Human connection

Twins.

Maesters, mages, and wise men had theorised about the connection between two people born together for centuries. There were ancient texts predating the rise of the Freehold that considered the possibilities and limits, though none had ever come to any clear conclusions.

At least that was what Shiera had believed for a long time. Reading this diary cataloguing the experiments, both failures and successes, that had been done threw that belief into question.

The writer had been a former member of the Obsidian guild of Valyria, banished to Oros after his line and person had lost the favour of the Forty. Many of his attempts to improve on the glass candles had been recorded in these journals, among a hundred other different interests. When they had climbed down the ladder, she had thought that the two finished glass candles, one black and one red, were the greatest prize, but the sheer amount of knowledge hidden in just the first few of near half a hundred books was doing a fine job at competing. Much was no longer legible of course, but the sealed off room had maintained far more than anywhere else.

Suspecting that blood magic was involved in their creation was as reasonable an assumption as any other, one that many had arrived at in the past, but the exact requirements had been elusive until now.

Shiera was unsure whether she should feel delighted to have finally gained this information or dejected since it was entirely useless for application. Twins, one male and one female, born to a female twin, all pure Valyrian lineage, would be difficult enough to find even if she were to participate in slavery, distateful as that idea was, but the dragons were dead and so there was no possible way she could accomplish the necessary steps. Perhaps the hope that she would be able to manufacture her own candles was a foolish one, but she had entertained it nonetheless.

Well, even if those hopes had been dashed, there were still other avenues for her to pursue.

Now that she had access to more than just the one glass candle, she could afford to be a bit more reckless with her experiments. Whatever questions remained after she had catalogued all the books here could be answered that way.

Finishing the last passage, an explanation of the effect using two male twins would have on the process, creating a candle that could not freely interact with every part of the world, Shiera lowered the book and glanced at Naruto. He was preoccupied with his own find, still playing around with the straight-edged Valyrian steel dagger that had been buried under a mountain of books and materials like some common trinket. There was a look of concentration on his face, but it took only moments for him to notice her gaze.

"Sorry, did you say something?"

"No, nothing." Shiera shook her head.

She was grateful to him, truly. Revealing her identity should have led to inevitable questions about her situation and past and she had been prepared to deal with them when she had decided to do so but Naruto had surprised her again. Perhaps she should simply stop expecting him to act as most people would, after all, he did not seem to particularly care about doing so. He was like Daemon and Aegor and Brynden in that way. They had obeyed only their own rules when they felt it necessary.

There was still a lot she did not know or understand about him, secrets to be unravelled and information to be gathered, but she could no longer avoid the fact that she trusted him, possibly more than anyone else.

Most of the people she had known, that she had shared a connection with, were long dead of course. Queen Naerys and her brother Aemon, Brynden, Daemon, Aegor, Daeron and Myriah and Daenerys, Baelor, Aerys, and Maekar and Dyanna. Even little Egg, the insolent scamp who had somehow become King, was dead now. Only Aemon was still around, her latest information said that he was still serving on the Wall as the Maester at Castle Black.

Shiera could not say whether she would feel differently about Naruto if all those she had known were still around, if she had never thrown away her identity and spent decades living as someone else, but a little part of her mind was telling that it would not make much of a difference.

It had not been even a whole day since Shiera had touched the seal on his stomach and yet that experience still weighed heavy on her mind. It was not so much the words of the giant nine-tailed fox, though they had had their own effect, but instead the safety she had felt back then that was influencing her. Naruto did not seem to have been aware of the situation and she had not spoken about it yet but that certainty of safety, that no matter the situation she would not come to harm in his presence, had been more than convincing.

Once more Shiera wondered at that effect for a moment, debated whether such a nebulous thing should really sway her in such a way, but in the end, she always arrived at the same conclusion. With her identity now revealed to him there was no reasonable way back to how things had been before. She had taken the step, had made the jump; trying to figure out exactly which detail had been the most important in making her do so was an exercise in futility.

"Did you find anything good?"

"Quite a bit," Shiera sighed and rubbed her eyes. Reading by candlelight was a common occurrence for her but it was never comfortable for long stretches of time. The darkness of this cellar room made judging the time more difficult, though that was the case everywhere in Oros and here at least they were surrounded by sturdy walls, but she was sure she had been reading for more than two hours now. "I am still unsure how to transport it all."

The glass candles were tall and slim, and it would not be difficult to find a place for them but the sheer number of books made the same approach difficult. It would take the whole day at least to sift through all of them and determine what was and wasn't worth the place it would take up. From what she had seen so far there would be far too much to find place for in their packs.

Well, the final judgement on that could only be made once she had had a look at it all. Before she could start browsing through the next book Naruto stood up and joined her, still flipping the dagger in one hand.

"What are you looking for exactly?"

"I won't know until I read it." She shrugged. There was never any clarity when it came to looking for clues on sorcery. "Anything to do with sorcery and magic truly. Any details I do not yet know about the magical abilities of the Valyrians or anyone else." There was precious little he could help with in that regard. From what she knew his own knowledge was heavily specialised, towards Aeromancy and the basics of elemental sorcery, and sharing all she knew with him so that he could judge for her what was notable or not would take longer than just going through it all by herself.

Without another word Naruto picked up one of the many books she had not had a look at yet, leaned against the old desk, and started looking through it. Before Shiera could tell him not to bother, she stopped herself. She could see how he was stubbornly focusing only on deciphering the yellowed pages, carefully not looking at her even if he was aware of her gaze.

Instead, she picked up a new book of her own, moved the lit lantern a bit closer to the both of them, and started reading. About thirty minutes later he quietly asked her the first question and went right back to reading after she confirmed the uselessness of the information.

They continued like that, quietly talking now and again, when clarification was necessary or facts disagreed with each other, and Shiera felt herself almost relax in the relative safety of the room and atmosphere. It was such an ordinary thing, to sit next to someone and read despite the subject matter, but there was something soothing to the experience all the same.

Hours passed and they continued reading and comparing and sorting out. Naruto stopped two times by himself, to stretch and move his body a little bit, and once with her to eat and drink and throw around ideas for their further plans. They still had enough supplies to last them more than a week but there was no good reason she could see to risk anything further when they had already found this much. Hoping for the secret to Valyrian steel and a dragon egg to reveal themselves when they had already been rather fortunate was insanity.

Somehow Naruto always ended up in slightly different positions afterwards. Sitting cross-legged on the desk, making the old wood groan and creak every time he shifted his weight, seating himself on another chair that had been hidden in a dark corner but eventually collapsed under his weight, and finally sitting on the floor right next to her own chair, so close that she could feel his warmth even through the layers she wore.

By the time they finished looking over the last of the books, night's redness was already creeping through the open trapdoor again. Even Shiera could feel the effects of a whole day spent reading in relative darkness by then, though it was no new experience for her. At the very least there had been no intention on her part to memorise or even necessarily understand everything at this time, that part would be accomplished in a completely safe location after she had the opportunity to wash the ash off.

As she was organising their final selection of valuable books into a separate pile near their packs, Naruto reached for one of the pouches at his belt. Yawning he retrieved a spool of wire and started constructing a simply alarm in the trap door. Even if he was obviously tired his actions were deliberate and precise, a result of many hours of practice no doubt. His formal education on history and most other topics had been rather appalling when she had started teaching him and even now there was still much for him to learn, but she could not deny that he was competent at the things he did know.

Shiera went to sleep sparing their safety no further thought, her back to Naruto with barely any space between them.

The eyes were clear and blue and terrible. For a moment she thought she was looking at Naruto, but his eyes were the blue of storms, as the ones of the Baratheons had often been called. These burned with freezing cold, the whole eye a unified blue that glowed against the black night.

Cold, terrible eternal cold chasing all the warmth from her bones, making her skin dry up and tears attempt to wet her own eyes, only for them to freeze and start to burn. There was no option of escape. Her body wanted to move instinctively, reflexively, but she could not move her feet, her body not really there, not really anywhere.

For all its terribleness there was no anger in that gaze, no fury, no greed, no lust. It was dispassionate, neutral, unconcerned. Inevitable.

Shiera woke with a start, the unnatural bright light in the room overwhelming her and making her squint. The bedroll next to hers was empty. She could not say exactly how much time had passed but she did not feel particularly well rested. The shadows were too dark and every colour too rich. Her sleep-addled mind took only a few seconds to understand what was going on. The realisation helped her wake up fully.

Seated at the desk they had used yesterday was Naruto, his back to her. The burning black glass candle they had found was the source of the unnatural light. His right hand hovered near the queer flame, but she could not see his face from her position on the ground.

"Naruto?" Normally he would have most likely noticed her already, his sharp hearing picking up on the small noises she made as she propped herself up, but they had noted the distracting effect of using a glass candle in the experiments they had done before this trip.

Naruto lowered his hand, the flame guttering out quickly and plunging the room into near complete darkness, only the slight red light of the night serving to illuminate anything. He did not turn to face her, only hunching over, face in his hands. The movement drew attention to the piece of wire still attached to his hand. Their alarm was still active.

"I didn't mean to wake you." Quiet defeat rang in his words, no sign of his usual confidence remaining.

"You did not," she said quietly. There was a fragile sombreness to him right now, comparable to the state he had been in when she had met him for the first time, though on a smaller scale. "Who were you looking for?"

Naruto did not answer for a time, simply sitting in silence. She could not see much in the dark, but the movement of his hands was noticeable enough, the way he massaged his face and then lowered and wrung them in an effort to busy his mind. He did that often, small repetitive physical actions to occupy his mind.

"Do you ever think about them?" he asked, just as Shiera was about to repeat herself. "The people that you left?" She thought long and hard about how to answer that. It was more than plain that he was talking about himself, and she wondered if there was a particular person he was thinking off from his past.

"What brought this on?"

"Just..." Naruto took a fortifying breath. "Just a dream I had. Forget it." She watched him stand up and walk to his own bedroll, taking care not to disturb the wire attached to his hand and never meeting her eyes. His torso was bare and when he turned his back towards her, she could see that her suspicion about his chest wound had been right. The one on his back looked just like it.

Shiera heard Naruto's breathing slow down slightly but she was confident that he was not asleep yet.

"Not usually, no," she answered his first question honestly. Quaithe had never thought about her past, neither had Serei, Naery, Myranna, or any of the others. They had no past to think of, no relationships to reminisce on, no homes to return to. Shiera did. But she had not truly been Shiera again until a day ago. "Most of them are dead now anyway but I remember them sometimes. I do not regret leaving either way, if that is what you were asking."

Naruto turned onto his back, staring at the ceiling as if it could supply him the answers he sought. "If I knew they were dead, maybe I could move on. But I don't know." He grew even more quiet and solemn then. "I don't think I ever will either."

She did not know how he could be so sure about that conclusion, but she did not particularly feel like questioning his confidence at the moment either. Even if Shiera had avoided Westeros for decades now, she could have always chosen to go back there. Surely, the same held true for him. Getting him to talk more seemed like the best course of action for now.

"Tell me about them, about your home. You know about mine already."

It was no fair trade of course. What Naruto knew about King's Landing and the Red Keep was sparse and incomplete but with her identity revealed he did know those parts about her already. He had been unusually tight-lipped or at least vague about most of his own past with her. Shiera was quite well-travelled herself, seeing most of the major ports all over the world at least once in her life but there were still many places she had never seen.

He looked at her for a moment of internal deliberation, his eyes as sharp as always, and then decided. Sitting up he looked down at his hands before staring ahead, obviously seeing some place else.

"I was born in a place called Konoha in the Land of Fire. I never knew about my parents growing up, but the leader of the village took care of me. Most people didn't like me much, so I was alone a lot but when I was six, I begged to enter the Academy, to learn to fight and protect the village any ways." He shook his head, a lopsided grin visible in the low red light. "I dreamed about becoming Hokage in the future, leading the village and protecting everyone. I thought that if I showed them that I could do that they would treat me better."

Shiera was loath to interrupt but a small part had attracted her attention.

"You had an Academy where people learned to fight? For everyone?" Nothing like it existed in Westeros, though similar concepts could admittedly be found in different parts of Essos, usually through temples. It was not unbelievable that a particularly martial land would organise things in such a way.

"Well, I guess not everyone, but if you were healthy and willing to work hard you could try to get in. It wasn't just about fighting really, we learned about our history, espionage, in- and exfiltration, survival, stealth. A lot of things," Naruto explained, seemingly not realising that he had just thrown her for a loop and undermined her whole estimation of his limits and capabilities. Was he just bragging? Shiera turned onto her side, facing him directly.

"You are a spy?" she asked in disbelief. "And not only that but you were trained to be one since you were a child?" Brynden had spent much of his time as Master of Whisperers and then Hand of the King trying to locate useful informants. His skinchanging had reduced the need for them but even that had its limits, human sources of information had always been necessary. But compared to spies, informants were easy to find.

They needed the correct capabilities, the right temperament and incentives, the right training. Intelligence, cunning, adaptability, perceptiveness, loyalty. Finding potential candidates was hard enough, training them sufficiently even harder. From what she had seen of Naruto, he was not exactly an ideal fit. What spy needed to be that good at fighting in the first place?

"Kind of, yes." He shrugged. "I was pretty bad at it at the time. Everything that wasn't learning to fight bored me to tears when I was that age, so I struggled to pay much attention to the lessons. By the time I was twelve I was the dead last, so they put me on a team with the best student. Sasuke Uchiha." As he said the name his voice gained a strange inflection, some strange mix of fondness, frustration, regret, and acceptance.

"I hated his guts." Shiera could not help but snort and Naruto joined in her amusement with a short chuckle.

"He was always so glum and moody when everyone fawned over him and he was good at everything he did, it pissed me off. We fought a lot, always butting heads over every little thing, but when it came down to it, we could work together pretty well. Eventually I learned that he was as alone as I was. Years before his whole clan had been killed by his brother, with him the only survivor. We connected over that loneliness. He became like a brother to me, or at least what I thought a brother would have been."

"When he betrayed the village, I promised I would bring him back, if I had to break his legs and drag him back there to do it." Shiera saw him clench his left hand into a tight fist. "He was a traitor to Konoha, had chosen to turn his back on all of us for revenge," Naruto ended heatedly. This was clearly a sore spot for him.

"You think he should have forgiven what happened?" Her question made him stop short and then compose himself before answering.

"That…, he needed to decide that for himself. No one in Konoha would have kept him from doing it, his brother was a declared traitor, marked for death. We would have helped him if he had asked. He left because he thought we were holding him back from getting strong enough, so he threw it all away and turned traitor himself. I would have forgiven him for that, all of it, had he come back." Naruto grew quiet for a few seconds.

"But I failed. I could not bring him back and could not bring myself to kill him either."

"That is how you got this scar is it not?" Shiera reached out and lightly touched the discoloured skin on his chest. It was a guess on her part but there was good reason to think that an event like that would have left its mark on him.

The muscles beneath the skin flexed lightly in response to the sudden contact. That he had survived the blow was incredible enough, that he did not seem to hold it against the one that had inflicted it was even stranger. Their eyes met and then he dropped his gaze to her fingers on his chest.

"Sasuke could use lightning to form a blade around his hand. He learned it from our teacher. Chidori, a thousand birds, for the chirping sound it made. He stuck it right through my chest. I thought I had died; everything was numb, and breathing was hell with one lung pierced."

Lightning. That explained the small cracks all around the circular wound, though she had seldom heard of any one sorcerer harnessing it for spells, much less in the direct, physical way that Naruto used magic. The stormsingers of Valyria were said to conjure clouds into the sky, bringing rain and storm and sometimes lightning, but shaping much less creating lightning itself was not mentioned in any texts she had seen.

"You were looking for him then? With the candle?" Shiera asked. She could understand the impulse, she had thought about doing it herself after they had figured out how to correctly use the candle, but with it being such a precious resource she had resolved to carefully consider any personal usage. That problem had been reduced now, after acquiring two more, but using them for leisure still seemed like a bad idea.

"Yes, among others. I couldn't find any of them." Dead then, most likely. It seemed like they had more and more in common the more she learned about him. The fact that his attempt had met no positive results at all clearly rested on him like a weight. She pushed down with the hand still touching the scar, making him lay down on his back again and then joined him there, her head resting on his chest.

He stiffened beneath her. "Continue with your story," she said, making herself comfortable. Nothing changed for a moment before he eventually relaxed, his unnaturally warm left hand settling around her body, accepting the comfort she was offering.

"I passed out after the fight and as soon as I recovered, I left the village as well. I went on a training trip for nearly three years. My teacher was Konoha's spymaster, so he had to travel all over the place to collect information and get in contact with his informants, but he took me as his apprentice anyways. What I know about spying I learned from him in those years. Really almost everything I know now he taught me." Now there was only fondness tinged with sadness left in Naruto's tone. Shiera could already imagine what had happened to his teacher, but she had no wish to open wounds he was not ready to revisit.

"He was a pervert and a drunk, but he knew how to make me strong."

Shiera listened to him continue his story, describing this mischief or that incident. Listening to him quietly ramble on about his past, feeling the steady beat of his heart, it was all quite relaxing for her. Minutes, maybe hours, passed until he had nothing else to speak about, trailing off with no more words to say and no other stories to share. Some of it seemed completely impossible and yet she could not help but believe every word.

Halfway through he had started gently trailing his fingers up and down her back, which did… things to her. Stirring urges she had not paid particular attention to for a long time. Those were things for Shiera, not Quaithe or any of the others. But this was hardly the place for that, even if, judging by the desire in his eyes when he looked at her, Naruto would be amenable to it. There would be time for things like that once they had left Oros.

Comfortable silence reigned between them for a bit, during which Naruto continued his ministrations. Eventually Shiera decided to reciprocate his honesty.

"When my mother died birthing me, I had no one to take care of me. Aegon IV certainly did not care enough to try. Queen Naerys sheltered me those first few years until she passed shortly after her brother, not that I remember most of it. She was a very gentle woman and kind, to look after her husband's bastard daughter. I grew up with her daughter Daenerys as a sister, even though she was years older and already understood my situation."

"The Red Keep was filled with ambitious sycophants under my sire and learned men and maesters under my half-brother, but I did not care for either group though my own interests aligned far more with the second. My mother had left me her scrolls and books and I spent much of my childhood buried in them, reading and learning everything I could. Daenerys tried to include me in her own activities sometimes, but I was too young for many of them, and she left for Sunspear once she was married."

She still remembered that day quite well. The grand ceremony in the Sept of Baelor, the celebratory tourney afterwards, and Daemon's sullen mood after his defeat. It had not been the loss against Baelor in the final round that had affected him so, but the cause of the tourney itself.

"Daeron had no quarrel with any of his father's bastard children and thought to use us to strengthen the realm, so we were all welcome at court at the start of his reign," Shiera said, continuing. "Daemon, Baelor, Brynden, and Aegor trained together in the Red Keep, and I spent much time sharing books with Aerys and Brynden long into the night. I wrote to Daenerys many times, asking about books Baelor the Blessed had ordered burned, hoping that she could find them in the libraries of Dorne, though she found only few."

"Daeron's intended marriages were quickly discarded when word of Daemon and Aegor rebelling became known, but our positions had been protected in the same moment. Brynden was the one to tell the Small Council of their plans. Daemon had plans to include him in the conspiracy, but Aegor and Brynden had grown to despise each other by then, and would never stand together as allies, much less brothers."

Naruto's hand stilled in its movements for a moment, the phantom heat hidden in the scarred flesh much more apparent than while he moved the limb.

"Was it truly so bad between them?" he asked quietly.

"I could not tell you what exactly started it, but near the end you could barely leave them in a room together," she said in answer. "Aegor was always quick to anger, and Brynden enjoyed provoking him at every opportunity, but in the training yard Aegor held the advantage and beat Brynden many a time. They could never take a loss from each other well."

Their rivalry had consumed them both, a fact that she did not particularly like remembering about Brynden. Shiera saw some parallels in them and what Naruto had told her of his own past. Perhaps if he had not been so insistent on his promise and had circumstances been slightly different, he and Sasuke would have turned out much the same.

Naruto seemed to give her words some thought before shaking his head. "Maybe it really is just different than I thought." He began moving his hand up and down her back again, a slight shiver travelling down her spine.

"Perhaps, but I would not judge brotherhood by them alone." She thought of Baelor, Aerys, Rhaegel, and Maekar. They had had their quarrels but nothing as serious as Brynden and Aegor. Shiera decided to change the subject to something less personal. Describing the Red Keep and its secret passages, the three Hills of King's Landing, the Kingswood, and many of the things she had seen in her life.

How much time Shiera spent on talking about her past she could not say but eventually sleep reinforced its claim too strongly for her to resist any more.

When she woke up the early morning had already passed them by and yet she was loath to leave the comfort of her position. In the end however, practicality won out. There was much to do so that nothing impaired their trip back to civilisation.

That is chapter 15 and Valyria done with. I hope you enjoyed as always.

I'm done with 16 as well and working on 17, 18, and 22 at the same time currently. 21 is already finished and is the first chapter of the second part of this story. 19 and 20 will come once I'm done with those first ones.

Not a lot happening action-wise and instead more character and lore work. Is that actually how glass candles are made? Almost definitely not but we don't know yet or ever so I have free reign in that regard. Don't interpret this as Shiera now knowing everything there is to know either. As I wrote, those are experimental notes. Some of successes but not all or even most. We know very little about Valyria and it's society and demographics but I imagine that there must have been some organisation of trades, especially where valyrian steel and obsidian are concerned.

Without the remaining Dunk&Egg books there are a lot of things we don't yet know about that time of the story. The Blackfyre Rebellions, Aegon the Unworthy's reign, the Peake Uprising. Aegon IV made a marriage pact through Daemon, marrying him to Rohanne of Tyrosh, which Daeron II saw through once he ascended the throne. Naerys and Aemon have no set death dates yet, so I'm putting them around 183 AC. Aemon died near a year before his beloved sister so Shiera would have been nearly four by the time Naerys passed in my timeline. Reasonably for a single core memory in my view.

Daemon Blackfyre was said to love Daenerys in the World book and she supposedly returned those feelings but then married Prince Maron Martell in a political move to bring Dorne fully into the realm. If the alliance with Tyrosh through Daemon had any meaning that would imply that diplomaticly inclined Daeron could have at least considered using his other noble-born half-siblings in a similar way. Obviously when Aegor and Daemon rebell that plan understandably falls flat pretty quickly.

Serenei of Lys, Shiera's mother, died after giving birth, so it is unclear exactly who even raised her. It is definitely intentional that the same rumours Egg tells Dunk about Shiera were used about her mother. How you could even judge whether a woman was using the blood of virgins to keep herself young when the woman in question is about thirty beats me.

Naruto and Shiera did not share everything with each other in this chapter and what Naruto did share is done in similar terms to the parts I wrote out as dialogue: those things happened and that meant this to me. It was not a read-through of the plot synopsis of Naruto Shippuden. Nonetheless it has brough them closer together.

There were some reviews in spanish since I published the last chapter. A language I do not speak, read, or write with any skill or fluidity. I do not understand why but appreciate them nonetheless.

Until next week and next chapter. Thank you for reading and reviewing and until then.