A/N: Well...this was actually supposed to be posted right after Waking Up as a part of set of four Dany/Drogo one-shots alongside Ayyey ma Oma Nakho and If Love Hurts, is it Really Love?, but...that didn't end up happening, obviously. But I was just reminded by my wonderful boyfriend that Valentine's Day in on Friday, so I thought I would dig this out of the recesses of my flashdrive and post it. After a painfully difficult but thankfully semi-successful attempt to refamiliarize myself with Dothraki. Anyway...it was inspired by a quote from Theon Greyjoy in A Clash of Kings (page 927): "The Dothraki believe the stars are spirits of the valiant dead,". I thought that was cool so I wrote this. Oh, and I got the title from a verse of Light 'Em Up by Fall Out Boy. So, I hope that you like it and I'm sorry that it didn't make it out with the rest of its buddies about a year and a half ago. Reviews are appreciated and translations of the Dothraki are provided at the end.
Disclaimer: The A Song of Ice and Fire universe and all of its characters belong to George R. R. Martin, not me.
Daenerys Targaryen had always loved the stars. She had never known a true home, and yet she knew that the stars she saw above her every night were the same ones that shone above the Seven Kingdoms that she so desperately longed to see.
When she was younger, and she still lived with Ser Willem Darry in the house with the big red door, she would sneak into Viserys' room at night and as annoyed as he always seemed when she asked him to tell her a story, she could tell from the way he told them that he loved them just as much as she did.
She would spend hours sitting at the end of his bed while he painted pictures of Westeros from the tales he told her. When he told her about their brother Rhaegar she could see him, tall and strong, with the silver hair and violet eyes that marked him as a Targaryen. He talked wistfully of their parents; of Aerys sitting on the iron throne with Rhaella at his side, not of a mad king, but of a loving father.
It wasn't until he was gone that she realized she missed those few moments when she felt that her brother actually loved her. It was the Viserys she knew before his desire for power drove him to insanity that she missed. At times, she almost wished Drogo had shown him mercy instead of giving him the golden crown he'd so longed for.
Now, they were both gone, as was her son and she was alone in the Red Waste, lying on her back and staring up at the stars she'd always loved.
The Dothraki believed that the constellations Viserys had once learned about from a Maester were the souls of dead warriors; the mark left in the Night Lands through which they now rode. Dany couldn't help but wonder which of the constellations she saw above her was that of Khal Drogo's spirit; and which was that of their son's.
"Anha vigererak yera," she murmured quietly. "Anha zigerelak yera."
Though she knew he wouldn't—couldn't—respond, she liked to imagine he could hear her from his place in the night sky. The only sound she could hear was that of Ser Jorah snoring somewhere off to her right.
"Anha zalak yer vehki jinne."
Above her, the stars shone brightly and she scanned the constellations, stopping when she found a particularly bright cluster that if she squinted looked a bit like a stallion. If Drogo really was watching her from somewhere up there, she hoped he understood what she had done.
"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, when the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves, when your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before."
It had been her only choice.
"Ahna vekhak," she hesitated and then slipped back into the common tongue, "sorry." She offered her apology to the skies, her voice cracking as a tear made its way down her cheek and the salty tang of blood soured her tongue as her chapped lips bled from the strain of speech. "Please, forgive me."
Curling up in the dusty red sands of the wasteland she found herself and her people slowly dying in, Daenerys cried. She cried for everything she had lost, from the home of her youth to the brother she had once loved to the husband who had been her sun-and-stars to the unborn son who she had sacrificed in a feeble attempt to return all that had been torn from her heart. She cried at the hopelessness of her situation. She cried in shame. She cried in fear. She cried at the unfairness of the world that seemed hells-bent to defeat her. And above her the stars shone brightly, twinkling in the deep blackness of the night sky, each blissfully unaware of the agony upon which they looked; they were the stars of the Dothraki Sea, the stars across the Narrow Sea, the stars of Westeros, the stars of her home.
Anha vigererak yera—I miss you
Anha zigerelak yera—I need you
Anha zalak yer vehki jinne—I hope/want you were here (there is no word in Dothraki for 'to wish' so that's the closest I could get)
Ahna vekhak—I am
