Chapter Text
By the time his youngest brother is born, Daeron is a bit bored by the arrival of siblings. His father makes a fuss, Aerion throws tantrums and Aemon sits with their mother in whispers but truth be told Daeron is too tired to gather the energy to fret like them; his dreams are still only glimpses but they are true. The child will be born healthy, among blood and screaming as they all were. There are more coming, more siblings and more blood and well, Daeron has run out of fear it seems. At least in this regard.
There is nothing he can do or say, what will come will happen whether he worries about it or not. He has learned the hard way.
-so while the whole castle works up into a lather of repressed emotions and fears unfounded, Daeron sneaks into the belly of the keep. Hiding amongst the bones of dragons to nap, a dreadfully morbid place to be sure, but his dreams are not so violent when he does. Most dreams come and go without his knowing the whole truth of them, just vague feelings of dread or flashes of fire. He wakes fitfully, alone and shaking but it has not yet becoming overwhelming. Just tiring, just something he deals with every night. In the morning he will crawl up the stairs and face a new day and hope none of the things he dreams about will come true.
(They will, they always do but Seven help him, he is still young enough to want to believe otherwise.)
One morning he comes up and he has a new little brother.
“He is ugly.” Aerion decides loudly, taking exactly one look at the babe in their mother’s arms before their father is dragging him by the cuff of his shirt. Probably to try and beat some manners into him.
“Too loud.” Aemon says as he toddles off.
(Probably to watch their father discipline Aerion and comment on how their father should also punish him for stealing the last good biscuit or tearing apart his favorite toy.)
“-and you?” Their mother asks shuffling aside her bed to make room for him. The babe in her arms is indeed ugly, and loud but so was Aerion, Aemon and Daella when they were born. All babes come out red and wrinkled and disgruntled. Eventually in time they fatten up and calm down, growing into those cute squishy little sacks of drool and cooing…but well until then;
“He looks like a boiled potato.”
Dyanna chuckles, “He doesn’t!”
“He does.” Daeron says as he pushes the folds of the blanket away from his newborn brother. Tiny, flushed red and covered in wrinkles. The only thing that sets him apart from any other infant is the fuzzy white growth of hair on his massive head. “I take it back, he doesn’t look like a potato, he looks like a massive egg. Look at the size of his head.”
“Oh!” His mother has to bite her lip to keep from laughing harder at that, “Terribly astute as usual. He is to be named Aegon too. Sorry little one.” She lowers her voice, “Did you dream of it? Of him?”
Daeron reaches to touch the child, his little brother. The tiny hand finds his finger and flexes around it; less of a show of strength and more just a natural reaction. A need to know you are not alone, there is someone to hold onto. Daeron curls his finger in reply.
He gives her the only answer he can, the one truth.
“I dream of all of them.”