There are a great many more monsters in the world then there are men. [And objectively speaking, one was carefully plucking thread out of his wound as they spoke.]
That doesn't make it less true that I should have. If I had been unable to come you could have lost more than your remaining eye or a hand. [And though there was no overt show of emotion about that possibility, he does look troubled if you know him well enough–and Aemond certainly did.]
It's not a long road between us and the castle, I left Vhagar behind as she was interested in some lizard-folk ...
[ His grits his teeth against the pain but it's far easier to bear in an arm than on his face, so he only hisses in pain now and then. His gaze tracks to Adar; Aemond places a hand on the uruk's knee. ]
You cannot always be by my side, nor should you feel the need to be. I was dim-witted for thinking I could walk home as though this were King's Landing.
The monsters in your world are easily seen or human in nature. There was no way for you to understand without seeing. It is dark, I should have been there. It costs me nothing but time, and of that I have an infinite amount.
[Humans were so fragile, even when they had a dragon at their beck and call.] Anyone would have been overwhelmed by so many. [He runs a cool cloth over the wound, to clear off the blood and make sure he has not missed further debris.]
[And he does, though he knows full well that Aemond wouldn't have survived such an attempt, the thought was a little warming.] So do not act so affronted when I would do the same, alright?
[Adar scoops more of that herbal paste out of his little jar and smoothes it into the wound before getting a new, dry strip of cloth and beginning to wrap up his arm.]
It will probably take until tomorrow evening, but that should fix it without much fuss. I will change the bandages in the morning and check.
[ Hissing as the paste is spread and the arm bandaged, he scoots forward on his seat to rest his forehead on Adar's shoulder, bad arm resting in his and his good one resting on a knee. Tired from the adrenaline rush of nearly being eaten. ]
Their faces were like fish, yet none I have ever seen. I think they were dead men once, but ... [ He sighs, not wanting to dwell on the terror. ] I'll keep my arm out of a bath but I need one. Could you please collect my sword ... from where it fell?
[It wasn't like it would take him more than a couple of minutes on his own.] I am going to get the servants to bring you some food. And some tea. [Because he was in shock, and he needs something soothing.]
Then I will grab your sword and be right back. [He presses a kiss to Aemond's temple, stroking the silver hair back behind his ear.]
[ For saving him, he means, but also being around in the aftermath and not critiquing his skill with the blade or his foolishness in wandering home alone through the wilderlands. Aemond kisses him briefly, then lets him go.
When servants call him for his bath in another room he goes mechanically and sinks low in the water until it covers him to his nose, silent and still with his arms folded and legs drawn up. ]
[Adar is gone and returned in the span of no more than ten minutes, including all the fussing he did in the kitchen and finding and quickly cleaning Aemond's sword and then himself. He washes his hands and face and changes out of the mucky clothes he wore in the fight, settling for some loose britches and a tunic that is loosely belted at the waist with a black woven cord.
He is barefoot when he comes in to check on Aemond, sword in hand so he can see that it is whole and intact.]
It was right where it was left, undisturbed. [Not that there was much that could disturb it given the crispy state of the riverbank.]
[ More thanks than he has given anyone else in months, all in one evening. The crackle of the hearth is louder than Aemond, who has removed his eye-patch in order to get his hair wet. He nods to Adar to come in, though he thinks himself poor company. ]
Come, sit with me while I stew. I want to ask you something, about yourself. It's personal, so feel free to say no.
[The sword is set by the door on a chair and Adar comes in fully, closing it behind him before moving to sit by the tub. He doesn't bother to bring a chair, he is tall enough to comfortably kneel there and be seen above the edge more than enough.]
There is nothing you cannot ask. [If he would answer was... sometimes more complicated, but mostly he held no secrets so important he could not share them in this realm between realms.]
You say you were an elf they made into an uruk, but that your children are orcs. If they began as you but are ... different, were they made into monsters like those by the river?
[ He asks it quietly so as not to give offence, but he does wonder. ]
They are Uruks too, but they look different so I used the word the elves call them. [They cannot hear him, and so no offence would be caused. Not that they were ever offended by their father, whom they loved more than life.]
They are not undead, if that is what you mean. [He rests his chin on the smooth edge of the bath, looking at nothing in particular, just the ripples of the water and across to the other wall.]
If you are asking if you would find them monsterous, then probably. Nothing came out of Angband that wasn't. Not me, not them, not Ancalagon whom you so admire the tales of.
They burn in the sun, their bodies are deformed. But their hearts beat the same as anyone else, they have names, desires, thoughts. [He may be being generous on that last count, but he doesn't think so.] They are of my flesh, and others like me.
You are not monstrous. [ He feels like a boy again, seeing with eyes no one else does. ] Everything you do for me is kind and patient, that's not the nature of a beast.
[ Tipping his head closer on the edge of the bath, he idly swirls the water and thinks of how badly 'deformed' the children of his lover might be. ]
That I contain multitudes does not mean I am not monsterous, my love, it means that I am complex. I am at once that which was, and that which I became. The mould I was forced into through fire and pain.
[He can talk about it, but he has a sort of distant look about him, as if his mind roams elsewhere even while it rattles off the measure of things.]
Some more than others. To make the first orcs, we were captured. Or perhaps he tried to make them from clay first and could not make them spirits to function on their own... I do not know, but they took us. Many of us, elves they had ensnared through battles or raids and used us for things no elf had been before. I don't mean they just made us–we were experimented with first, changed to our very core. Many died, and a few lived. I was one of them. It is why my blood is black. It was not always so.
[His gaze refocuses and he turns just enough to look at Aemond. There is a small smile on his lips, but it is tighter than usual.]
I know, and I care about you. [That is why he wants Aemond to be safe.]
For a long time, I couldn't remember who I had been before I was dragged through those iron gates. It was like it was pulled from me and shut away in a very small, tight box.
I remember most of it, yes. ["Easier" might not he the correct term.
It's also less interesting than what Aemond says next. He knows the secondborn children are frail, and the hundreds of ways they can die, and sometimes they are born strange–but that was all of them and not from one family. He must not mean just the usual poor luck some parents have.]
In what way? [he is quiet and gentle, though he had already been fairly subdued.]
[ He shouldn't speak of things like this, they are matters for Targaryens ... but Adar has been honest with him, soothed Aemond's pride. He doesn't believe he will betray it to someone else to make his house seem lesser; that would be beneath the uruk, he thinks. ]
When there are many riders bonded and not enough dragons, children are born with features of dragons that should be alive instead. Wings and tails. Snouts. Sometimes when there are too many dragons and not enough people, if a new egg is hatched in a crib so the child may claim it from birth, it will have a human face but a white wyrm's body and attack the babe instead.
There is some blood-magic involved in it, the same kind that lets us bond with a dragon. I claimed Vhagar because no young dragon would take to me from the crib until I was ten, when it was too late for an egg of my own.
[He would have to talk to anyone else at length before he was even at risk of betraying anything... and even then, why would he? He listens, keeping his face as neutral as he can though the descriptions do make his face scrunch slightly as he tries to imagine them. The babe with dragon attributes is not so hard, but the dragon with a human face was a little more difficult.]
If the balance isn't maintained it hurts one of your children or the other. [Vhagar may be the size of a small hill, and older than any living Targaryen, but they still must have hatched and raised her at some point.]
Did they not want you because there is some kind of predestined pairing? If ever a dragon felt love, she seems to love you.
[ He nods to Adar's understanding, then a small smile settles as he mentions Vhagar. ]
She's so big, she counts for five dragons. In retrospect it makes sense no dragon would hatch for me.
[ Resting his temple on the edge of the bath by Adar, Aemond half-closes his eyes. ]
My aunt, her rider, had died and she followed my uncle back to Driftmark although he was riding Caraxes the Blood Wyrm. She went home with him because she wanted to, riderless. She slept on the dunes of the island.
I was a little boy when I snuck up on her in the middle of the night. She woke up and almost set me on fire but I shouted at her to obey me ... and she closed her mouth, and did. I climbed all the way onto her back while she watched. Then, although it was freezing cold and she would have been within her rights to ignore me, she flew when I asked her to.
[ His smile saddens. ]
The other children said I had stolen their mother's dragon, which was stupid. I could no more have forced Vhagar to bend to my will than a mountain, they didn't understand. In the fight, one of my nephews cut out my eye before the adults stepped in.
When I took her home I would sneak into the Dragonpit where she lived when I was not making use of her, and she would listen to me read Valyrian stories about her first rider, Queen Visenya.
[It sounds to Adar like the Targaryens don't actually know much about whatever ties them to the dragons, else why try to hatch a new one at all why Vhagar lives? But the words don't cross his lips, he doesn't even consider saying them as Aemond recounts his story.
A very victorious story until it isn't, which was how most true tales seemed to always go. He frowned. He could not imagine when he was young trying to cut his cousins in truth. Even now he had managed to mostly make the Uruk's get along, a feat much greater than he was comfortable admitting even to himself.]
I do not understand your family. [Because the only family he had ever known had loved him, be it elven or uruk.] Yet I do understand why Vhagar loves you. [You wreckless, cute thing.]
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That doesn't make it less true that I should have. If I had been unable to come you could have lost more than your remaining eye or a hand. [And though there was no overt show of emotion about that possibility, he does look troubled if you know him well enough–and Aemond certainly did.]
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[ His grits his teeth against the pain but it's far easier to bear in an arm than on his face, so he only hisses in pain now and then. His gaze tracks to Adar; Aemond places a hand on the uruk's knee. ]
You cannot always be by my side, nor should you feel the need to be. I was dim-witted for thinking I could walk home as though this were King's Landing.
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[Humans were so fragile, even when they had a dragon at their beck and call.] Anyone would have been overwhelmed by so many. [He runs a cool cloth over the wound, to clear off the blood and make sure he has not missed further debris.]
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[ His pride smarts at it. ]
... Much as I am grateful for your protection.
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It is not an insult for people to care about you, Aemond. It is a gift, to know someone wishes to be at your side, someone would come for you.
No one ever came for me.
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I would have.
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[And he does, though he knows full well that Aemond wouldn't have survived such an attempt, the thought was a little warming.] So do not act so affronted when I would do the same, alright?
[Adar scoops more of that herbal paste out of his little jar and smoothes it into the wound before getting a new, dry strip of cloth and beginning to wrap up his arm.]
It will probably take until tomorrow evening, but that should fix it without much fuss. I will change the bandages in the morning and check.
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Their faces were like fish, yet none I have ever seen. I think they were dead men once, but ... [ He sighs, not wanting to dwell on the terror. ] I'll keep my arm out of a bath but I need one. Could you please collect my sword ... from where it fell?
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[It wasn't like it would take him more than a couple of minutes on his own.] I am going to get the servants to bring you some food. And some tea. [Because he was in shock, and he needs something soothing.]
Then I will grab your sword and be right back. [He presses a kiss to Aemond's temple, stroking the silver hair back behind his ear.]
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[ For saving him, he means, but also being around in the aftermath and not critiquing his skill with the blade or his foolishness in wandering home alone through the wilderlands. Aemond kisses him briefly, then lets him go.
When servants call him for his bath in another room he goes mechanically and sinks low in the water until it covers him to his nose, silent and still with his arms folded and legs drawn up. ]
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He is barefoot when he comes in to check on Aemond, sword in hand so he can see that it is whole and intact.]
It was right where it was left, undisturbed. [Not that there was much that could disturb it given the crispy state of the riverbank.]
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[ More thanks than he has given anyone else in months, all in one evening. The crackle of the hearth is louder than Aemond, who has removed his eye-patch in order to get his hair wet. He nods to Adar to come in, though he thinks himself poor company. ]
Come, sit with me while I stew. I want to ask you something, about yourself. It's personal, so feel free to say no.
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There is nothing you cannot ask. [If he would answer was... sometimes more complicated, but mostly he held no secrets so important he could not share them in this realm between realms.]
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[ He asks it quietly so as not to give offence, but he does wonder. ]
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They are not undead, if that is what you mean. [He rests his chin on the smooth edge of the bath, looking at nothing in particular, just the ripples of the water and across to the other wall.]
If you are asking if you would find them monsterous, then probably. Nothing came out of Angband that wasn't. Not me, not them, not Ancalagon whom you so admire the tales of.
They burn in the sun, their bodies are deformed. But their hearts beat the same as anyone else, they have names, desires, thoughts. [He may be being generous on that last count, but he doesn't think so.] They are of my flesh, and others like me.
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[ Tipping his head closer on the edge of the bath, he idly swirls the water and thinks of how badly 'deformed' the children of his lover might be. ]
Are they born that way?
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[He can talk about it, but he has a sort of distant look about him, as if his mind roams elsewhere even while it rattles off the measure of things.]
Some more than others. To make the first orcs, we were captured. Or perhaps he tried to make them from clay first and could not make them spirits to function on their own... I do not know, but they took us. Many of us, elves they had ensnared through battles or raids and used us for things no elf had been before. I don't mean they just made us–we were experimented with first, changed to our very core. Many died, and a few lived. I was one of them. It is why my blood is black. It was not always so.
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I care very much for you.
[ It is the only thing he can think to say, apologising for something he could never have stopped happening feels wrong. ]
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I know, and I care about you. [That is why he wants Aemond to be safe.]
For a long time, I couldn't remember who I had been before I was dragged through those iron gates. It was like it was pulled from me and shut away in a very small, tight box.
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[ The water drags on his hair as he sits forward, hooking an arm over the edge of the tub. He pipes up about a taboo subject from his own house. ]
Sometimes ... Targaryens are born wrong. Deformed.
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It's also less interesting than what Aemond says next. He knows the secondborn children are frail, and the hundreds of ways they can die, and sometimes they are born strange–but that was all of them and not from one family. He must not mean just the usual poor luck some parents have.]
In what way? [he is quiet and gentle, though he had already been fairly subdued.]
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When there are many riders bonded and not enough dragons, children are born with features of dragons that should be alive instead. Wings and tails. Snouts. Sometimes when there are too many dragons and not enough people, if a new egg is hatched in a crib so the child may claim it from birth, it will have a human face but a white wyrm's body and attack the babe instead.
There is some blood-magic involved in it, the same kind that lets us bond with a dragon. I claimed Vhagar because no young dragon would take to me from the crib until I was ten, when it was too late for an egg of my own.
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If the balance isn't maintained it hurts one of your children or the other. [Vhagar may be the size of a small hill, and older than any living Targaryen, but they still must have hatched and raised her at some point.]
Did they not want you because there is some kind of predestined pairing? If ever a dragon felt love, she seems to love you.
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She's so big, she counts for five dragons. In retrospect it makes sense no dragon would hatch for me.
[ Resting his temple on the edge of the bath by Adar, Aemond half-closes his eyes. ]
My aunt, her rider, had died and she followed my uncle back to Driftmark although he was riding Caraxes the Blood Wyrm. She went home with him because she wanted to, riderless. She slept on the dunes of the island.
I was a little boy when I snuck up on her in the middle of the night. She woke up and almost set me on fire but I shouted at her to obey me ... and she closed her mouth, and did. I climbed all the way onto her back while she watched. Then, although it was freezing cold and she would have been within her rights to ignore me, she flew when I asked her to.
[ His smile saddens. ]
The other children said I had stolen their mother's dragon, which was stupid. I could no more have forced Vhagar to bend to my will than a mountain, they didn't understand. In the fight, one of my nephews cut out my eye before the adults stepped in.
When I took her home I would sneak into the Dragonpit where she lived when I was not making use of her, and she would listen to me read Valyrian stories about her first rider, Queen Visenya.
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A very victorious story until it isn't, which was how most true tales seemed to always go. He frowned. He could not imagine when he was young trying to cut his cousins in truth. Even now he had managed to mostly make the Uruk's get along, a feat much greater than he was comfortable admitting even to himself.]
I do not understand your family. [Because the only family he had ever known had loved him, be it elven or uruk.] Yet I do understand why Vhagar loves you. [You wreckless, cute thing.]
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