Author's Note: Hello again, and an early Merry Christmas!
Lots of change in this chapter, and a lot of ground covered in not all that many words. Hopefully, once we settle into where I'm going to diverge from canon more and thusly have more room to work (in my own mind), updates will become more frequent, but no promises.
New POV, might or might not be recurring. Let me know what you think, and check out the second author's note at the bottom por favor!
As always, I hope you enjoy and review this update.
*Minor edits made 06-16-2024
The Riverlands settled into a stalemate.
The Prince of the Iron Throne sat astride Harroway for nearly three full turns of the moon, waiting on an answer from the Young Wolf that never came. Damon reminded himself that the Riverlands were a dangerous place for anyone of any allegiance; the bloody Northman he had sent with his letter could have been ambushed by other Lannister soldiers somewhere on the road, or perhaps even by bandits—wars were nothing more than mountains of coin in the eyes of the lowest of the low. Perhaps one of the wounds Damon's men had inflicted had damaged him internally, and the Woolfield now rotted on the side of the road. Perhaps he simply didn't pass on the message, some Northern or Riverlander lord deciding not to bring the request for words before their newly crowned king.
Perhaps Robb had ignored him.
Damon hadn't been close to the eldest Stark son while in Winterfell, but there had been no animosity between them. At least, the prince didn't think there had been, but he was never much good at discerning that sort of thing. They had been civil at the very least, and Robb was borderline friendly at times. When the Baratheon Prince had sent his missive, he'd never considered the 'King in the North' would refuse him outright.
But Damon wasn't the same boy he had been those moons ago at Winterfell, and it stood to reason that Robb wasn't either. The Baratheon was now a knight with the blood of dozens on his hands; the Stark was now a king with likely the same. Damon had the weight of command on his shoulders, while Robb had the much more daunting weight of kingship on his. Whatever almost-friendship or cordial acquaintance the two had once had was as dead as their fathers.
The two boys were now men on opposite sides of a war. While Damon was inwardly frustrated and disappointed that he couldn't force Robb to parlay with him, he had forced himself to accept the fats for what they were.
The war, for what it mattered, was at a relative standstill. Robb couldn't force the offensive on Tywin; the Lannisters had too many men and too strong of a position, as well as the advantage of holding Edmure Tully and several Riverman nobles as hostages. On the flipside, Tywin couldn't force anymore of an offensive than the scattered raids and sieges on the Riverlands, unable to march out and besiege Riverrun due to Stark holding Jaime.
Standstill or not, there had not been a cease in the violence. While Damon had seen neither head nor hair of a Northerner or Riverlander since the fiery raid on his camps, a score of small scale battles and skirmishes had occurred. Ser Forley Prester had taken the towns of High Heart and Blackbottom Bend easily. Gregor Clegane, whom Damon refused to think of as a knight for the Mountain was nothing more than a vicious dog, had burned seemingly half of the villages along the Trident. The Strongboar, captured at the Whispering Wood while helping Damon and Tyrek escape, had been exchanged for a handful of Rivermen noble sons. He had brought news that, while Jaime was kept separate from the rest of the prisoners, Lyle had seen him alive and…well, he'd seen him alive anyway.
But it wasn't all good news. Ser Flement Brax, whose brother Tytos still remained a captive at Riverrun, had attacked Acorn's Hall at the same time a conglomeration of Riverlander and Northern forces had strengthened it, leading to a pitched battle that saw the royalist forces routed. They were nearly slaughtered to a man when the rebels pursued, a few hundred of them surviving only due to the arrival of Ser Forley, who had been drawn by the sound of pitched battle from his own conquests a few miles away. The Prester knight had stemmed the pursuit long enough to turn the flight into an orderly retreat, but had himself pulled back and abandoned the two villages he had captured in the face of the superior Northman numbers. They had been harried all the way back to Harrenhal.
And that was only what Damon knew of. All ravens and couriers routed through Harrenhal and therefore his grandfather, and the prince had no doubt that Tywin kept a firm grasp on who knew what. He may have knighted him, but Damon didn't imagine for a second that Tywin let him know everything.
A prime example was that Damon didn't know anything about either of his Baratheon uncles. Where they were now, who made up their forces, what his grandfather intended to do about them, what they intended to do about each other…none of it. It was as if the two Baratheon brothers had vanished from the Seven Kingdoms.
So Damon had sat and waited for either a response from Robb or new orders from Tywin, receiving neither for the aforementioned moons. He had tried to pass the time training, but he had been forced to stop after reopening the infuriating slash across his back thrice. Riding on scout tended to irritate the injury as well, and he even had to be careful while abed with Bella, a place he had never been careful in his life. While the once red, weeping wound had recently become an irritated pink line grown sturdy enough for him to resume training with Tyrek, the days of absolutely nothing had nearly driven him mad.
Some of the messages that Tywin had allowed through were not of a military nature. Damon had lost count of the total number of letters from his mother, though he had received northward of fifteen while at Harroway. The prince had taken to putting Cersei's letters into three categories, based on their contents. 'Letters from the Queen' used the tactic of duty and obedience to one's parents, trying to coerce him back to King's Landing via royal requests and demands. 'Letters from Mother' used the tactic of love and need to see him, near-begging him to leave the fighting to more experienced men and return to her at King's Landing where he would be safe. 'Letters from the Lioness' used hardnosed, brutal tactics; they told Damon how Tommen and Myrcella asked after him and cried at his absence, how King Joffrey was worried for his sibling, how she couldn't understand why he insisted on worrying her into an early grave and how she couldn't believe he would risk depriving her of her child so soon after her brother was put in stocks.
Letters from the Lioness were the hardest for the prince to handle, and his mother knew him well enough to know that would be the case. Well over half of her letters had been of that sort, and in the past moon her strikes had grown in their bite.
It had taken him no time at all to recognize the small, neat lettering of his sister, nor the near-unintelligible scribble of Tommen. They'd both written him, some of their words their own thoughts, others heavily and obviously influenced by his mother. Damon, who had taken to answering only one in ten of his mother's pleas, had written them both back at once, and then wrestled with the guilt of leaving them for a full week. He admired his mother's ruthlessness and pragmatic means of attack, but sometimes he wished to throttle her. As it was, he had had Bella sew both of his sibling's letters into the cloth lining of his breastplate, keeping them close as both a way of treasuring them and a silent vow that he would return to them both.
But only once the war is won. However much he missed his brother, sister and mother, he had a duty as a prince and as a Baratheon to see those opposing Joffrey's rightful reign and degrading his family's blood and name stopped. He had failed at ending this war before it began, a shame he would carry to his grave, but by the Seven he would see it to its end. And, despite the boredom and fear and shame and guilt and countless other emotions that gnawed at him daily, he felt a pivotal turn was coming.
So when Tyrek, out of the blue, pounded on the canvas of his tent in the middle of the night, Damon knew even before he answered that something was shifting.
The prince was on his feet in moments, stepping into his breeches and cinching them at his waist. He pulled the blankets over the still half asleep Bella to preserve her modesty—an odd thought, conserving the modesty of a whore. His paramour grumbled in protest, sleepily twisting them more snuggly around her and instantly falling back asleep. Damon stepped through the flap, unconcerned with his state of relative undress.
That was appropriate, considering Tyrek shared it. Absently Damon noted that Tyrek, over the moons and moons of war and training, had lost much of the chubbiness of youth, replaced by muscle and suntanned skin. Damon imagined he himself had undergone the same change, if the soreness he awoke with most mornings said anything.
His cousin may only be five and ten, but the Lord of Hayford had become Damon's righthand man. Ser Phillip Foote was still the man liaison to the rank-and-file men, due in part to his experience and in part to the fact that grown men found it hard to follow two freshly-made knights still in their teens to war. But it was Tyrek who tended to update Damon on news from the other fronts, as well as ride on scouts, train with and accompany the prince near everywhere. Damon was eternally grateful, not only for Tyrek's assistance and willingness to help but also for the fact that he had a friend, one with whom he shared a bond only those who fought and bled together could share. The prince wasn't sure when precisely his cousin had infiltrated the very small ring of people Damon trusted, but the fact that he had brought the golden-haired Baratheon both relief and hope that, just maybe, Damon wasn't as fucked up socially as he thought he was.
In any case, his cousin gave a slight bow in greeting before gesturing behind him without a word. A courier, dressed in Lannister crimson and holding a torch, stepped forward after a bow of his own.
"A letter from Lord Tywin, m'lord."
"Your Grace," Tyrek firmly corrected, though Damon didn't mind. He waved the courier's quick apologies away, then held the same hand out to Tyrek without looking away from the lion seal on the folded parchment. His cousin instantly placed a dagger in Damon's hand, and the prince split the wax deftly, unfolding the message. The courier extended his torch, giving Damon light enough to read the contents.
He only got through the first paragraph before he started yelling.
Cersei wasn't a fool.
The Queen of the Seven Kingdoms knew what her son was. She knew Joffrey was sadistic, coarse, rude; unkingly, if she was truly honest. He was her Golden Prince, her son, her firstborn, and she loved him fiercely, but she wasn't stupid, nor was she blind.
Some days she wished she were. The day she had seen the dead whore in her son's chambers, shot full of crossbow quarrels, had been one of them. She had resorted to black violence of her own before, hardening her heart to do what was best for her children—slaughtering Robert's many bastards was merely the most recent and severe of the extremes she would resort to. But seeing that sort of violence carried out by your own child, someone you brought into this world and loved with all of your heart since they first drew breath…that was different and terrible, and nothing in the seven Kingdoms could prepare you for it.
She wondered if this was the Seven punishing her for that, or her and Jaime for their love for one another.
Or both.
But she discounted the latter as soon as she thought it. She and Jaime had beaten the odds, truth be told. Three of their children were sweet, good people, a much higher ratio than other offspring of siblings; look at the Targaryen bloodline, where a child who wasn't completely insane was the exception, not the norm. Tommen was a sweet child who loved kittens and applecakes. Cersei could never see him raising an aggressive hand to anyone or anything, much less another human being. If anything Cersei worried because he was too soft, too caring of others, and while that concerned her for his future in a cutthroat world, she certainly preferred that to the sheer aggression and brutality that was her oldest. Tommen didn't look like Jaime all that much, but she knew his heart was the same as her brother's.
Myrcella was an angel, a copy of Cersei at that age with half of the fierceness and twice the sweetness. Her little girl was already a beauty, likely to grow to an equal of Cersei herself. She would make some lord the perfect wife, though the Seven knew there was no House nor lustful man worthy of her. Certainly not this Trystane of Dorne, prince or no; the Dornish were savages, and no machinations of Tyrion's would see Cersei's daughter in their hands. Though, considering the sounds outside the throne room, Cersei couldn't deny she was glad her daughter wasn't here.
And then there was Damon.
Her second son, born mere minutes after her first, was Jaime incarnate. He was tall and strong like his father, smart and cunning like his mother. Damon was all of Joffrey's fierce will to fight for his family and none of his cruelty, all of Tommen's care for others and none of his hesitance to fight. She had seen her son train with her lover since he was a small boy, and while seeing the two of them together terrified a part of her—Damon was so alike Jaime in physical appearance that Cersei had been waiting for someone to put his true parentage together since her twins were two—she was also fiercely proud of how much like Jaime Damon was. She didn't know much about sword play, the ridiculous ideas about the roles of women taking that avenue from her, but she knew enough to know Damon was highly skilled. While he may not possess his father's glib tongue, he possessed his skill with a sword.
And his streak of foolishness, much to Cersei's chagrin.
She had been terrified and furious when Damon had disappeared with only a letter of his intentions left behind all those moons ago, but she had been confident the men she sent after him would return him to her side.
They hadn't.
Her son's insistence on attending the hunts of the man he thought was his father paid off in an infuriating way, and by the time Cersei realized the soldiers and Kingsguard she had sent after him should be replaced by trackers and huntsmen, it had been too late. She had resorted to letters, some begging and kind, others demanding and even threatening, certain that he would return when he realized the anguish he was causing her.
Damon didn't.
Finally, after months of fruitless pleas that were answered with an increasing resolve in the tone of her son's replies, she had helped her youngest two children pen letters, pleading with their brother to return to them. Cersei knew that, while there was a fierce competitiveness and distaste between her twins, Damon loved Myrcella and Tommen more than anything else, more than he even loved Cersei or Jaime. This tactic, she was so certain, would bring her son back to her.
But like all the others, it hadn't.
Instead, through moons and moons of worry and strife, she only heard of her son's escapades on the field of battle, the very place she wanted him nowhere near. Just like his father, Damon had a flair for reckless bravery, and while part of Cersei was proud to hear of the stories about her son Damon the Daring, the rest was furious and terrified.
She needed to know he was safe. She needed to know he was not slogging through the mud and blood that her brother spoke of. She needed him here, now, to protect his family. Instead he was off in the Riverlands, fighting a war he had no business being involved in.
Cersei shushed Tommen, the vial of sweetsleep clutched hidden in her hand. Stannis, he who was attacking her city to kill her and her children, would not get her youngest son. She had ordered Joffrey to leave the front, plans in place to make sure her eldest didn't fall into the cursed Baratheon's hand either, but she knew there was a chance that would go awry. But no matter what, sweet Tommen would not fall into Stannis' hands.
The sounds of men outside the doors of the Iron Throne caused Tommen to cry and her to shush him again, whispering sweet words into his ear even as she uncorked the vial of poison.
The queen steeled herself, ready to once again do an awful deed for the sake of her family.
When the doors opened she brought the vial to her son's lips, though a moment of weakness made her hesitate. She would later thank the Seven for that hesitation, whether they had damned her or not.
It wasn't Stannis Baratheon walking through the doors of the throne room to take her and her son. It wasn't his dead brother Renly in some awful twist of fate. It wasn't Robb Stark or dead Ned or Robert or the fucking boar that killed him.
It was her father.
The vial slipped to the ground and shattered as relief flooded her. She found no words as Tywin marched in, proclaiming their victory. She barely even looked at him, clutching Tommen in a fierce hug as her eyes were drawn to a figure walking quietly behind and to the right of her father.
The figure was tall and straight, in black and gold armor with a Baratheon stag on the front and a sword with a lionhead pommel at his side. When he removed his helmet, stepping into the torchlight, Cersei thought for a fleeting, glorious moment that it was Jaime.
It wasn't, but her heart still felt nothing but joy.
Damon had come home.
A/N: See, lots of ground covered but I didn't see a point in monotonously going over months of time where Damon has little real impact.
I have a pairing on my mind that I'm 95% set on, but still fell free to leave suggestions about that and of anything you might want to hear more about. Constructive criticism is always welcome, as are questions and suggestions! Y'all rock.