Chapter Text
Morning sunlight peeked through the gaps in your bedroom’s curtains and fell on your closed eyes, not letting you sleep peacefully. You turned and rolled in your bed until you found another comfortable position away from the light. It was around ten in the morning, which was still early enough for you to get some more sleep in.
You had taken your last final exam before coming back home, because professors enjoyed drinking student tears and making exams unreasonably early in the day, and now officially had nothing else to worry about for the rest of your life. At least until you heard back from one of the companies you’d applied to for a mandatory summer internship.
Regardless, you had been sleep deprived since the start of the finals week, and needed to hibernate for the entirety of summer like a… winter bear, if they existed? You would try to at least get rid of the burning sensation in your eyes before getting up, shake off the built up stress of The Week of Torture, and waste away the day doing nothing but changing positions in your bed. You wouldn’t change the comfort of your bed for anything else in the world right at that moment.
And so, buried deep into your pillow, under your soft blanket, with the relief of the end of your finals and no worries in your head for what tomorrow would bring, you drifted off to sleep, and dreamed of soft clouds with fire-breathing dragons gliding through them.
“…y…” a distant voice could barely be detected, echoing, “…ey!”
“Five more minutes…” you mumbled.
You felt a hand poke you quite harshly, “Hey!” said a man’s voice.
You jumped out of your slumber in panic and hit your head on something in front of you while trying to sit up before you could fully open your eyes. “Ow!” you yelped, sliding back on the hard and cold floor… that definitely was not your bed.
Your eyes widened as you looked around frantically, trying to comprehend where you were, and what was going on.
You were in a dark place, a room, with multiple fireplaces, yet filled with shadows and unseen parts, and dark enough to be eerie. The floor, cold stone; the air, suffocating heat. There were ivory black statues of weird fantastical creatures all across the room, the ones you could see out of the shadows having lizard-like aspects to their designs. The room was big enough that you couldn’t see most of what was inside, and it smelled of soot and dampness and other unpleasant things you couldn’t name.
“Who are you?”
You didn’t try to pick out the details you couldn’t see at a glace, as you held your hurting forehead, and turned to face the cause of your pain instead. You had hit your head on his when you’d jumped out of your sleep.
Upon taking a good look at his face, you realised that you recognized the man.
“Finn Bennett?” you asked in confusion. He looked angry and threatening, as if he were ready to attack you, had you made the slightest movement, so you decided to stay on the ground for a little longer, at least as long as he didn’t get closer to you than where he was standing a few steps away. He was in his Aerion Targaryen costume, you could tell, or this was a very successful look-alike. Where were you? How had you ended up here? What did this man want from you?
As the realisation of the situation you were in dawned on you and fear started to settle into your chest, you tried to stop your trembling hands and slow down your frantic breathing. The suffocating air didn’t help. You could feel your heart hammering against your bones, you had never felt your pulse so clearly before. Terror and anxiety spread from your fingers to your toes, circulating in your entire body as easily as blood, consuming all of your being.
You had slept in your room only to wake up in an unfamiliar, dark place with a stranger in front of you. What had happened? What about your mother, who was also home with you? What was going to happen to you now?
“What?” he asked, narrowing his eyes while looking you up and down. You thought you could see suspicion and caution in them, like you were the offender, the unpredictable wild-card in this situation. “Your name is of no importance, what are you doing here? How did you get in?”
You looked at him in frozen stillness, other than the trembling in your hands that you couldn’t stop. You didn’t know what to say, what answer did he want? Who had brought you here? Who was this hostile man?
“Look,” he said, now slowly walking closer to you. “I have guards right outside that door,” he said like he was spitting poison, looking into your eyes with an intensity you’d never experienced before, making your hands grow cold in an instant. Shadows fell on the man’s face like paint on canvas, making him look even more dangerous. “And your next words will decide whether you’ll be thrown into the dungeons or killed here.” He took out a sword from the sheath he had tied to his belt, and it seemed real enough to send tremors of overwhelming fear into every cell in your body.
You stood up as instantly and quickly as you could, and started taking back steps at the same pace as the strange man. You hadn’t wanted to risk any sudden movements, but sitting down had seemed like a surrender to death. You didn’t know how your legs were still working properly, considering you could barely feel them, despite the unnaturally loud thumping of your chest.
Talk, you thought, force the words out of your mouth, say something.
“I…” you started, “I have no idea where this is, or how I ended up here. The last thing I remember is sleeping in my bed.” You had managed to say, holding back tears.
“Answer truthfully, woman,” he said in a threatening tone.
“I swear I’m telling the truth.”
The two of you had started orbitting each other, neither one took your eyes off the other one even for a second. He circled his tongue in his mouth in a reptile-like fashion, just like Aerion had done several times in the show.
“Who are you?” it was your turn to ask.
“You don’t know? You are in Dragonstone, yet you ask me who I am?” He had a mocking undertone to his voice, sounding like he was playing a game at your expense.
“What do you mean Dragonstone?”
So he was a cosplayer. Was this a prank? Or were you the first victim of a serial killer pretending to be in Westeros? Were we certain this wasn’t Finn Bennett?
He stopped abruptly, making you freeze again, and sighed. He assumed a bored expression.
“It won’t be any fun if you can’t even make up proper lies.”
You were getting more confused by the second.
“I genuinely don’t understand,” you started, you needed to ask questions while he wasn’t attacking you. “Who are you? Why am I here? Who brought me here? What do you mean Dragonstone, is this some sort of prop room?” Why me?
“Fine,” he said as he started walking away. “The guards will seize you and make you talk.”
Unlike your expectations, you didn’t feel any relief upon seeing him walk away. What did he mean by guards? More men? Make you talk?
“Wait!” you shouted. “I’ll talk.”
He turned to face you again, a smug smirk on his lips. You could play along if that were what he wanted, you weren’t an expert on A Song of Ice and Fire, but you assumed you knew enough to at least keep up. You could try to get information out of him at the same time, too.
“But I really don’t know who you are,” you said before he could make another insulting comment.
He looked at you intently for a moment before answering.
“Aerion Brightflame Targaryen, a prince in the flesh in front of you,” he said, still sword in his hand, “Now speak.”
“Okay,” you said, trying to think of a way out of this conversation. You swallowed your pride and decided to be rational, you could call him “Your Grace”, it wouldn’t hurt you. In the worst case scenario, you would be humiliated.
“How could I even get into the castle, Your Grace? There are guards everywhere. I wouldn’t even be able to find the next room if I stepped out of this one. I really just woke up not knowing where I was.” You tried to speak fast enough that he wouldn’t interrupt you. “You woke me up just now. Would I just sleep on the floor if I had sneaked in?”
“Then how can you explain being here?”
“Someone who can get in might have brought me? I mean, Your Grace, you can see I have no weapons, I’m visibly smaller and weaker than you. I can’t outrun or overpower you. I have no way of posing a threat to you.” You said as you realised he would have probably checked before waking you up, in a scenario like this.
“That is true,” he said. “But you are in the dragon egg nest of the castle, these eggs may not hatch, but they are still more valuable than your entire lineage.”
You broke the eye contact and looked at something other than the man since you’d first woken up. You looked deep into the shadows, trying to see the eggs he was speaking of. You wanted to ask where they were, but were afraid of pissing him off again.
“Exactly, so this room is very well protected. There is no way that I, a stranger, could just get in. I don’t know who brought me here, Your Grace, I can swear upon anything you want.”
He looked you over again, this time seemingly in somewhat deep thought.
“What manner of garment is that?” he asked.
You looked down, and were met with your favorite pajamas that you had worn after your exam in a feeling of whimsy. It was a completely green Mike Wazowski onesie. Very bad choice for sneaking in purposes, as he also must’ve realised, and a lack of shoes also supported your claim. The only onesie you had, and your pretty purple socks with emojis on them were now covered in dirt.
“Well,” you started, now upset, “my pajamas.”
He looked at you confused.
“My sleeping clothes, I told you I was sleeping in my bed before waking up here,” you said, then after a pause, added “Your Grace.”
“That is a strange nightwear,” he commented.
“It’s my favorite,” you added, unnecessarily.
“The guards will take you to the dungeons, Finn Bennett, and we’ll get to the bottom of this,” he said, as he slowly started to walk towards the side of the room where there were some stairs, without turning his body fully away from you.
The guards again? Your nerves had calmed down since the start of this conversation as he’d started seeming more and more human, but you were still cold in fear despite the warmth in the room.
“My name is not Finn Bennett, Your Grace,” you added, as you told him your real name.
“So you lied to me at the start.”
“I thought you were Finn Bennett. I was calling you Finn Bennett.” You could swear he looked and sounded exactly like the actor.
He stopped and looked at you intently for a moment, then said “You are possibly the strangest person I’ve met.”
After kidnapping you?? The audacity??
You started to look around the room more carefully while he walked towards the door, it really felt like a dragon nest in a castle. Other than the creepy statues, fireplaces, and the black stone floor, it was as big as your whole house, or maybe bigger. The room was lit by torches on the walls, which weren’t enough to cast light on most of the room. There were no windows. You turned your back, and finally saw the dragon eggs, all stationed in front of a wall, on weird stone structures. There were more than you thought there would be, definitely more than five. They were all sorts of mesmerizing colors, you didn’t know how you had managed to miss them this whole time when their bright scales popped off in the darkness. They truly did seem magical.
“Finally realised where you are?” asked the man, standing in front of the stairs. He had stopped to watch you instead of getting his guards, you realised. Perhaps he wasn’t done with you yet, maybe he was having fun. You tried to guess what he planned to do to you with every new move he made, yet you couldn’t come to a logical conclusion.
“They are beautiful,” you said, while getting closer to them to admire the intricacies of the paint on the shells. They were covered in many different colors, glimmer inside some of them. You were growing more curious about where you were every passing moment.
The man came to stand by your side. You didn’t know why he let you get close to the eggs or even stood next to you if he were impersonating Aerion Brightflame. The cruel prince would not let any common folk near anything he deemed important. Based on what you knew. Maybe you seemed harmless enough that he would, to enjoy a peasant’s awe at seeing a dragon egg? He thought himself a dragon, after all.
One egg was pitch black with yellow lines forming abstract paths on the shell. One was green, but not just one shade, it had specks of many shades of green all at once. One was pearly white with dark blue whorls on it. That one was your favorite. You felt as if it was calling to you, urging you to get closer, to touch it.
All of this felt and looked extremely real. Too real. You supposed people rich enough to waste their money like this and actually make it feel realistic did exist, and vast secret criminal networks to kidnap people to make them a part of their weird theatrics must’ve also been a thing. What had you gotten yourself into? You were just a university student trying your best. Most of the time.
The fireplace closest to where you stood suddenly roared, flames rose up enough to touch the high ceiling. You gasped, taking a step away from it, looking up in surprise, then you looked at the man. He seemed just as surprised and taken aback, was it not a part of his game?
Before either of you could take another step to escape, the fire spread around you, engulfing all that was in the room in flames, forming a circle of burning heat turning around you, its movements causing a scorching wind, stinging your face and eyes. You reflexively moved closer to the man, and then had to stop yourself from grabbing his arm; he was still dangerous. You were alone here.
“What is going on?” he asked, yelling over the noises the explosion was making. The strong wind was threatening to make you lose your footing, fire was cracking all around you, sometimes beneath your feet.
“It’s your castle, how am I supposed to know?!” you yelled back.
“Are you a witch?!”
“If I were a witch, I would be gone before you could draw your sword!”
The fire finally spread enough to encompass the dragon eggs, and closed in on the two of you, leaving you nowhere to move. The man yelled for the guards outside, but nobody came in.
You then heard a strange voice, barely a whisper. It echoed your name over and over again. It sounded like neither man nor woman, yet both at the same time.
“What’s that voice?” you asked the Finn Bennett look-alike next to you.
“What voice?”
“The one that’s repeating my name!” your own voices could barely be heard.
“Are you sure you are not a witch?”
“Aerion, be serious!”
“I’m not hearing anything, witch,” said Aerion, as you’d decided to think of him for now, even though that was most definitely not his real name. It was hard to breathe, your lungs and nostrils burned, soot got into your nose and mouth, the heat pressure pressed on you from all sides. Your eyes teared up, everything was stinging.
The voice started to speak in cryptic sentences you could not grasp. You tried to make out the words, but realised they were in a language you did not understand. “Child of two worlds,” said the voice, more clearly now, and you felt your head spin while you tried to keep your feet steady.
Then the voice stopped.
The wind stopped, flames faded out, the fireplace turned back to the way it was before. Nothing seemed to have burned, the dragon eggs looked exactly the same as before, so did the statues, so did every piece of stone in the room. You grabbed one of the weirdly shaped rocks that were holding the dragon eggs and started taking deep breaths, finally able to properly inhale. You wiped the sweat on your face with your poor pajamas.
Aerion grabbed your arm. “What was-”
One of the eggs moved. The white one. It wiggled.
Both of you took a step back at the same time, gasping. Were these actual eggs? They had painted real eggs? Which animal lay eggs this big? Emus? But why was it moving, shouldn’t it be thoroughly cooked by now? Why hadn’t the fire burnt anything?
A crack formed on the egg, and then it expanded until the baby inside made its way outside. A… huge lizard? It was white, and when it opened its eyes, you saw they were dark blue. A mesmerizing blue, looking like it was straight out of a fantasy novel. You had no idea what kind of weird exotic lizard this was, or why, as a baby, it was so big.
Aerion exhaled next to you, and when you looked at him, you could detect many emotions in his eyes; awe, shock, doubt… Either he was a very good actor, or he truly cared about… whatever was happening with the eggs.
“What-” you started, but couldn’t finish your question when the lizard leapt towards you, and stuck straight to your face, obscuring your vision.
“Aaaahhhh!” you yelled as you tried to run away and shake your head, but the lizard was holding on without any problems. You brought your hands up to grab and yank it off, but you really didn’t want to hold it.
“Aerion!” you yelled as you tried to find him, he had come next to you anyway, even though you were restless. You grabbed him without knowing where. “Get it off! Take it!”
He gripped both of your arms and made you stand still in front of him, you could feel him leaning down to look at you —or more so, the baby lizard.
“Incredible,” he murmured, sounding astonished.
“Aerion,” you said, “please get it off me.”
He didn’t seem to hear you, he didn’t respond.
“Aerion!” you yelled, then remembering, “Your Grace!”
“This is a miracle,” he said, “It’s the first dragon egg that could hatch since-”
“It’s moving on my face, Aerion! At least let me go!”
You could hear an annoyed sigh leave his lips, he was finally hearing you. Annoyed?? A lizard, right after being born, still in its egg juices or whatever, had glued itself to your face. He had no right to be annoyed.
“Do you not know what an honor it is, that the first alive dragon in fifty years is even touching you?”
The lizard sneezed. You felt a burn at the top of your head.
“What did it do?!” you shrieked, “I will kill myself!” you started to shake your head and kick his legs.
“Stop whining,” he said loudly and audibly irritated, “stand still.” He released your arms and grabbed the lizard, pulling it off your face. You stumbled backwards, and immediately put an adequate distance between you and the animal.
The lizard wriggled and thrashed about in Aerion’s hands, trying to set itself free. And then it breathed fire. You saw it, there was no mistaking it, fire came out of its mouth and almost burned Aerion’s hands, but he let it go before that could happen.
The lizard sprinted towards you in a speed no baby of anything should be capable of, and you started running away. You had to admit it was the most beautiful lizard you’d ever seen, it had scales like starlight and eyes like ocean depths, but the trying-to-eat-you-alive bit really made it hard to appreciate its beauty.
“Aerion!” you yelled again, knowing he would not help you, and started running towards him.
He looked baffled and confused, he just stood there, watching.
At that moment, you hated everything. And this room, you hated the most. It was suffocatingly hot, frusturatingly dark, the only source of light, flames, distractingly yellow and unreliable and dangerous, the only other person inside, unpredictable and uncaring. Your chest had been tight since you had woken up here, the ceiling was coming down on you to crush you every passing moment, the walls were closing in on you, the creepy statues were watching you like prey, you were actually being hunted like prey.
You needed to get out. You changed your trajectory towards the stairs, and then started climbing up. The door was heavy, but you managed to open it, and barely closed it back in time to keep the weird lizard inside.
You let out a deep breath, there was some light outside. It was morning. Or noon.
There really were other men positioned outside the room, and they really did have armor. They looked at you questioningly, but didn’t do anything. You looked around to see where the room was connected to.
You were standing in a long hall, the end of it barely seen, the ceiling so tall that several floors would fit inside the hall. A red carpet underneath your feet, the walls were made of the same ivory black stone as the room.
You made your way to the nearest window, you needed to see where you were. When you looked outside from the window, however, you couldn’t believe your eyes. You stuck out your head to feel the wind, smell the salt and smoke, look at the sun until your eyes teared up, to see if you were still alive, if this was truly real.
You saw the sea stretching towards the horizon, neverending. You saw the steep cliff the castle you were in was standing on, right next to the sea. You saw how the castle looked from outside, enormous, completely black, and adorned with dragon motifs and sculpture, resembling multiple giant dragons. Hundreds of gargoyles were placed upon the outer walls, and you were too high for your head to stay stuck out without worry. You could see the ships sailing the sea, many people busy with their work. They wore outdated clothes, and the ships, too, seemed like they had come out of a history museum. The everyday people bustling about in their soft and colorful clothing served a sharp contrast to the nightmarish castle with horrifying gargoyles perched on its walls.
You turned back to face the guards. “Where are we?” you asked them, dread slowly growing in your chest.
“Dragonstone Castle, My Lady,” said one of the guards, clearly confused.
You looked back outside, trying to comprehend all of it. This was real. It was exactly how it was described in the books. Aerion Targaryen looked exactly how he did in the show. The weird lizard had breathed fire.
You touched the top of your head and felt the part of your hair that had burned.
Were you really in Dragonstone? But how? Did that mysterious voice you heard have something to do with it? Had someone brought you here somehow?
But how could any of this be possible? Were you dreaming, in a coma? No, you knew how a dream would feel, this was real. And even if it weren’t, that would not matter. It was real as long as you were living in it. It was just logical to treat it so just in case.
So you truly were in Westeros, in the castle of the Dragonlord’s heir, as a completely random stranger. You had woken up in the room where they kept the unhatched dragon eggs, and Aerion Brightflame had found you. He really was Aerion. The Monstrous.
A dragon had actually hatched, when it never had in the story you knew, and you were there to witness it. That meant things would be different from how you knew them, so you didn’t even have the armor of knowledge.
You were in Westeros of all places. In your Mike Wazowski pajamas. With no shoes on. Completely out of your depth. Westeros was a nightmare to live in even without being a palace intruder, let alone being caught transgressing into the room with the most precious possessions of the royal family.
You sighed, looking outside.
You were so dead.