Comment fic meme #3

[gotexchange_mod]

Here we go for the post-exchange comment fic meme. (Posted on the mod account as usual because I don't want to enable anonymous comments on the exchange comm.)

A couple of rules:

- please include the pairing/character (and maybe a short prompt/kink) in the comment title - both for prompts and for fills.
- there are both show and book fans in this

Comments

Those not dead (Stannis/Davos, endgame, end of series--TWoW/ADoS) 1/2

[stannisandre]

[[NOTE: This is TWoW or ADoS timeline (some ADwD spoilers obliquely referenced; Pink Letter assumed to be a hoax) and assumes that a collective force of the major surviving players after ADwD banded together to, you know, save the universe, although most of them did not survive. This is very much a bittersweet "everyone dies" fic, so be warned of that. ;)]]

It couldn't have been more than twice, maybe three times, but it seemed like half his adult life had been spent believing Davos Seaworth dead. After Blackwater, at the hands of Wyman Manderly, at the hands of Skagosi cannibals--the Onion Knight was dead more often than he was alive.

The Onion Lord, he reminded himself. My Lord of the Rainwood, my admiral of the ships of the Narrow Sea, my Hand...without one of his hands, reminding me of my duty, forever telling me the truth and nothing more and nothing less.

"Don't lie to me, Lord Davos. Not now. Not...ever."

Next to him, sprawled in a growing puddle of red in the snow, Davos smiled, revealing missing teeth in a face covered in bruises, black frostbite, and burns. "I did not lie. Your Grace. Look and...you will see the dawn. Close your eyes...hear dragon song."

If I close my eyes I will see and hear no more. If I close my eyes my own bruises and dead body parts and gaping ice-blade holes will finally swallow me whole. But Lord Davos was correct about the faint greenish tinge to the east, as well as of the roar of Daenerys Targaryen's great brutish fire lizards. Even now the black one was circling overhead, screaming, louder than before but more sorrowfully, too, if that were possible.

"Drogon is sad. Your Grace. I wish I knew...why. Perhaps his rider..."

He grunted in reply, coughed, although he could feel his mouth twitch in the attempt to smile. "My brother tried... a thousand times to kill Dae...Targaryen, and she has done it...to herself? That's of a piece...with the justice the septons and the red priests--a prettier song than Robert's little--brother--lying dead in the snow."

"You're not dead yet, Your Grace."

This time he did smile, faintly, as he watched the great black beast swirling and keening in the air. "But I'm dying."

"Yes, Your Grace."

"And so are you, Lord Davos."

"Yes, Your Grace. I'm dying on...the snow alongside my king, Your Grace."

He turned to look at Davos, bruise by bruise, with a tight chest he couldn't remember having a moment before and a fading smile. Each bruise on his own body was aching in the cold, and the blood freezing between his legs was sticky against the bits of his exposed skin that still had feeling.

"And is the dead king and...his Hand... a prettier song, while the Targaryens...win all over again?"

Davos's smile picked up where his had left off. "Pardons, Your Grace...I have never known you to care for...songs. And we all...won."

"Those not dead. Songs were...Renly's thing, what his nursemaid had entertained...him with at Storm's End until she starved. A fearsome large woman...some fool wanted to...wanted to eat her flesh."

Davos tried to laugh and wheezed instead, heaving on the ground. Weakly. When he spoke his voice was thinner, more distant than before.

"And cannibalism...it is not proper, Your Grace."

His own voice had to be torn, by force of will, from his chest. "No." In a gravel whisper he added, "And Renly would not...would not have liked it. The boy Renly. Not...the man, either. Maybe."