fic: what is mine is not yours (Game of Thrones; Daenerys)
Title: what is mine is not yours
Characters: Daenerys Targaryen
Rating: PG
Summary: She will take what is hers, and then Westeros will have a Queen not a King.
Author's Note: 800 words. Written for this prompt here. Spoilers for the third book, but really more speculation and what if on the future. I own neither the show nor the book.
Daenerys stays in her conquered city, does not let it go to ruin like the ones before. She does not march, not yet. Instead, she listens, she watches, she reads, and she learns. Day by day, she pieces herself together until she truly is ready to be Daenerys Targaryen, Queen of Westeros.
She awakes in the mornings and looks out from her rooms. The city is what lies before her, but she does not see them. She sees the lands where she once lived, the lands that belong to her, lands that were stolen. She sees the places from the books she has been given, from the stories from her knight. There is no way of knowing if what she thinks the places look like are correct, but it does not matter whether they are true or if they are her mind making up for what she does not know.
Dany will know soon enough. Westeros will be hers. Her dragons, her children, grow stronger each day. They hunt and grow bolder, straying farther away in their flights but never failing to return. Her blood burns hot, and she knows that with each day that passes the right time draws closer.
Soon, soon, she says to her dragons.
She marches.
Her army grows, people flocking to her and her dragons; and if not, she takes them. Always learning, she moves on. She is sparing to those who deserve it and harsh with those who do not. Her army grows and with it so does she.
Yes, yes, she thinks.
They march until they reach the ocean. Her khalasar is still wary of the poisonous salt water, but they believe in her. They will follow her.
Dany stands on top of a hill that overlooks the ocean that they will sail across in the next few days. She feels strangely calm, she thinks, but then this feels right, this feels like home; in a way that running through streets and hiding to stay alive with Viserys had never felt. The long grass tickles her legs beneath her Dothraki skirts.
Her knight, the first of her Queensguard, stands behind her. She feels his presence, and as he had told her before, to let her out of his sight was not to be thought of. She turns to him, “You said my father was called the Mad King.”
“I did, my Queen.”
He is open before her, no hesitance now in his voice. “You told me that one day you would tell me about him.”
Again, “I did.”
“Tell me,” she commands.
Her knight does. She shivers at some parts of the story, thinks that maybe it wasn’t an unkindness that this Lannister gave; after all, she has seen this madness in her brother. Thoughts of the Undying Ones plague her. Their prophecies and words do not scare her, but they are worth remembering she tells herself.
In the end, it is not so hard to take back her lands.
It is not easy, but it is not as hard as one would think. The Seven Kingdoms are in chaos, broken and divided. It is easier still when there are those who are tired of the players of the game that are in power now; a girl near her age, lonely and aching in cold mountains, and a half man with debts to be paid. She takes them one by one with the sigil of House Targaryen. Three dragon heads to match the three dragons at her back. Viserion, Rhaegal, and Drogon who she rides. Once she had said that Drogo had given her the wind with her silver. Now, she truly knows the wind.
I do not have a gentle heart, she wants to tell them, old words that still ring true. She is Daenerys Targaryen, Stormborn, the Unburnt, and Mother of Dragons. This is what was taken from her, and this is what she will take back. These lands are hers. By right, by conquest.
Westeros trembles beneath the roars of her dragons, roars that echo in her heart.
The Iron Throne.
It is an ugly thing, and when she first sees it Dany wants to laugh, remembering when Drogo had once joked about iron seats and their worth. The swords glint in the light. She has heard the stories that no one can sit in it without being pricked, that it had been designed that way to serve as a reminder. She needs no reminder of what has been paid to get here.
She sits. The metal does not cut her skin. It seems as if it lets out a sigh. There are things still to be dealt with: traitors, the settling of her people, the reward of those who helped her, and the threat of what still lies North that needs her fire.
But in this instance, when her fingers curl around the edges of the throne, and her dragons circle the city, it does not matter.
She has come home.