The Death of Me
Fandom/Pairing: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms/Daeron "The Drunken" Targaryen x oc, Vaeda
Summary: Daeron The Drunken has never met her. Not for lack of trying or wanting, but when the girl who plagues his dreams is before him there is only that same dark vision that haunts him eternally, their entwined suffering.
Warnings: angst, mentions of death
Word Count: 1.7k+
Another's Note: An angsty short intro to my oc, Vaeda who has it real bad for this sorrowful dragon dreamer. This is my @blind-dates-fest entry for 2026 which honestly was not what I had planned, but I am so glad that it created such a lovely sad girl for this sweaty sad boy.
There was still the dampness of wine on his face when he stumbled into his room.
The scent was cast as if a memory unfolding around him. The heat of the incense dulled his senses for a moment. He recalled sleep, memory, and hope in that scent. Did dreams have odors? If they did, the dreams of her would smell like this.
Warm.
Inviting.
Safe.
“You are late.” He muttered not bothering to look upon the woman he knew, but did not know fully.
“Some would say I were early.” Her voice was lower than most women's. He recalled the soft tones of whores and sweet forgivenesses of maidens. She was neither.
His eyes cast away from the knife at his belt to her face. Daeron found himself spotting the differences in her features from the oddities that befell her in his dreams. He had been young when he first dreamed of her. She had been small, a girl no older or younger than he, humming a tune that conjured soot and embers to erupt at her feet. She picked a flower made of ash that turned into black flames that stung her fingers. Her hair was made of tawny owl feathers. Her one eye had been coated over in emerald shimmering dragon scales that blended into her skin.
“You are late.” Were her first words to him.
“Some would say I were early.” Were Daeron’s first words to her.
The dreamer lounged on his bed. The gown she wore was loose though clung to her body in ways that he could not comprehend in his current state of drunkenness. The woman was a beauty to be sure. She wore tones of emerald that nearly mixed the coloring of the crusted over scales on her dream self’s face. Instead of scales over her eye he found a vivid violet eye that sought his own Valyrian colored eyes. He licked the foul taste from his lips.
“Ashford is it?” He muttered under his breath. “Fuck me.” Daeron thumped his way to the bed watching her look down into her hands. She held something small there he could not see. His hand ran over his lower lip. He sat on the bed harshly watching as she wordlessly moved her legs to accommodate him. “Who is the dragon than?”
Daeron had never met this woman.
Not in the waking world.
In his dreams she was a strange prophet guiding his hand through disaster.
“I can not say.” She said softly as one might who wished to know the answers. “There will be too much to feel. One dragon’s demise begets the rest.” In her hand was a skull, small and carefully tossed from one palm to another.
“The knight.”
“He matters not.” She then looked upon him. “Or he matters most.” One hand cupped his cheek. Daeron felt as a boy searching for familiarity. She dreamed too. She knew his horrors, the horrors of knowing and not being able to halt the darkness. “Who is to say but the Gods themselves.”
“Are we not Gods?” He asked. His lips teased her pulse. Daeron was surprised she let him. “We hold the threads of fate, follow them, see them, weep for the fate of others though we can not chase our own, change our own. What is more godlike than that?”
“Dragons.” She hummed.
Daeron The Drunken laughed.
“I shall conjure up a dragon for us to fly off to Old Valyria. We shall live happily away from our own Doom.” He had seen her fate. She had seen his. They had sworn not to share the end of their stories with one another. They had been children once, stuck in dreaming never content with the visions set upon them.
The Gods were cruel.
The Gods were confusing.
The Gods were cunts.
“Off to Ashford to see a fair maid.” She spoke as if it were a lullaby.
“I'll make her my love and we'll rest in the shade.” He sang the song with the proper tune.
“That is unfair, sweet Daeron.” The woods witch let slip through her teeth. “Your voice is sweeter than mine.”
“And your body is prettier.” He let his eyes rest on her hair, long, thick, and dark. Underneath he could see strands of silver as if spun from steel itself. Be it a sign of her age or her clinging to a Valyerian heritage he could not say. He could not care.
“You are too hard on yourself. It will -”
Daeron’s finger settled to her lips, hushing her.
“Sweetling,” he hummed trying to form words in his drunken state. “Do not dare tell me of my demise. I rather a surprise.”
“And I rather you live.” She pulled his wrist from her feeling the heart that fluttered underneath the skin. He could not halt the shock on his face as she spoke. It was her eyes he noticed now, one dark brown and one the violet of his own. “Is that a shock to you? That someone would like you to live or that I may have caught love sickness for your woeful ways?”
Daeron held no talent worth keeping. He was merely born first unable to escape the burden of his birth order. He was his father’s heir, who was a miserable man who sought greatness in sons who were doomed to disappoint. He had no merit for the fight, no yearning for glory or dragons. He simply sought the drink, sought to drink from it deep to drown out the dreaming.
Who could love a man who did not want the life he had?
“Do not tempt me, witch.” It could be a trick, a jest, a pretty thought to be loved by a woman so beautifully broken it made his body seek to be held. He saw the hurt cross her features regretting his words. He swallowed down the sourness.
The room rang quiet around them feeling a pulsating of warmth amongst the incense that burned and cracked. She stared at his hands. What did she see there that fascinated her so? Soon he felt her place the small skull in his hand. It was the skull of a bird, a raven perhaps. He looked at it in the candle light of the room.
It was painted in blood.
“Don’t let him fool you as well.” He felt the echoed words pierce his heart. Her fingertips traced the lines on his palm.
He wanted to chase the words away, chase away all recollection of those moments to come. He could feel the flames from his last dream, see the smoke, feel the weight of the dragon lying dead upon the hedge knight. She pressed her thumb upon his pulse bringing him to this room, his doomed reality.
“Vaeda.” He said her name as if a prayer or sworn secret as if it held some purpose on his tongue. He closed his eyes, humming in the feel of her.
“Do not drown yourself in dream.”
“Rather I drown myself in drink?” He let the chuckle skirt across his lips. It felt better to be in the fog of wine than the mists of uncertainty.
“I rather you drown yourself in me.” Fuck. Daeron let his eyes open to see her.
He tried to focus on the imperfections of her face. Her top lip was thinner than the bottom. Her eyes were of two different colors and sizes with crows feet settled at the corners. Her breasts sagged too deeply though his wandering imagination thought differently of that imperfection. She had weight on her, a small pouch of a belly that he found endearing. He could also see the thickness of each of her thighs, so round and lovely. She had shape and strength to her.
These were not imperfections.
These were assets that made her harder to resist.
Her eyes settled to his lips. Daeron could hear his heart pulse in his ears. The drink fogged his mind, letting libations become his guiding hand. He always felt too much of himself while in a drunken stupor. He should have asked for a whore.
Instead he had her with her sagging breasts, thick thighs, and beautiful needy lips. Her hand creeped over his own thigh. His name crossed her lips. He should not have said her name. He should have kept the secret in his soul.
“You thirst.” She breathed so dangerously close to his lips. “Have me instead.”
The woman was mad.
He remembered his dream, her death.
There was a hatchling. Two legs, a body, and every expanding wings crawled over her lifeless form, breasts bare, body dyed in red streaks. The dragon curled around her breast, a strong lonely hatchling who cooed and cried out for its mother. Her eyes had faded lifeless in the vision.
He’d be her demise.
In the end Daeron would kill her.
“I can not drink.” He told her with much regret. “You are too fine a drink for me to endure.” Daeron The Drunken refused indulging for the first time in his life. He could not end the only person who knew him, understood him.
She searched his eyes before settling back on the bed, away from him, away from her Doom. Vaeda lifted herself from the bed to the incense by the door. The smoke blew across her as if shrouding her. Daeron was sure she would disappear in the smoke, but instead she snuffed out the flame.
His heart pulled at that gesture.
Someday he would not be able to resist her.
“Will you lie with me this evening, my lord?” She looked as innocent as a cress fallen girl child with an infatuation for a princeling. “I yearn for your company. Your touch.” The words could have been spoken with seduction though instead melted with loneliness.
He was lonely too.
Daeron said nothing. He removed the heavier parts of his outfit before settling on the bed. He faced the wall only feeling the dip in the mattress moments later. Her arms wrapped around him as her lips felt like ghosts on his neck.
“Vaeda.” He whispered again nearly a warning.
“My prince.” She said with a tone that mocked and cursed his nature. “I will stay ‘til morning, ‘til you bid me leave. I would stay forever if you wished for it.” Her love was quite apparent. His sorrowful self did not deserve to be loved in her arms.
He wanted to kiss and cherish her.
He could not.
Daeron was barely a prince, barely a dreamer.
He would be her death though he did not know the tears she cried in the silence of his chambers were for his demise.
She would be the death of him as well.
