CHAPTER 2: Oh, must this all end in violence?

289 AC

The house with the red door

Braavos

Essos

Raquaro had always been a cunning sort, or so he imagined himself. He'd grown up in the fetid slums of Braavos, in Ragman's Harbour. Those had been some terrible days. He'd fought and clawed his way up, and had signed up with a sellsword company, the Stormcrows, first chance he'd got to get away from it all. Unfortunately, he'd quickly discovered that a sellsword's life wasn't for him. Too much risk involved, and he'd preferred living yellow livered to not living at all, thank you very much, so he'd deserted and made off in fine fettle.

He'd returned to Braavos, and spun triumphant tales of victory and glory, and terrible luck and fate robbing him of his rightful battle-plunder. His old haunts though, had become stale, and jobs were scarce. When he'd been approached by an exiled knight from the Sunset Lands, he'd jumped on the opportunity to work in a palatial manse with free board and food. There, he'd met two other Braavosi like himself, and a right pretty maid. Tolo and Brolo, brothers, and Dalla, a girl ripe for the plucking. He'd wanted into those skirts for quite a while. A right shame that the lass was so reticent around him. Heh, he'd get her sooner or later, and probably sooner, with the way the winds were blowing.

The old Westerosi was dead. Now here was an opportunity, and darned he'd be if he didn't make use of it. Selling out the day-to-day activities of the old man had been worth generous coin, and he'd hastily agreed to that barbarian Sunsetlander King's spies when they'd offered it to him. Oh, he knew just who the two brats that Ser Willem had been protecting were. Targaryens. A name famed the world over. The Dragonlords had no dragons left though; and the last of them were these children. Easy prey for anyone with a knife and some wits about him. How the mighty fell. But in his wildest dreams he'd never dared to imagine a windfall like this falling into his lap.

The children had lost their only protector, who was busy coughing his heart out. The geezer never stood a chance, between the wasting disease he'd caught, forbidding mention to be made of it to his brats, and now this deliciously fatal wound. Ah, but now, now old Raquaro had his chance! A chance to own his land! His own manse! Riches and money beyond anything he'd possessed in all his life! It'd be a truly fair state of —

"Raquaro, d'you think the old cranker's snuffed it yet? Let's go check, we promised a fair division, didn't we, Brolo? Now don't go you dreamin' abou' the coin before we've snatched them, Raquaro!"

...He couldn't wait to dispose of these two lackwits, good for nothing more than muscle. Divisions his delicate right foot! As if he would cede one copper, one measly coin from the coming windfall! After they got rid of the brats, shanking these two brutes in their sleep would be easy as pie. They slept like huffing pigs, and ugly to boot.

Dalla he'd keep around, if she would consent to be his bedwarmer. Sometimes, he really rued the customs of his people, the rest of Essos was far more enlightened, in his not so humble opinion. Taking a defenseless woman and clapping chains on her was so easy in any city but Braavos. Alas, if Dalla refused him, he'd find another. He didn't doubt there were many women in Braavos ready to jump into his arms for the sake of a warm bed and wealth to live out the rest of her days.

He looked down at their feet, where Dalla was trussed up securely and gagged, leaking tears, the stupid bitch. She'd disagreed with the plan to throw out the brats, and Raquaro had been forced to take extreme measures to secure her, heh, co-operation. Oh, but she had a fine a pair of lungs, that one. Definitely a screamer. More would be the pity if she refused him, but there were always more whores around to take her place.

"All right, lads. We move quietly, and we'll get this done right quick. Grab the children, and we'll toss them out. Ain't likely to offer any resistance, even, expect they'll be blubbering over the wretch still, who should be cold by now." Raquaro preferred not to kill the children if he didn't have to, the city council had little love for Valyrian scum, and even less if they were the last of the Forty, but even they would have to act if two citizens were murdered in cold blood and their servant inherited the manse outright.

As he motioned to his lackeys to quietly ascend the stairwell, they all heard a voice they knew well, raised as it always had been in arrogance to those below him, the male worm himself.

"He's — He's dead! Sir Willem is dead! Somebody! We need help! Your King commands you! Get up here if you know what's good for you, you good for nothing sacks of dung! Up! In the name of King Viserys Targaryen, the Third of His Name! Up, dogs!"

Even now, the boy had no understanding of the sheer downswing his fortunes had taken. Something ugly flared up in Raquaro, and all notions of mercy, small and fleeting as they had been, vanished from his mind.

He looked towards the twins, who bore identical looks of rage on their gormless faces.

"Forget everything I said before. We make them scream, and then we kill them." The house had thick walls, and nobody would hear.

Brolo and Tolo's faces lit up in unison. For once, Raquaro grinned back at them.

After I made my call, in the resulting quiet of the house, you could hear a pin drop. I heard footsteps. Making a valiant attempt at being noiseless, and yet they were ponderous and heavy. Two of those, and a lighter, faster gait alongside them, barely audible.

They were coming.

The door inched open from where I had closed it after my summons. A heavy and shadowed form stepped in, head trained on the bed in the centre of the room.

I took a deep breath, my detachment filling me to the brim, and yet, the sphere knocked on the back of my mind with growing urgency. Now was the moment of truth.

Beggar or King.

I moved, and thrust with all my might at the head of the swine who had entered. The blade was sharp, sharpened just three days earlier by Ser Willem, bless his soul. There was a wet feeling on the blade, a momentary hurdle, and then it gave. Blood splattered over me, and the area just in front of the half opened door.

I withdrew the sword, in the pirouette I had been trained in, and forced to repeat to the point of exhaustion, and flicked the blood off. Adrenaline filled me, and I whipped about, kicking the lumbering body, who I saw was Brolo. No doubt his brother and Raquaro were right behind. With an almighty crash, Brolo fell to the ground. He did not rise.

Tolo rushed into the room, and swung a meat cleaver at me. I dodged under the blow, and swinging my sword wildly, managed to nick his thigh, at which he let out a great bellow of pain.

"You little bastard! When I'm through with ya, I'll rape your little cunt of a sister, and then I'll —"

My vision went red. The sphere, banging as it had been on the back of my mind, finally broke. I felt its contents flowing outward like water, and just like water, just tasting it made me wonder how I'd lived without it all this time.

My gaze trained on the brute, and I threw every bit of what I had just been given at him mentally.

Tolo's mind felt like sludge. Hard and sticky to move through, it was like I was wading through jelly, but it was getting easier by the second. I looked at myself through his eyes, a boy of above average height with hair of silver gold, dressed in fine clothing splattered in gore. He screamed.

As I returned to my own eyes, he was frantically muttering and shouting at the top of his voice as he attempted to tear his eyes out. He succeeded, and his eyeballs dropped from his suddenly merciless fingers, leaving behind twin gaping pits on his ace weeping blood. He suddenly began gasping, and spat out a mouthful of blood, falling to the floor, his weapon forgotten. Grateful for the momentary lull in the fight, I stepped closer to examine the spot, and it was his tongue in the middle of the puddle. He'd bitten it clean off.

He began to grasp for breath, rolling across the floor, as he choked on his own lifeblood.

It was then that I paid for my stupid, stupid actions. Ser Willem had always told me, before cuffing me up the head, my eternal problem in combat.

Be mindful of your surroundings, Viserys.

As cold steel kissed my neck, I realised that I'd forgotten about Raquaro in the heat of combat, and he'd entered without hindrance from the door as me and Tolo had shifted the fight to the right of the room as one entered.

"Fuckin' Targaryens. Fuck, fuck, fuck, if you make one move, boy, I'll take your head off. What are you? This was no fight. What did you do to Tolo? What did you do to him you foul demon —"

I interrupted him coldly, as I slipped my skin again, with greater ease this time.

"Exactly what I'm about to do to you."

Raquaro felt curiously different to Tolo. Where Tolo was a mass of hard substance to move through, Raquaro felt like I was encased in concrete. I didn't feel anything of his body, because I did not succeed in taking his mind. Tolo could not take the strain of my mind in his body, and that at the least held true for Raquaro.

He began gasping and tearing viciously at his face, the same way as Tolo, uncaring of the wounds he was inflicting on himself, mindlessly.

I would have been more than happy to watch him suffer and die a slow, agonising death for what he had tried to do, and yet...

Daenerys was all that mattered. Her viewing this violence was already a terrible blow to my heart, and I would not suffer another to her innocence, whatever little remained of it.

Scooping up the knife Raquaro had held at my throat and dropped when he entered his convulsions, I stabbed straight into his Adam's apple, the blade penetrating all the way through to the back of his head, and the light in his eyes went out immediately.

The fight was over. I fell onto my back, and took greedy gulps of air. As the rush that had been holding me up the entire fight went out of me, I felt great exhaustion. The knife dropped from my fingers.

I stretched out my arms on either side of me. "Dany? Dae-Daenerys? Come out now, it's safe."

Creeping and rustling noises from under the bed ensued, and as I watched, the first bit of horror I'd felt the entire fight surfaced —

The blood of the bodies had seeped in a steady line under the bed. Daenerys was soaked in it, her face wet with tears. Despite the harrowing experience, despite the utter fear and agitation she'd felt, she'd done exactly as I'd asked. A child drenched in blood, she'd remained quiet as a mouse.

Tears of my own seeped from my eyes as I struggled to a sitting position. She cannonballed into my side, still shedding silent tears. I wrapped my arms around her and rocked her to and fro, almost frantically examining her for wounds, even though I objectively knew the blood on her clothes wasn't hers.

She nuzzled into the crook of my neck, tightly returning my embrace as her breath evened out, and her tears stopped.

We remained in silence like that for a few minutes, seeking and giving solace to one another.

Then I moved. We still had to see what had become of Dalla, a person who had always been loyal to us and Ser Willem, and somebody who had particularly adored my sister. Her turning in this plot seemed unlikely to me, but my knowledge urged otherwise. All the servants in canon had betrayed us.

Everyone but Dalla was dead by my hand. I had to check if there was anyone else in the manse and see where she'd gotten off to. Quickly, I hoisted Daenerys, whose bulk was still slight, onto my back, and with her still not saying a word, moved out of the room and down the stairwell.

At the bottom of the stairwell, tied up cruelly with ropes and a gag obscuring the best vocal efforts of that poor woman, was poor Dalla.

Hope and happiness filled my heart, she had protested. She had not been on board with the plan.

I untied her as much as I was able, and cut the remainder of the stubborn knots. She immediately beelined for us, and tearing a strip off her own clothing, reached for my face to begin wiping the blood off me.

I shook my head, and rasped out, "Dany first."

She gave me a sad look, but nodded.

I lowered Dany to the ground so she could get a good look at her. I left her to it as I went upstairs to attend to a pressing matter.

We needed to get the filth's bodies out of my house. I wouldn't stand for them remaining here for a single moment longer. Running to the master bedroom, I didn't attempt to lift the bodies. There was no point breaking my thirteen year old back trying it. I rolled them over to the door, then kicked them down the stairs as hard as I could.

Down they went, ass over teakettle, as useless and headache inducing in death as they had been in life, leaving stains on my beautiful stairs on the way down. Hopefully Dalla could clean that out without that staining, I didn't want any part of the house stained insomuch as I was capable.

Descending the stairs, where the bodies had landed with enormous thuds that had startled Dalla and Dany alike, my unfortunate journey of rolling stuff continued. I opened the front door, the Red Door, of which so much has been said in the original timeline, and kicked the bodies out one final time.

They would start to stink soon enough, and there would be undoubtedly be an enquiry into their deaths. Telling the truth was the only choice I had, and I doubted that my word would not be accepted. Regardless of whatever prejudices the city authorities held towards my family, this was a pretty open and shut case. Greedy and dishonourable servants attempting to filch the family fortunes when the only heirs were mere children with nobody to speak up for them was a tale common enough in the Free Cities. What would raise eyebrows, was the not-so-common ending of this story, with the aforementioned children managing to kill their usurpers.

I began laughing hysterically. Usurpers. Usurpers. Usurpers.

I wiped tears from my eyes, for sardonic laughter quickly turned into pure misery. Tongue unbidden, words spilled out into the empty street. "Is this to be our fate? Constantly looking over our shoulders, fearing for assassins, fearing our own servants, fearing everyone and everything, fearing for our very lives?"

My newfound power niggled at the back of my head, as if to reassure me I wasn't alone. I would never be alone again.

If anybody had been watching me, and maybe somebody was, they'd have seen lilac eyes flash blood red. So fleetingly momentary, that it might have been reckoned a trick of the light, but it was there. Oh yes, it was definitely there.

I trudged back into the manse.

Dalla, that wonderful dear, had just finished undressing, and then getting Dany into a bath, which she seemed to have drawn in about as much time as it had taken me to get rid of the erstwhile crooks. Her motions done, she made for me, now attempting to wipe the encrusted blood off my own face.

"Your Grace, please, are you wounded? The Princess is fine, I've checked her for wounds, please let me look at you as well."

The glare fixed on me promised that she would most displeased if I disregarded her again.

Snorting, I let her go about it. Clucking like a mother hen, she set about cleaning my face, my arms and legs. I had to disrobe to let her examine my body, which she was quite familiar with, being the closest thing to a maternal figure in my life as I had allowed her to be, or rather, the closest thing Viserys had allowed her to be, which really wasn't saying much. I — he, had had quite a few notions about accepting affection from servants, even when he'd met Dalla at the age of seven, shortly after we'd fled Dragonstone for Braavos.

Dany, starved for a mother figure, had let Dalla into her heart and mind quite readily, and I shuddered to think of the loss and heartbreak she would have felt at losing her when, in the original timeline, we'd gotten our asses handed to us, with little else save that and my mother's crown, some other odds and ends, and tossed out as beggars onto the street.

Dalla interrupted my reverie, and I could see that she had finished. She fidgeted awkwardly as she escorted me to my own bath in my luxurious copper bathtub, and as I settled down, I decided it was probably smart to give some answers to the questions she was undoubtedly bursting with.

I leaned back. "Ask me what you will, Dalla, I will answer what I can."

Her voice seemed reticent now. "How did you kill them, Your Grace?"

How indeed. I could probably deflect, but she would know I was lying, and that would only sow discord in our relationship, and that I could not afford. Having Dalla was indispensable, for a variety of reasons. I trusted her, as much as I trusted anybody save Dany. She was loyal, and faithful, and she hadn't gone along with the plot. That much was clearly evident.

...and I still needed someone trustworthy to clean the house.

It didn't matter. If I ever wanted to succeed in taking back the Iron Throne, this would have to become public knowledge in any case. Using it as a weapon on the battlefield was so appealing, merely the failure in trying to possess a human drove them mad enough to kill themselves, imagine the possibilities once I actually mastered this —

I was thinking too much, and I still hadn't spoken, had I? Shaking my head to clear it of my prior thoughts, I vocalised, "I am a skinchanger, Dalla."

To her credit, she didn't actually seem all that perturbed, no more than she already was, anyway.

"You can‐can possess men and animals, Your Grace?"

"I can." Eventually, I suppose. I cleared my throat.

"Human minds are hard to get inside of, compared to animals, and with good reason. We think, are sapient, and are generally a higher life form to most other life on this planet."

"What is a planet, Your Grace?"

Oh, heck. She was stumped, and the more fool me for saying something like 'planet'. Dalla couldn't even read.

I simplified, "Never mind that, yes, I can possess humans, animals, birds, the like. Don't worry, you are the only person in this world who has proven herself to my sister and me, I'm not about to possess you."

She seemed mollified.

"But Your Grace, isn't skin changing a Westerosi gift from them Old Gods? How do you have it..."

She trailed off.

"Before you ask, no, I don't worship the Old Gods. My ancestors willing, I will not worship any gods, and I reccomend the same to you. What we call gods, are cruel, eldritch abominations more fit to be called demons and devils with their deeds towards mankind. No god is interested in anything but their own gratification, we are but insects to them. There is no sense in worshipping such cruel entities. And yes, gods exist."

She gave me a look of consternation. "You shouldn't say that to a pious man, Your Grace, ought be careful."

I gave her an amused look. "Will you let me complete?"

She looked mortified, and afraid of my response. The Viserys of old would have rebuked her for interrupting a King. I was not him.

"In any case, skinchanging is tied through bloodlines, not gods. The Old Gods are little more than Greenseers, the mightiest of all skinchangers, who, shedding their bodies after death, have joined a collective consciousness — a hive mind, if you will. I would guess that my own gift stems from the blood of House Blackwood, I'm sure you have heard of the name Brynden Rivers, or as he is also known, Bloodraven?"

Dalla jerked her neck forward. I'd take what I could get.

"He was half Blackwood. As am I. Incest does wonders for preserving the proportion of your bloodlines, though I wouldn't reccomend it to you..."

I broke off, an involuntary giggle bursting free. Dalla looked amused as well, a first for this conversation.

"I suppose that's the only thing of value we received from diluting the blood. I certainly can't imagine that my family ever dreamt we'd be ousted one day, despite all the marriages we made after we lost our dragons —"

My face darkened as I cut myself off. "Is there anything else you wish to ask, Dalla?"

She placed her palm on my shoulder. "I'm sorry to have bothered you so, Your Grace. Wasn't proper of me. You need your rest, like any growing boy. Beggin' your pardon, Your Grace, but I didn't mean to trouble you so. Dalla doesn't need any more knowledge of which she doesn't understand half, and the other half is too high in station to concern one such as her, oh no she doesn't. A thousand pardons, Your Grace —"

I cut her off before she really got going, Dalla all worked up was not something you wanted to listen to. "My bath, Dalla?"

"Oh! Forgive me, Your Grace, I'll leave you alone. Always blathering on and on, I am."

I sank back into the bath as she left and closed the door behind her. Dany would be safe with her. A short while later, I got out the bath, skin all pink, and headed to my room for some clothes.

Dressed, I made my way to Ser Willem's solar, ignoring the blood on the staircase. As I opened the door, memories of Ser Willem rushed to me, him sitting at that mahogany desk, writing covert letters to sympathisers and supporters of House Targaryen, asking for funds, help, and whatnot.

Pull yourself together, Viserys.

I hadn't spent my time in the bath idle. I'd categorised what assets I had to me. I had wealth, a not inconsiderable amount. I had a richly outfitted mansion of pure marble, well provisioned. I had Dalla. I had my newfound skinchanging. And I had knowledge of terrible, terrible secrets which could plunge a whole continent into war and chaos.

The last was infinitely valuable. I had thought about it. Changing too much would derail the canon timeline. But I had already changed so much. I was leagues ahead of where Viserys had been at this point in the timeline. When you were a Targaryen, your changes tended to ripple more than most, with the amount of thought everyone paid to you. Ser Willem's death, the latest in a long line of tragedies which had struck my family. My loved ones. And I had loved him. He was the father Viserys never had. The father Aerys II Targaryen could never have been in a billion years.

I had nothing left to lose. My brother Rhaegar, dead. A part of me hated him for his actions, his choices which had ruined our dynasty, and left us diminished and suffering. The rest of me remembered a brother always attentive, always kind to me. Always taking time out to play with Viserys, buying him the latest toys from Essos and the markets of King's Landing. The shining Prince of House Targaryen, more inhuman in beauty than any had been in our House for several generations. Rhaegar had loved me, of that there could be no doubt.

Yet, he didn't love us enough to spare us this horror.

His children, murdered. His wife, raped and killed. My father, evil as he had been, stabbed in the back by his own Kingsguard. A part of me wept even for him, for Viserys remembered Aerys showing him gestures of physical affection. The young child had assumed it to be love, and even though I knew it likely wasn't, simply delusions of a mind succumbing to insanity, I couldn't forget the memories. I simply couldn't.

Mother, dead in the birthing bed. Bereft of Maesters, a flock of them who should have attending the most powerful woman in the Seven Kingdoms, giving birth alone, with a single maid to attend to her. My beloved mother, who had always taken care of me, protected me as best she could, who had given me unconditional love.

Dead, because of Robert Baratheon and his allies. My House destroyed, because of Westeros.

Because of Stark, Tully, Arryn, Baratheon, Lannister, Greyjoy. Even Tyrell was culpable.

They were all responsible. They would all pay.

I would never forgive Westeros. They would all burn. One way or another, I would burn them all down. Let them fight. Let them kill each other, and know the pain I felt every day. Even then, unless they were cast into exile, and felt the same pains I bore, would continue to feel, to fear for our very lives upon each breath we took, and had to fight bitterly to earn the right to keep ourselves alive, they would never even compare.

Pulling out a parchment, I considered what I had to write. I had enough to turn every single Kingdom of Westeros against its neighbour, or near as. Robert's children were bastards born of incest between Cersei and Jaime Lannister. Ned Stark harboured Jon Snow, son of my brother in the North, yet no kin of mine. Lord Baelish and Lord Varys had several secrets, some of which were manifestly simple to state. The boy who called himself my nephew, Young Griff, was no Targaryen, and yet Lord Varys backed him. Lord Renly Baratheon was a sodomite, and a sword swallower. So was Ser Loras Tyrell, both scions of Great Houses. Destroying their reputation and making sure that the backwards lords of Westeros would look upon them with scorn could only benefit me, and destabilise Renly Baratheon's rule. Loras himself might not be actionable for now, due to his young age. But Renly? He was old enough, and it was believable. Westeros's own prejudices would do all the work for me here.

As I finished drafting the letter, I looked it over. I'd have to make several more copies, and fund at least one letter being delivered by ship to each Great House, King's Landing and each major port in Westeros. That'd get the word out. I hesitated.

This would firmly end any advantage I held in predicting the future from the moment those letters would be opened. I would be left to rely on my own skills, wit, and whatever remnant knowledge still remained valid to me to climb the ladder from here on out.

Beggar or King. There was no middle ground.

Let the Games begin.

AN: Finally got the next chapter out. Thanks goes out to Tertius711, without whom I would probably still be languishing in developmental hell. Here's hoping the next chapter doesn't take this long, and my apologies for the same. If you like the chapter, give it a like! Or a review! Depending on the forum you're reading this on I guess. Criticism is always welcome, and so is praise. Won't say no to either, ha. Peace out, guys.