tongue invades her. She tastes the ale on his lips and his ravenousness for her in the harsh grip of his hands parting her thighs for him. His fingers play with her sex and he prides in it that she is always so wet for him. He braces his knees between her legs and strokes his length in his hand. It is already pearling with his seed and he circles her nub to bring her near to his own desire. “Fill me, Jon.” Her words disarm him, so far he has never spilled inside her. He wants to protest (our child should come from wedlock, he believed) but nods a bit too eagerly, and she moans his name as he slides inside her.
The frown of her brows, the want in tilt of her hips and the gentle shove of her hand against his chest tell him that she needs something else. He curls his arms underneath her and rolls onto his back. She smiles as she rocks above him. Unabashed and wanton and all his.
When his hands rove over her curves and his lips find the pink pebbles of her chest, she tugs his hair in her fists. Demanding. Always so demanding. He possessively strokes her sides and her breasts, his lips greedily suck her pert tips, and an unbridled growl escapes his chest making him painfully aware of how her moans are throwing him off the edge of restraint.
Trapped between her legs, he braces himself on his heels and pulls her to him, anchoring her to his body with his solid arms circled around her and he asks, “Is this what you truly want, Daenerys?”
She nods with a now bashful smile, and he is rutting against her. Deep and hard. Her eyes roll back into her head and she grinds against his hips. He loves her cries in the confines of their chambers, and his mouth on her neck leaves a trail of treasures they discover together on these nights when he marks her his. As she pleads for her release, he rams roughly, his desire hard and throbbing and she spasms around him, crying out his name.
A heady rush of pleasure should await him as she whimpers. Instead, a bite of anger and envy wrenches his already mangled heart as he thinks about all others who have come into their lives before him and her. He regrets not being her first but knows she will be his last and he, hers. As if she can hear his thoughts, she reminds him, “Make me yours, I need you.”
The next thing he knows is, he’s thrusting inside her, his arousal a beast slamming against the walls of the castle, and he comes hot and groaning, imagining he’s cleansing them both off the memories of their past. As he gives her his seed, seed that should’ve always been hers, only hers, it isn’t shame that surrounds him, not the unworthiness that clung to him all his life, he’s giddy with triumph and all his uncertainties have vanished in a flare of their heat.
He kisses her, nuzzles her, and rubs his hands up and down her back as she climbs down from her peak.
She has never been touched by such loving hands. The hands on her have always been cruel or cold, or always wanting something from her.
“I dreamt of you”, she tells him.
He weaves his fingers in her hair and slants her close to his face. When their eyes meet, he asks, “And?” Tell me, my love, the dark things they say about bastards, are they true?
She kisses him earnestly and holds her gaze steady with his. “You were a shadow, and yet, comelier than the fairest man.”
Fire. She lights his world and burns his diffidence. Red is her color and Black is his. She lies sprawled above him and he smiles, “-- what a pair we make, you a red dragon, I, your pen of black.”
“Black is my pride, the color of my House, and you are my home.” She touches his cheeks with her slender fingers and pledges, “If the Gods allow, I will carry your seed and house your soul. Jon, you’re mine and I’m yours.”
*-*-*
Moons later, when they tell them that he is the son of the dragon, he wants to slam his fist in the stone walls and bleed red. Everyone around him screams, trying to stop him when he storms out from their sight. Everyone but her.
The skies rage and wroth on his behalf. The words have ruined him more than the bite of steel to his chest.
The dark and foreboding nightmares follow her here too. A thousand vows, a thousand promises, the promised days when the sun will shine and starry nights when colours will light the skies -- will it all turn to ash in a blaze of fate? She is some invisible, hooded girl when she crosses the dark corridors of the ancient northern castle of the Kings of Winter, and finds him in the meagre room of his boyhood.
“Wine?" She hopes it will wash the bitterness from his spirit.
He watches her from the shadows, the room is torn bare, just him, a chair and a table, and his bitter ale. “Your guards?”
“I came alone. Unnoticed.”
Anger flashes in his eyes. “You’re Daenerys Targaryen, you will never not be noticed!”
She pours their wine and stands at a distance from him. His dark eyes are a raging storm tonight and he scares her. There’s pain and sadness in her voice when she asks, “Do you still love me?”
He steps closer and takes her face in his palms. His lips hold a thirst and his eyes are starved. They struggle against the table; struggling to find each other’s lips, struggling for their souls and when the wine spills, red trickles down on the floor; red of the blood in her veins, same as his.
“I thought (I feared) you will never find me.” He complains and rejoices all at once.
She smiles at him, unbelieving. Her mouth finds his life-giving lips and she sucks them violently. “Take me, Jon.”
There are no battles within him, no rights and wrongs. He knows now, why he felt an outsider all his life, why he never belonged. Its she who is his home and that is how it was always meant to be. In the iciness of his childhood room where no fires grace the hearth, he burns from inside, and eagerly moves their clothes out of their way to join with her where he too needs the most. The knots that refuse to yield, he rents them with his bare hands and pins her underneath him. Aligning their bodies and souls, he becomes one with her and then stops to exhale. Relief. Relief washes over him as he feels complete. She cages him like a vice and he bends down to plant kisses against her jaw and the pale, pulsating column of her neck. He is taking her slowly, stretching her, filling her the way she always asks, and her moans are all that he wants to hear.
Her moans grow louder, drowning the sounds of the distant thunder. She is sprawled like a dragon, her wings clutching the sides of the table, he is standing and thrusting hard inside her and her hips undulate under his lax hold. His need for her outweighs the burdens of kinship and bloodlines, it’s above the oaths they took before the heart tree or the mortal beings. That need is buried deep into his bones, in the warmth of her smile and the kindness of her soul.
She melts against him, clamping him between her walls, and he follows her soon.
He collapses atop her and she is happy to bear his weight. “Stay”, she whispers and wreathes him in her embrace when he tries to unburden her of his heaviness. Their groans turn to pants and then whispers of love. Her arms twine around his neck, her clouded lilacs meet his steely grey and in that moment Daenerys knows, Jon is forever hers.
When he finally pushes himself up, he takes her with him. She is leaning into his chest and he shields her from the world, declaring, "I will always love you, Dany." As he smoothens her silver hair with loving strokes of his callused hands and unhooks and fastens his black cloak around her – he had ripped her coat in places and also, because he wants to remind all Gods that she is his -- she smiles, you're my dragon, and you were always my home.
*-*-*
She stands by his side and not in his shadow, she is his strength and he, her wit. To an unknowing eye, they are as opposite as the sun and the moon. Her hair pale as day and his’ dark as night, her eyes are lilacs of summer and his are grey of winter. Beneath the layers of fabric and skin, they are one and the same. The same ghosts haunt them at day, and the same pale shadows chase them at night.
They are the children of destiny, the promised ones, and their songs will be sung long after they have turned to ash and dust. Their line was all but extinguished when they came into this world, but in the castle of the Dragons where red comes alive on black, here they are, with their little, wide eyed dragons, narrating the story of a wandering Targaryen Princess and a lost Targaryen Prince.
"-- Ooh! Then what happened, Muña? Did the Princess find her Dragon Prince?"
*-*-*