Viserys was never a dragon. He had no use for fire and blood when what he wanted was forged of iron. He was not regal but greedy; not a king but a boy who'd never gotten what he'd been promised. He wanted a kingdom when what he should have wanted was a name. Fire can not kill a dragon as it had Viserys. Viserys was a cunning, narrow-sighted snake at best, but that did not make Dany one.
Daenerys Targaryen was a dragon in ever sense of the word. She used her name in all the right ways; as a shield, as a dagger, as a war hammer. She knew what it was like to yearn for a title that was rightfully hers, but she had no need to obsess over it, for she could not remember anything besides her days spent as the beggar sister of the beggar king. Viserys had had his life stripped from him: his royalty, his family, and his sanity. He couldn't blame everything on Daenerys, but he never did forgive her for killing their mother. Daenerys reasoned with herself that it was okay, because the only thing that can kill a dragon is a dragon.
Dany knew Westeros through stories and bloodlines, but Viserys knew it through his eyes and ears. It had etched its way into his skull subtly but surely, the promise Westeros brought of better times, embedding itself deep into his mind and overcoming every thought he had, every decision he made, every long look he gave her. They said that the Gods flipped a coin when a Targaryen was born to see whether he would be mad or unmad, but Dany didn't think this was the case. Surely her brother had not been born always mad, before being stripped of all he knew, but she had certainly never known him unmad, had never see him before his quest for his rightful throne. She figured that the Gods had not flipped Viserys' coin. She figured they had waited for him to flip it himself.
When Viserys had been a prince instead of a runaway, dressed in gems instead of rags, he had had lessons from those at court, and what he relayed to Dany was all she knew. She knew each house, its sigil and its words, but not its history, of which she only knew Targaryen's. She knew of things like wildlings and the wall and something called the Kingsguard, but she did not fully understand; it was all right, because Viserys said she would learn quickly when she became queen.
So even if her brother slithered across the desert it was perfectly fine because she could flap her wings and fly him to wherever he had to be.
If anything had bern important to relay to Dany when Viserys was teaching her of the Targaryens, it was the story of Aegon the Conquerer and his sisters, Rhaenys and Visenya, one which she knew well. It was the tale of the three first dragons, but really the tale of Daenerys herself, if she squinted at it enough. Aegon had flown in with his sisters and their dragons and set the world alight, welding Westeros together under the beginning of the Targaryen rule. The story ends with Aegon marrying both his sisters and the dragons living for hundreds of years, but Daenerys was no babe and could see herself in the steps of her ancestors. Rhaegar was Aegon and Daenerys and Viserys were both wed to the desire to avenge him.
If Dany was a dragon and Viserys was pretending at one, then it must have been that Rhaegar was one as well. Their gone brother could be Balerion, large and and Valyrian and black as death. Viserys could be Meraxes, who was bigger and stronger and more fearsome than Vhagar, but only because Daenerys let him. Dany did not mind being the weakest of the dragons. It did not matter to her. Together, the dragons had united the seven kingdoms under House Targaryen, had killed four thousand enemies, and had obliterated the entire house of Gardener. Now that the dragons could not work in tandem, their black skulls rested heavy underneath the Red Keep's Baratheon rule.
Dany wracked her brains for the words of the Baratheons. Ours is the fury, she recalled, their sigil a stag. Daenerys could never be a stag because hers was not the fury. She could never be a Stark because she was a summer child. She could not be a Lannister while subduing her own roar for the sake of her brother's. She could not be a Tyrell because she was not growing strong - she had not changed since the day she had killed her mother. She could be an Arryn, but her brothers could not have been as high as honor; Viserys would have faced his execution instead of fleeing, and Rhaegar would never have been so publicly brash with another man's betrothed, let alone steal her away. Besides, a falcon could never soar quite like a dragon could. No, she was a Targaryen through and through, but what Viserys had taught her meant little when compared to what she knew, not in her mind, but in her blood. She knew of the Usurper's War, as Viserys called it, and when she asked her silent question her blood knew the answer: the stag could rut around with the wolf as it pleased; the fish with the mockingbird; the lion with itself. But if their was one thing a dragon knew in its being, one thing a fire knew in its blood, one thing that made Dany more of a Targaryen than Rhaegar would ever be, it was the fact that she knew it was not her place to steal a Stark away, or a Martell, or any at all. Rhaegar may have been the epitome of a Targaryen but he lacked the fundamental building block of his house, which was gained through intuition. Dany had not been taught by anyone the single characteristic of being daughter of fire, but it was coursing through her body anyway, screaming at her in the face. You are a Targaryen, a dragon queen, and you know what Targaryens know.
Targaryens know how to keep the purest of bloodlines.
When she was small and curious and had freshly killed the last Targaryen queen, she would sometimes find herself stumbling over to Viserys' pallet at night, plagues with demon dreams of knights in blood-stained white. She would shake her brother awake, no matter if they were in a tent or an inn or a manse and wail to or at him until he told her to shut up and go back to sleep for he was risking waking the dragon. Now she could hardly remember the frightening fantasies of a girl long gone, but she still lay awake and contemplating shaking her brother awake, though she never did. The two of them lived off nothing and everything; no messages from Westeros pleading for their return, but whispers of smallfolk sewing rad an black banners in their homes. Daenerys knew it was a lie but it was true enough to live off of; it wasn't as if they were sewing yellow and black banners either. But it was not enough, never enough for Viserys. The smallfolk of Westeros did not matter to him unless the man who polished Robert Baratheon's crown decided to hand it over to him. The smallfolk of anywhere did not matter to him, and in his eyes, every living creature was a commoner compared to himself.
"Viserys," Dany said, testing the word softly on her lips, lining the syllables up of her own accord.
"My sister," he replied, and Dany had to fight down her instinct to be startled, and instead not move, eyes unwavering from his as he turned in his pallet to face her.
They lived in a tent tonight, elaborate and expensive as any throne room, yes, but definitions hold no silly exception or what-ifs. A tent was a tent and they were living in a tent. They were living in a tent in the Free Cities in poverty. They were living in a tent in exile. They were living in a tent when they should have been living in a palace, and their dragons were living inside their heads when they should have had lands free to roam. They were living in a tent and didn't know if they would still have that luxury in just days. They were living in a rent that even Vhagar could barely fit his head into. They were living in a tent and it was done.
"Do you ever wish you had been crown prince and not Rhaegar? You surely would not have made the mistakes he did."
"Rhaegar was a warrior, and our brother brought pride upon our name. Do not speak of him that way." The reply had been almost practiced, with no hint of emotion behind it, as if Viserys had been expecting the conversation. He was lucky that Daenerys was feeling so brazen tonight, and was not keen to play by the usual rules.
"You did not answer my question, brother," she noted.
It seemed like an eternity before Viserys replied, an eternity when all she heard was her own shallow breaths in her ear and, if she tried hard enough, his across the tent. "I would have made a better prince, for sure," he stated, almost trying to convince himself rather than her. "I would never have stolen a northern whore."
"And why not?"
Anger and slight disbelief coursed through her brother's violet eyes. "Do you doubt my intelligence, sweet sister?"
"Simply curious, brother."
"Because the Stark was not his to take! Because a prince should not cause chaos in his own kingdom! Rhaegar was no prince. Rhaegar was barely a dragon." Dany felt pent-up aggression radiate off of her brother and quickly realized what was happening. He was complaining. After being hers for years upon years, hers to annoy and pester and cry to and scream at, she was now his to listen, to accept, to hear. He was letting go, telling her all the things he had had to hold onto for so long when there was no one to share his burden.
She wasn't about to interrupt.
"I'm sick of living in the shadow of an unworthy man," Viserys voiced to the air, Dany wondering if he had forgotten her presence. "He is nothing but dust and blood in the dirt of the Trident now. We are real. I am real. Rhaegar Targaryen is no more than words and fables, but I am flesh and blood and life. We exist."
It was a fact most of the seven kingdoms seemed to have forgotten. Stories belonged to the wind as Viserys belonged to the throne as Daenerys belonged to her brother , but men were never so fond of the truth. Stories were more real than people, Viserys was but a beggar king, and Daenerys had only herself.
She tried to tell herself this as she fell asleep, cold and alone, that night, but it was overpowered by dreams of climbing into her brother's furs and blankets.