Baelon Targaryen/ Jon Snow (193 A.C. Fourth Moon)
Summerhal
He did not know how it was possible, yet the fire did not feel hot.
No. He felt cold, truly cold, and wet.
This must be death.
Then light flashed across his eyes, sudden and blinding, and he cried out, not with words, but with a thin, helpless wail, the sound of an infant.
"Your third-born, princess," a woman called out.
Confusion flooded him. What was happening? Baelon tried to look around, but his body would not obey him. Hands larger than giants closed around him, firm but careful, and he was wrapped in warm cloth, swaddled tight. The cold began to retreat, replaced by heat that was not flame, but life.
Moments later, he was placed into the arms of a woman.
She had purple eyes and black hair, her face pale with exhaustion yet strikingly beautiful even through sweat and pain. She looked down at him with wonder and affection, and though he could not understand how, he knew she was important.
"Princess, your husband waits outside," another woman said.
"Let him in," the woman replied at once.
Her voice trembled, thick with emotion, as she looked down at the bundle in her arms and then to her side.
"Oh, you both are my beautiful boys," she whispered.
Beautiful boys? Baelon turned his gaze as best he could and saw another babe beside him, swaddled like himself, but crowned with soft silver hair. Twins. Baelon thought confused.
Footsteps approached, heavier now, deliberate. A man entered the chamber, tall and broad, with golden-silver hair and the hard presence of a warrior.
"Maekar," the woman said softly. "Look at them. Aren't they beauties?"
The name struck him like a hammer. Maekar.
The man stepped closer, his face unreadable at first, then softening as he looked down at the children. Awe crossed his features, followed by something like fierce pride.
"Oh, hello, little man," he said as he reached for Baelon and lifted him carefully into his arms. "I'm your father." Father.
"He has your black hair," Maekar noted, a faint smile touching his lips.
Princess. Maekar. The truth slammed into him all at once, even through the haze of infancy.
Prince Maekar Targaryen. The Anvil. Hero of the Red Grassfield. Future King of the Seven Kingdoms. Father to Aemon Targaryen, the maester who had guided him in another life.
His chest tightened with something close to peace at the thought of the old maester, blind and wise, gentle if harsh with his truths. Yet neither of them had known the truth of their kinship then.
Yet confusion followed swiftly after.
How could this be happening?
He had died. He remembered it. The blood soaking through his armor, the red clinging to Sansa's hands that had shaken as she held him. He remembered asking Rhaegal to burn them, to let them die in fire rather than be torn apart by the dead, or worse, slain by the others and brought back as wights.
Only death can pay for life. It's what Daenerys had once told him, when he asked how the dragons came to be. Three deaths. Rhaego, Drogo, and Miri Maz Dur.
Had that been the price? His and Sansa's burning, their sacrifice, their final choice, their choice had made for love, to die together, and peacefully. Instead of violence?
Had that bought him this?
A life sent backward, more than a hundred years before his own birth.
It meant he wouldn't see her again. Not soon anyway, his love gone, but the thought alone was enough to twist his heart. And yet anger rose with it.
Why?
Why send him back? Why deny him the peace of death he had earned? Why burden him with knowledge again, with memory, with foresight? Of what was to come.
His thoughts were cut short as the woman spoke once more. He knew her now, somehow. Dyanna Dayne, Princess of Summerhall, wife to Maekar Targaryen.
"What shall we call them?" she asked.
Maekar looked between the two babes, weighing fate with a warrior's seriousness.
Baelon knew enough of history to understand this moment. The other child could not be Daeron. Daeron had sandy-golden hair. That left only a few possibilities.
Aerion. Aemon. Aegon.
"Well," Maekar said slowly, "it has been a while since we had an Aerion in the family. Let us call the lad after the father of our house. Aegon, the Conqueror."
So it was decided. This babe was Aerion; he was known as the younger twin of Aerion Brightflame. "A strong name for your first-born," Dyanna said with a tired smile as she kissed the silver-haired babe's head.
He would not be so sure, in his opinion. Aerion was close to being one of his worst kin. Cruel and mad were the words most used for him. Part of the reason the realm never received the king that never was, Baelor Breakspear. Perhaps only Aemon, son of Jaehaerys the First, was held in the same regard.
Then Maekar looked down at Baelon, his gaze softening further. Curious. Maekar was said to be a hard man, hard but just. Much like Stannis. And like Stannis, a kinslayer, though Maekar's kinslaying had been accidental. A death that broke him more than anything else.
"And you, little one," he said gently. "Baelon. After the great warrior prince who passed before his time. And for my brother, whom I loved dearly."
Must be fate, or something else, to receive the same name.
Yet what year was it? He was not exactly sure when Aerion had been born, but it might be that the Blackfyre rebellions had not yet happened. Not that he could stop them, even if he wished to. He knew Aemon had been born two years after that rebellion. He had asked the old maester once about his life. It pained him now that he had not asked more about his past, about his family, even when he had not known they were his own.
Now, though, he was somehow reborn in a time when Aemon was not yet born, or perhaps he had been, and Aerion and Baelon came later.
Why was he here?
Then he remembered the bright blue eyes that had caused his death.
There it was.
To prepare the realm for what was to come. To not let it fall into chaos, unprepared and divided, when the fight for the dawn came again.
"The lad is quiet," Prince Maekar noted, "yet not entirely. You can see him looking."
I will look, listen, and make sure the realm does not go to shit.
Sadly, he was unlikely to stop all the events to come. Yet he would stand in those boots when they arrived.
For now, he would listen and learn all he could.