ā§ summary: within the cold, unforgiving walls of the red keep, two opposites collide in the dead of the night. a lady-in-waiting, raised to value duty and perfection above all else, discovers the shattered reality behind prince daeron "the drunken".
ā§ pairing: daeron targaryen (the drunken) x fem!reader
ā§ contents/tags: soft/fluff, hurt/comfort, panic!attacks, severe!anxi3ty, sleep deprivation, vivid descriptions of dragon dreams and impending doom, mention of alcohol as coping mechanism for traum4, pre akotsk era, canon divergence
ā§ word count: 2k+
other works
notes: hello there ā” ā based on this request. hope you like itā” sorry it took a while, i was busy :')
The Red Keep was a labyrinth of echoing stones and suffocating expectations. For a woman of your standing, the castle was not a home; it was a stage. Every morning, before the sun have even kissed the Blackwater Bay, you were already awake, breathing became a secondary concern to posture.
Your mother, a woman whose heart was forged from the same unyielding iron as the Great Gates, had raised you with a single, devastating philosophy: "A lady is the ink with which history is written; if she blots the page, the entire story is ruined". You remembered a summer in your youth, perhaps your tenth year, when you had tripped during a formal dance at a harvest ball. You hadn't even fallen, merely stumbled, but the look of pure, curdled disappointment on your mother's face had stayed with you longer than any physical bruise. You had spent the next three days in a darkened room, practicing your steps until your slippers bled.
As a lady-in-waiting to Lady Kiera of Tyrosh, you were the epitome of that harsh upbringing. Your dressed were never wrinkled, your hair was a masterpiece of braids and silk, and your voice never rose above a melodic, controlled murmur. You moved through the draughty halls like a ghost of perfection, carrying the weight of your family's honor on your narrow shoulders.
To you, duty was a religion. And that was precisely why you loathed Prince Daeron Targaryen.
He was the blot on the page. Known to the court as Daeron the Drunken, he was a prince who traded his dignity for the bottom of a wine flagon. You had watched him from afar for months ā stumbling through the gardens, his eyes unfocused and glazed, his sandy brown hair matted with sweat. To you, he was an insult. He had been given the greatest gift in the world ā the blood of the dragon ā and he was throwing it away while you struggled every day just to keep your chin at the correct angle.
Every time you passed him in the Great Hall, you felt a surge of visceral disgust. You woul look at him with eyes as cold as the Wall, your spine so straight it looked ready to sharp. You saw the way his lips would curl in a defensive, bitter sneer when you glided past. You were the Perfect Lady, and he was the Royal Failure. You hated him because he was allowed to be broken, while you were forced to be a statue.
The night of the encounter began as many other. The air was thick with the scent of old incense and the damp salt of the sea. You had just finishe a grueling evening of service, reading Tyroshian poetry to Lady Kiera until your throat was dry. The moon was a silver bone in a sky of ink as you began the long walk back to your quarters.
The Red Keep at night was a different beast. The tapestries of ancient kings seemed to watch you with judgmental eyes, and the shadows stretched like grasping fingers. You walked with your candle held high, the flame steady ā a reflection of your own discipline.
But as you turned the corner near the library, a sound broke the stillness. It wasn't the rhythmic clanking of a Gold Cloak's patrol. It was a ragged, wet gasp, followed by a frantic thumping, like a trapped bird beating its wings against a stone cage.
You stopped, the flickering candlelight casting long, distorted shadows against the masonry. In a deep, arched alcove, you saw a figure. At first, you though it was a beggar who had snuck past the gates, but the shimmer of a fine silk doublet ā now stained and rumpled ā gave him away.
It was Daeron.
But he wasn't drunk. Not tonight. He was slumped against the freezing stone, his head between his knees, his entire frame shaking with such violence that his heels were drumming a frantic rhythm against the floor.
Your first instinct was to turn away. The lady in you recoiled at the sight of such raw, unkempt emotion. Disgraceful, you thought. Another night of excess and shame. But as you turned to leave, a sound escaped him ā a broken, high-pitched whimper of genuine, agonizing terror. It wasn't the sound of a drunkard; it was the sound of a man facing his own executioner in the dark.
"Prince Daeron?", you whispered, your voice trembling despite your best efforts to remain poised.
He didn't look up. "Go away", he choked out, his voice a jagged ruin. "Leave me to my madness, little saint. Go back to your nests of silk and propriety. You shouldn't be here. You'll get your skirts dusty".
Ignoring the voice of your mother in your head ā the one that told you a lady never touches a man in the shadows ā you knelt beside him. The ston floor was freezing, and you could feel the dust of centuries clinging to your fine skirts, but for the first time in your life, you didn't care.
"You are not well, My Prince", you said, reaching out a tentantive hand. The moment your fingers brushed his shoulder, he flinched as if you had touched him with a red-hot iron.
"I am never well!", he shouted, finally snapping his head up. His violet eyes were bloodshot, pupils blown wide with a primal terrifying panic. "How can I be well when the world is burning in my head? How can I be well when I see the end of us all before it even begins?".
He lunged forward, his fingers digging into your wrists with a strength born of desperation. His hands were like ice, yet he was sweating. "I saw it again. Just now. The moment I closed my eyes to rest. I saw a dragon, massive and black ā so large its wings blotted out the sun. It lay dead in the mud, its heart stilled, its fire extinguished. And beside it...a knight. A common, wandering knight with no name, standing over the corpse of a god, watching the world turn to ash".
He began to hyperventilate, his chest heaving in jagged, uneven bursts. "It's coming. The doom of my house. I see the fire, I smell the copper of the blood, I feel the heat of the pyre. Every time the sun goes down, the dragons die, and I am the only one who has to stand watch at their funeral".
You stared at him, the candle light reflecting in the tears streaming down his face. You had heard the whispers of Dragon Dreams, the curse of the Targaryen bloodline, but you had awlays dismissed them as the dramatic excuses of an eccentric family. Looking at him now, seeing the raw, unadulterated horror in his eyes, you realized it wasn't a legend. It was a physical weight ā a psychic burden that was crushing the soul out of him.
"This is...why you drink...", you whispered, the realization hitting you with the force of a physical blow. All those months of judgment, all those sneers of The Drunken Prince ā they were all wrong.
"I drink to kill the dreams...", he laughed, a hollow, jagged sound that broke into a sob. "Wine is the only wall I can build. If I am drunk enough, the black dragon stays in the shadows. If I am sober...I am a prophet of the grave. Tell me, Lady of Duty...what is the 'honorable' path for a man who carries the weight of a thousand deaths in his mind?".
For the first time in your life, the armor of your upbringing shattered. Your parents had taught you how to act, how to speak, and how to represent your name. But they had never taught you what to do for a man who was drowning in a sea of time.
"I am sorry...", you said, and the words felt heavy and real. You reached out and, this time, he didn't pull away. You pulled his head to your shoulder, letting his forehead rest against the crook of your neck. "I judged you for your weakness, but I did not know the strength it took just to stand up every morning with that fire in your head".
Daeron let out a long, shuddering breath. He leaned into you, his hand clinging to your waist like a child afraid of the dark. The silence of the hallway swallowed you both. In that moment, the hierarchy of the court vanished. There was no prince, no lady-in-waiting ā only two sould in the dark, one terrified and the other offering a anchor.
"Help me to my room...", he murmured against your skin. "Please. If the guards see me like this...if my father sees me...I cannot bear the look in their eyes. Not tonight".
The journey to his chambers was a tense, agonizing crawl. You supported his weight, his arm draped heavily over your shoulders. You could feel the heat of his body through his doublet, a stark constrast to the chilled air of the castle. Every time a shadow moved or a torch flickered, your heart leaped into your throat.
You passed a bust of Aegon the Conqueror, and for a moment, the stone eyes seemed to judge you for your shattered propriety. You were a Lady-in-Waiting, a woman whose reputation was her only currency. If you were caught now, your life as you knew it would be over. Yet, as you looked at Daeron's pale, sweat-slicked face, you realized you didn't care about the Perfect Lady anymore. She felt like a stranger, a doll made of wood and paint.
"Almost there", you whispered, your voice a soothing balm. "Just few more steps, Daeron. I have you".
His chambers were a chaotic reflection of a fractured mind. The hearth was a heap of grey ash, and the air smelled of old parchment and stale wine. Scattered across the desk were frantic sketches ā dragons with broken wings, circles of fire, and names of kin crossed out in dark, aggressive ink. This was the laboratory of a man trying to solve a puzzle that had no solution.
You eased him onto the furs of his bed. The room was dark, so you moved to light a candle, but he caught your hand, his grip desperate.
"Don't leave", he pleaded. "The knight...he's waiting in the corners of the room. He's waiting for me to close my eyes so he can show me the end again".
"I'm not leaving", you promised.
You sat on the edges of the mattress, and without hesitation, he moved, curling up against you. He buried his face in your lap, his arms winding around your waist as if you were the only solid thing in a crumbling world.
You began to stroke his hair, the sandy brown strands feeling like a cool silk between your fingers. You began to speak, your voice a soft, rhythmic hum that filled the empty spaces of the room. You didn't talk of duty or kings; you told him of the Tyroshian coast, of the way the sun looked when it hit the sea, and of the quiet, mundane things of the world that didn't involve prophecies of fire.
"Why are you doing this?", he asked, his voice muffled by your skirts. "You've looked at me with such hate for so long. I thought you were made of marble".
"I thought I had to be", you confessed, your own voice cracking. "My parents...they taught me that any emotion was a crack in the foundation. I hated you because you were the person I was most afraid of becoming. I was afraid of losing control".
"Control is an illusion", Daeron whispered, his breathing finally beginning to slow. "We are all just leaves in a storm. But tonight...the storm feels a little further away".
As the hours ticked by, the castle grew even quieter. Your back began to ache, and the cold of the night seeped through the stone walls, but you didn't move. You watched his face soften in the dim light. The lines of terror that usually etched his brown began to smooth out, replaced by the peaceful mask of a man who had finally found a moment of silence.
You leaned down, pressing a chaste, soft kiss to his temple. "Sleep well, Daeron", you whispered. "The black dragon is gone. The knight has ridden away. There is only the wind against the stones and the warmth of this room. I am here. I am watching".
Every time he stirred or let out a soft, subconscious moan, you would tighten your hold, whispering sweet, nonsense words of comfort until his breathing leveled out again. You became his sentry, guarding the borders of his mind against the horror of the future.
As the first grey light of dawn began to creep through the heavy velvet curtains, you realized that your parents had been wrong about everything. Duty wasn't just about being a perfect statue for the world to admire. Sometimes, the highest, most sacred duty was to be the shield for a broken heart that had no one else to turn to.
You remained awake, curled around the sleeping prince as the sun began to rise over King's Landing. You were exhausted, your reputation was at risk, and your life would likely never be the same. But as you looked down at Daeron ā peaceful, at last, in your arms ā you knew that you had never been more perfect than you were in this messy, silent, and beautiful moment.
You would stay until the sun was high, ensuring that when the Drunken Prince finally woke, he would find not a shadow, but a light.
i donāt find the beauty in everything, like its accidental, i donāt stumble upon it, i dig for it, i push my fingers into the dirt and dig to the earths core for it.
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