maskormenacelogs | you'll no longer fear when your heart's turned to gold

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you'll no longer fear when your heart's turned to gold

WHO: Viserys Targaryen and YOU
WHERE: All over
WHEN: Month of February
WHAT: Stuff and things - first meetings, reunions, you name it
WARNINGS: Well his canon is what it is and Viserys is harsh to women, especially verbally...will update if there needs to be more here!

NONAH 006;

So. He's definitely dead. He's also not quite sure what sort of beyond this entire set up is. It's...nothing he'd ever been told, or been hinted it, or even imagined. The world was completely different. His ancestors were not sitting atop bejeweled thrones waiting to welcome him into their arms and tell him the future of their name. No comfort for his end, for his sister becoming a kinslayer. No reassurance. No horses, either, no sun, no dirt, no savages...something far more confusing and stranger and awaited, and for once in recent years? Viserys was rather cooperative and quiet. A magical feat to be sure, for when he was taken to his new "home" (ha-ha-ha) and began to find his footing, even a little bit, that shock slid down into his belly to join the rest of his nicely marinated bitterness. He'd be back in regular form sooner rather than later. He wasn't about to change out of his rotting clothes, which would help, tattered once-black top with a three-headed red dragon being the most notable thing on him.

He had managed to find the place while empty. That won't last forever. And his new roommates can come across him in a variety of ways. Perhaps he's turned the water faucet off and on in the kitchen, staring at it in an angry sort of confusion. Perhaps he's doing the same...in a bathroom that is not his. Or more invasive still: opening, inspecting, and trying to make sense of hygienic products most men would flee from. Perhaps he's standing in front of the TV with nothing but static on, or a really terrible infomercial about Tupperware, confused but amazed. He may be in the hallway, turning the lights off and on, seemingly offended by their mere existence. Or something else. Anything is possible.

PICK A CITY ANY CITY;

He is...trying. A little. There is some effort happening here that does not at all involve taking off the symbol of his family. So the clothes are a bit tattered and worn, and perhaps a little musty, so what! They are far, far better than anything this world has to offer. But. He is still trying. Trying to make sense of vehicles, and the many people, and places, of dogs and cats, of ice cream and other sweets, of hamburgers and foods he'd never have in the lands he was meant to rule, of the tall buildings, of just about everything there was or was not. So he can be found in quite literally any given situation, either looking grumpy and confused and standing out due to his whole everything, or perhaps causing a scene by nearly getting hit by a car. By offhandedly telling a hot dog vendor his food tastes better than horse meat, and getting some looks for it. Or worse than horse meat! Sky's the limit here, have a ball.

THE MESSIAH IS MY SISTER AIN'T NO KING MAN SHE'S MY QUEEN; CLOSED

And then, in this world of impossibility, he sees an impossibility that is familiar. A shadow hits the ground that he has seen in his dreams only. Looking up, he knows, despite knowing there are no more dragons—not those sort, anyway. From the reactions of those nearby, he also knows he isn't the only one who saw that. Who saw a dragon.

He followed. Like he'd heard the cry of his own child, Viserys kept an eye on wings and one ahead, and ran. Past any city he may have been near, into longer grasses, through shallow waters, it didn't matter. Suddenly he had all the energy and stamina in the world. Who can know the heart of a dragon, if not another dragon?

He worried he'd lost him, until he reached a steep slope. At the bottom of it was, yes, a dragon. A real dragon. So very dark in color, reminding him of a smaller Black Dread, stories and paintings running through his mind more than real fear. He was a Targaryen, he had nothing to fear. He knew. The dragon would know, too. That's how they were in days long past, anyway — surely that would be the same now?

His feet moved slowly, his heart beating just the opposite. Only when the dragon turned and noticed him did Viserys stop. Dead in his tracks, open-mouthed, in awe, hair and eyes a very very familiar shade...but the man himself, perhaps not familiar at all. Perhaps not having made the best decision here but still taking another step forward, for once looking every bit as humbled and submissive as he'd demanded of his sister.

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Daenerys doesn't stop him, and Drogon doesn't either, but his presence is too huge to be denied. Not just in bulk, but the smell of lizard and fire, and the gore on his breath, and the occasional snort and rumble of a giant living creature. Jagged teeth can be seen even without him needing to curl his lip. There is intelligence in his eyes of gold and red.

And there is intelligence in Dany's. Clear. Sad, too.

"Khal Drogo perished," she says. "And in the fire that consumed his body, I set ablaze the witch that caused his demise. And I took the eggs into my arms and joined them both. I emerged with the first dragons of our era. Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion."

Before Viserys can eat up all the territory in his approach, Dany claims the last couple of steps for herself.

"Four years," she says. In case he was wondering.

His internal glee over the death of his murderer and said murderer's wife being the one to tell him of it is squashed by the conflicting glee about dragons. So close, now, he can see Drogon in the most high definition. No pictures or stories could have prepared him for this moment, could have done justice to the living, breathing beasts. He saw everything he'd ever been told and more. Heard more, too.

That was his name. A dragon, somewhere, had been born, and carried his name. A version of it anyway. His and their brother's! Dragons born, and then given the names of men who died before her. Was it a sick joke? Did she miss them, even those she had never met, even those she had watched die?

"Four—" he points to Drogon, close enough for Daenerys to touch him now, his arm even brushing against her shoulder as he gestures. His face, his torn rags from the Dothraki sea, all barely six inches away. Easy to reach out. Easy to smell and see as quite real. "—years, this? Four years old and already so fierce! Where are the others?"

Her brothers, he almost says, but no, that loops back to misery and the presence of a dragon is doing a Goddamn good job of keeping him from thinking about what that four years also means. Over four years since she last saw Viserys wear the crown that killed him.

It isn't a flinch that has Daenerys' hand lifting ever so -- she never makes to touch him, but a little ready to do some corralling in case his sudden movements turn into ones of provocation of either queen or dragon both. Likewise, there is a responsive shift in Drogon's body language, more feline than reptile in the coil of his muscles and sinuous spine. Dany's eyes flicker, drinking in the sight of him, the unwashed smell of his clothing unable to quite disguise the scent of the lands that weathered them so.

Four years that have felt like a lifetime. "They weren't brought here with me. Only he."

Jon Snow has touched the scaled hide of the dragon, and so too has Darlene of New York, with the Mother of Dragons' guidance and permission; it is not Dany's compulsion to invite Viserys to do the same, and her stance equally shields her brother from the dragon as it does shield dragon from her brother.

He fixates. It gives him away. She doesn't have to ask the question she asks all others of their realm: what do you remember last?

"And to think," she says, "that there was a time I would have given them to you."

Better fixated than not. Without a focus, who knows what horrors could happen. Especially when she goes and says that, Viserys' fixation snapping to her immediately, lilac eyes and the thin line of his lips reading hot. The sort of heated look that once had never really existed and then grew unfortunately common. Now, it can mean nothing. Not what it did once upon a time. His sister never had a dragon to her back to keep him line outside of her dreams. Back in those days. In that time when she, his sweet sister, would have given him just about anything.

For now, with dark scales and the consequence of dragonfire to match the strangely confident way she carries herself, Viserys' hands will be stayed. He isn't soaked with alcohol, he isn't in the land of his ancestors. He may be uncomfortably within her space, but that is all.

"Do you sit upon our father's throne, sister?"

He isn't going to be able to pretend, now, that he does not know his fate. Time to find out what really matters.

It's a balance. Honesty and provocation. She thinks she can see in his face, and his current show of restraint, dragon besides, that he sees that she is a different Daenerys. She isn't certain she could be that Daenerys if she wanted to be. If she tried.

"No," she says, a touch serene. "But I will. Before coming here, I last recall sailing west, with my dragons in the sky, and my ships of the Iron Islands and the Meereenese navy in the water. They carry the khalasars, and the Unsullied, and freedmen of Slaver's Bay, all beneath Targaryen flags."

It hasn't been an idle four years.

And it isn't pain she wishes to cause in him so much as that he would know who she is and, perhaps, behave, and an introduction to at least acknowledge the new world order.

Edited 2017-02-14 08:56 (UTC)

Not idle at all. The longer she speaks, the realization of how truly dead he is sinks in deeper and faster than is comfortable. It is not the quick, cutting sink of claws or fangs. It is creeping, seeping, falling into cold water while fully clothed. First, the change is there. He knows it due to awareness. But then that icy spiking is constant and everywhere and he has no way to escape or shake it off, having taken root on and under his skin and threatening to overwhelm him entirely.

His hands shake. He leans back, chin and nose up as if he'd smelled something foul. Then he's back in her space, eye-to-eye and close enough enough to kiss.

"I should be sailing with you," he spits, but his words come out as truths, not venom. Truths he understands will never come to pass but were meant to. A rug has been pulled from under his feet, replaced with molten gold. "We should be sailing together!"

His voice breaks, pitch rising. He turns from her and throws his arms up in disbelief. He has to put distance now before it's too late. Before he goes too far and finds himself nearly or actual dragon chow. That thought is both horrifying and comforting...typical Targaryen.

Viserys stops with his back to her, hands on his hips. Dragon shadow stretches nearly to his neck. He manages a few moments of disappointment and frustration easily associated with parent more than sibling before he lifts one hand to his face and takes a very deep breath that seems to drain ten pounds from his already thin frame when he lets it out.

It would only take a word. A single word, and Viserys would be blown into ash, or so she thinks. It isn't his death she craves so much as his obliteration is there, on the tip of her tongue, vanishing him from this world like a bad dream. It's there when he gets close to her and hisses in her face, when his voice takes on that pitch, and

he turns away, and Daenerys breathes out. Behind her, Drogon has risen up from his crouch, that strange mammalian-reptile rattle of his growl purring out of him as he arches his neck, and snorts a short torrent of warm air from flaring nostrils as Dany lifts a hand to coax him back.

She watches her brother gather himself, before speaking again.

"The Viserys that died in Vaes Dothrak was not worthy of our name," she says, her voice carrying louder, not without feeling but a more controlled kind of feeling, wielded like a sword held level. "And he had no place at my side. But they say this world is one of second chances. Of reinvention." There's a flick of a glance, flatly, up and down. His soiled garments, and the lean, hungry frame they hang from. "I advise you to take that into your heart."

Of course it would go that seeing a dragon for the first time would be coupled with this, old faces made anew and so very ungrateful. She has grown beyond and without him. He saw it before his end. But how did she get to that point if not because of him?

Viserys' hand drops back to his hip and he straightens. His quick inhale is almost audible. There is offense being taken here but he cannot react in any way physical.

"The Viserys that was slain in Vaes Dothrak is the only reason the Daenerys sailing west beneath Targaryen flags knows our name." He turns to face her, surprisingly put together. His face, at least, is less ready-to-kick-her-to-death anger and something quieter. Lashing out with words can do just as much harm, if not worse. He is a ghost to her now, isn't he? Ghosts can haunt, more so when they go unmourned. "Without me, sister, you would have become some prize whore ignorant of your own name. Have you already forgotten?"

He is ignoring all advice at the moment, too blinded by that sword. How very dare she. After everything he did for her! The nerve.

"I remember," Daenerys says, teeth baring, old anger fanned back into flame as words find mark, "everything."

Tempting though it is to move, she stands where she is, rooted to the spot. Her hands are in small fists at her sides. "Without you, I have become Daenerys Stormborn, First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, and Mother of Dragons. Not the chattel you would bargain for your savage army, nor the wife you would possess in your grasping hands, not your sweet sister who you could not stand to see grow beyond you."

She can hear Jorah in her mind. He isn't worth this, khaleesi. She can hear, even, Petyr Baelish. Diplomacy is prudent, your grace. But she thinks that some men have the luxury of separating the personal from the politics, and others, to have loved someone they still, well, love.

Tyrion would probably understand, if while wincing.

"And that is what killed you that night in Vaes Dothrak. If you would have peace with me, in this world, you will not make the same mistake."

His lips curl, nostrils slightly flaring, an all-too familiar face. The last she had seen of him, almost, before smiles and screams. Distrust. Disdain. Disgust. And underneath all, resignation. This is how things are, how they must be, no turning back or changing. The line has been drawn with fire and blood.

"No."

He speaks with a quietness and too-quiet confidence that he hasn't in quite some time, steps the same sort of firm that does not stomp, does not throw fits. No, he says, but to what? He gives her nothing more to work with as he reclaims space, managing to keep his eyes on her and not Drogon, even as he becomes shrouded in the dragon's shadow.

"You killed me, Dany. You and your savages. There is a title for that, dear sister. Claim the truth or not, all the world knows no one is more accursed than a kinslayer."

Daenerys maintains his stillness as he approaches back into her territory, anger transforming even as he speaks. Running hot into cold, like superheated metal plunged into water. There are enough things wrong with his claim as he makes it that for a moment, she isn't even certain of what to say, nothing quite good enough, sharp enough, nothing that doesn't feel like it might betray her as someone who has, you know.

Feelings.

Complicated, personal, muddled. However wrong his words ring against her sense of truth and responsibility, her personal belief that he has no one to blame for his demise but himself, it is she who lived, and he who died. In a way, it is that simple.

Regardless, she sees his blame. Who she is, for him. Very well.

"If you truly believe that," she says, in her quiet severity, "then you should stay your distance."

For a moment, he shows only confusion. Then he laughs.

It almost sounds genuine, more mirth than madness. More merry than broken. Almost. His smile is the same, a reflection of pleasure from his last moments tainted by the glossiness of his eyes.

"What is this? You lied. You knew what he would do. You let me die, you watched. Now you offer only blame."

He smiles again, wider, just as wrong. He looks at Drogon and the laughter reappears, a boy in need of a nap experiencing a sugar rush while still in the candy shop, only much more traumatic and involving life and death. He does not cry or stop breathing or breathe erratically. But he could. If pushed just a hair.

The laughter is wrong, and it dims something of the sharpness present in tone and stare, even if it sounds so much like the real thing. Not sympathy, not softness, just a sort of resignation.

Maybe a little irritation, if she's being honest. There is something about him that makes her feel like if she were to touch him, it'd be akin to setting off something to explode. But then again, fire metaphors work for her, and she reaches out, then, her hands up onto his shoulders in a grip that is designed to calm, or win back his attention.

"I know well the part I played," she says, and means it, eyes wide around the irises, brows drawn to pinch at the centre. "I do not turn from that, as I did not look away when you were killed. I betrayed you, in your last moments, and I did so before you could destroy me. Before you could destroy my child."

Who died before he could be given life. She's more than noticed the lack of inquiry as to there whereabouts of the heir that helped to inspire such wrath. The promise of a new king.

"You must know that."

Winning back his attention is exactly what she does, chin tilting up, brow furrowing, lips turning into a frown. What is this? What is this game, hm, what does she play now?

In those last weeks of his life, even if he had difficulty putting it into words, he had missed her. He had missed them. He had missed having her attention whenever he desired it. He missed her needing him. He missed her voice, her touch, he missed his sister. All the while he was forced to watch her grow with this new group of people who adored her so, who treated her in ways they'd never treat him, saw her learn a language he did not teach her...he saw, with no ability to stop it, her grow past him so much so they were no longer them. She was khaleesi, and he was just.

Nothing.

Nothing to her, even, so caught up with her new savage people, with her husband, with everyone and everything other than Viserys, her entire family in one.

Now she touches him. She speaks to him directly with no man or woman nearby to threaten him if he acts out...a dragon, though, but that is different.

Now he commands her full attention? With no sword and no child, now that she sees a ghost come back around, now she has some care for her brother?

"No."

His anger passes quickly, but the red rising to his cheeks does not. Soon that skin is splotchy, and wet, Viserys lifting his hands to hold her wrists loosely. Grounding, not pushing away, still having to fight to understand this as a reality when he last remembers...well. His hold tightens, shaking fingers rather wringing about her skin. Nothing too harsh. Yet.

"Dany." Not pushing away at all; he leans forward quickly, resting forehead to forehead, voice a cracked thing. Perhaps there is a bit of a bonk but he is Compromised and growing up Targaryen means having a skull made thick with family pride. It'll be fine. Unlike Viserys, who is currently more of a wreck than usual, vulnerable in place of continually Mad. "No, no. You — you knew. You knew, you, no."

A damn blubbering wreck, and quite the clingy one at that. She knew, didn't she? That he couldn't do it. Wouldn't do it. That the first sign of blood would be too much for him. But even then, all the worst, was it not? To mock a dragon's pride, to threaten with wagging tongue and coward's hand. He understood, despite not wanting to, why his fate had been as it had whether or not he was sincere in his words.

And he did, in fact, have only himself to blame, though for reasons that would take him time still to properly articulate.

The hands braced on his shoulders flex their fingers, Dany closing her eyes when Viserys bows his head, touches brow to brow with that inelegant bump. Mouth pinched and nostrils flaring, there are multiple reflexes to combat -- to push him away, yes, or to gentle her grip, pull him into an embrace as if she were the older one, although now they're almost of the same age.

She knew, he says, and the uneasy churn of her guts -- at that fond, childhood nickname, at everything -- turns to steel. Her brow wrinkles, her fingers grasp again. Harder.

Uneasy, Drogon huffs. That she put her hands on Viserys first is sign enough that he needn't intervene, but by the sound of rustling scales and leather wings, he's not thrilled.

"No man pulls a blade on me and lives to speak of it," she says, almost a whisper. "Not even you, brother. That I know."

She reaches up and clasps his face, pushing him back inches enough that they can look at each other. It wasn't only the blade, gods knew. It was merely the threshold of Viserys' stagger towards his own destruction. She wonders if he'd ever understand how many times she had tried to save him, whether in direct terms or subtle ones, little gestures, attempts at peace that his pride refused him. Not today, more than likely.

"And now, so do you," she adds. There's pain present in her eyes, too, never particularly adept at masking her feelings, but they are dry. "But it does not have to be so, here. I offer you peace, once more. Do not refuse, Viserys."

He's angry, still, always so very very angry, but her hands on his face prove some salve to the wound. Not much but enough to help numb the pain that is bound to return in full force sooner rather than later. It's there only as a harsh intake of breath when she makes her claim, one he knows very well to be true. He wore the crown of a man who had done so. Had it happened more, since? For her to have grown so much and been on her way home, their home, she must have seen more bloodshed to prevent her own.

An exhilarating, proud thought. For a brief moment, he feels just that: proud. Proud of her. Approving.

It's gone as quick as it comes.

"And what," he says once tears have stopped, once his lips no longer shake, still refusing to move away. If she will look him in the eye, he will rise to that. "Does this peace of yours entail, sister?"

He is trying to be reasonable here.

But the answer is yes because she has a living dragon and that is not something a Targaryen can walk away from, no matter how much bad murderous blood is between them. It's a tough life.

"This peace of ours," Daenerys asserts, her voice hard, her hands gentle, "is as it sounds."

She doesn't need him not to be angry, but she does need to see reason.

"I will not harm you. You will not harm me. I will not tarnish your name, and you will not tarnish mine. I have my path, here, and you will find yours as well. We are bound by blood, we share our legacy, but I am no longer yours -- not to protect," his idea of protection, twisted over the years, "nor to have." Slightly less ambiguous language. This is what restraint looks like in Daenerys Stormborn. "That, if we are to have peace, must be agreed."

Daenerys lets him go, then, hands curled inwards. "You needn't say the words," she adds. "Not here, not today. It would take more than only words to give meaning to my terms."

She holds his full attention, the center of his universe. Once upon a time, she rather had been. He'd focused on her first, then himself, thinking only of getting them home. Of showing her the hallways and rooms he grew up in, he and their brother before him, of felling their many enemies and creating a family so vast it would take more than a rebellion to nearly kill them all...

Probably why she's very clear about the having part, huh.

He blinks once she breaks contact. Blinks and looks to the dragon as though he'd forgotten his presence. He's still a bit amazed by the whole living dragon thing, it will take time for him to adjust.

"I see."

He doesn't say yes or no. Only I see. She hasn't required an answer of him now anyway, and any answer now would likely be delivered in haste, and anger, and hurt. So he lets her know he's heard and understood. He'll consider it.

She's fortunately given him the out of not needing an immediate answer; he takes it.

"Where were you going anyway, Daenerys?"

Subdued, almost quiet. He shows some interest in her intended ending location but more than that...

Well.

Now he's kinda lost.

Help.

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