Chapter Text
There was a taste of copper in his mouth, hot and viscous. A burning pain in his side, where the prince's lance had gone through his chainmail, his skin and his flesh. His eye was throbbing, swollen shut, his leg screaming with every movement.
Dunk felt like a tree in a storm. Swaying, only able to bend so far until the wind would be too strong and knock him down. The ground was muddy beneath his feet, it had too much give and he strained to keep his destroyed body upright.
Opposite him stood Prince Aerion. Knocked off his horse, muddied and bloodied, and angry. Dunk was face to face with purple eyes, a cruel, red-tinged grin. The prince's silver hair was tacky with blood. A pretty face, once. A monster, now.
Prince Aerion lifted his morningstar and Dunk braced himself.
Dunk shot up in bed, sucking down air like a drowning man. He was soaked with sweat, his t-shirt clung to him like a second skin. His side ached but when he touched it, he was not tender there. His eye was not swollen either, his leg was fine too.
And yet.
Dunk breathed, or tried to. The images in his head felt like they did not belong to him but they were too tangible, too real to feel like dreams. His head was pounding and he sat upright best as he could and cradled his tender head in his chest. A new wave of images flashed in front of his inner eye, vivid and painful. The stench of rotting corpses while he tried to remove horseshoes from bloating fallen steeds. Cradling Rafe's cheek while blood spurted from a deep cut across her throat. The light in her eyes dimming.
Dunk's stomach rolled.
The snap of a finger. A scream. Red hot anger, a thrown fist, a kick to the mouth, a child – Egg – yelling: "Don't hurt him".
Dunk groaned as his head pulsed with memories flowing into his brain. Because what else could it be? No dream had ever felt this vivid. No figment of his imagination had ever been so detailed.
"–can?"
Dunk snapped out of the maelstrom inside his head with a sharp gasp and scrambled up to the headboard. His lungs were burning like he had held his breath for too long and he could hear himself fight for air around the black spots in his field of vision.
"What the fuck", a voice said to his left, muffled as if through water. "Duncan?"
Duncan the Tall. Ser Duncan the Tall. Ser Duncan of the Kingsguard. Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.
Dunk remembered.
He remembered it all.
Flea Bottom. Ser Arlan of Pennytree. Egg. The Trial of Seven. Whitewalls. His Kingsguard cloak and armour. The fire at Summerhall.
A warm hand on the nape of his neck jostled him from his memories and Dunk turned to face the man it belonged to.
His stomach plummeted.
Aerion looked disgruntled and worried at the same time, his silver hair mussed from sleep and the t-shirt he had stolen from Dunk to sleep in was slipping off one shoulder.
Aerion, his fiancé.
Aerion, the monster from his memories.
"There you are", Aerion said. "Care to tell me what that was about?"
"You–", Dunk croaked and his stomach rolled again, Tanselle's scream echoing in his head, the crack of her bones snapping.
Dunk slapped Aerion's hand away.
"Don't touch me", he heard himself say and the venom in his voice sounded foreign.
His fiancé – his foe? – stared at him like he had grown a second head.
"What the fuck?", Aerion said, wide awake now, and his mouth twisted with anger.
That expression. That fucking expression. A memory flashed in his mind, that same twisted mouth, bloodied from Dunk's boot, a cruel glint in purple eyes that heralded punishment.
"I remember", Dunk heard himself say and climbed out of the bed. His knees were weak, his skin clammy. "I remember everything."
Aerion stared at him. "Are you sleepwalking? What in the Seven hells are you on about?"
"Like you don't know!", Dunk hurled at him, voice almost breaking.
Gods, he was nauseous. He had slept in the same bed as Aerion. Had asked him to marry him.
"I don't know!", Aerion threw back. "You wake up panting like a dog, stare at me like I've murdered your family and spout some bullshit about remembering – what the fuck is going on?"
He had to know. He had to. Didn't he?
But Dunk himself hadn't known until tonight. Hadn't remembered a life so long past it was not documented anywhere until the memories washed into his head in his sleep.
"Duncan", Aerion said quietly and Dunk, still breathing heavily, looked at him.
Aerion knelt in the middle of their bed, in between the ruffled blankets. He was in his sleepwear. Dunk's old t-shirt and briefs peeking out from under the hem. There was a silver glint on his finger.
The ring.
The ring Dunk had proposed with three months ago. The ring Aerion had said yes to, on their two year anniversary.
But even more unsettling was his expression.
Aerion looked scared.
And in his memory, Dunk had felt a sick gratification at Aerion's fear when he had dragged him through the mud and forced him to withdraw his claim. But now, Dunk's stomach rolled and the instinct to protect flared up in his chest like a beacon.
He did not mean to scare this man, he loved him. Didn't he?
Was Aerion, his fiancé, truly the same man as Prince Aerion Brightflame from his memories?
"What do you remember of Ashford?", Dunk asked and from the way Aerion flinched back, he must have looked terrifying.
"Ashford?" Aerion clutched the blanket with the hand bearing his engagement ring. "We went to watch a game. Ashford Suns against the Storm's End Stags? The stags won and you tried on a fugly antler hat Lyonel thought was cool."
Dunk remembered that. Of course he did. But he'd meant the tourney.
Aerion didn't remember.
Yet?
"Look, I don't know what in the Seven hells is going on", Aerion said, still white-knuckling the blanket. "Fucking talk to me."
Dunk would have liked to laugh hysterically. 'I remembered a past life where you terrorised those I held dear and brutalised me on the battlefield'?
Sure, that would go over well.
"I have to go", Dunk blurted out and stumbled to their wardrobe, pulled out whatever he could get his hands on and tossed it in a duffel.
"What?!" Dunk heard the bed creak behind him and then the sound of naked feet on wooden floors. "Where?! It's the middle of the fucking night and you're having some sort of nervous breakd–"
"I'm not", hissed Dunk.
Aerion scoffed. "You are. You're looking at me like I'm some monster, fucking hell."
Dunk turned around, stared down at the man he called his fiancé. Aerion lifted his chin in defiance despite their height difference.
"See?", Aerion said. "You're out of your mind."
"Me?", Dunk spat, the red hot anger he knew from his memories spreading in his belly. "I'm out of my mind?! You drank wildfire to turn yourself into a dragon and killed yourself!"
Aerion took a step back, his face guarded all of a sudden. "Duncan. What are you talking about?"
Dunk wanted to cower and cry. His head was pounding like someone had taken a pneumatic hammer to it and felt like it would split open any second.
What was the present? What was the past? Aerion was dead, wasn't he? He died in Lys. But no, here he was.
Alive. Well. Sane. Dunk's.
"Okay", Aerion said slowly and moved towards the nightstand where his phone was charging. "I'm calling an ambulance. You're either having a stroke or a psychotic break and you're fucking scaring me here."
No. No, no, no. The last thing Dunk needed right now was to be put on a psychiatric hold. He just needed to get out of here. He had to go somewhere. To someone.
He couldn't be alone with these memories. Aerion clearly did not have them (yet). Maybe they came at a specific age?
Someone had to have gone through this before. An odd comment. A change in personality.
'I dreamed of you.'
"I have to go see Daeron", Dunk blurted out.
"Are you nuts?!", Aerion spat from the safety of the other side of the room, phone in hand. "The only person you have to see is a doctor, you're not going anywhere!"
Aerion could not stop him if he tried. No Kingsguard at his beck and call here, in the present.
Dunk pulled on socks, joggers and a hoodie, shouldered his duffel and booked it, ignoring Aerion's shouts and all but flying down the stairs to the car.
Should he be driving with his head feeling like it was going to split open? Probably not.
Dunk had to ring the doorbell three times before the intercom crackled.
"Who'sit?", Daeron slurred.
"It's Dunk", Dunk said. "I need to talk to you."
"Can't it wait?"
"No", Dunk said. "No, it's urgent. It's really urgent."
The lock buzzed and Dunk shoved into the house. It was dark and quiet and Dunk belatedly realised he might have woken baby Vaella.
The light in the hallway turned on and Daeron came swaying down the stairs, whether from alcohol or sleep, Dunk could not say. He'd gotten the drinking under control, shortly after getting with Kiera, but he'd started again a year or so ago.
Dunk knew Daeron had recently gone through another rehab stay and really hoped the swaying was due to the early hour and not intoxication.
"Ser Duncan the Tall", Daeron greeted him as he had the past year.
This time, it resonated.
"I remember", Dunk said and Daeron's eyes cleared up.
"Oh", Daeron said. "Fuck."
Oh fuck indeed.
"Did they come to you in your sleep too?", Dunk asked into the dark. "The memories."
Daeron handed him the blunt they had been passing back and forth. Dunk would have preferred to drink himself into a stupor hadn't it been so unfair to Daeron's sobriety. So weed would have to do.
"Yeah", Daeron said and leaned back on the Hollywood swing they were sitting on. Vaella had, by some miracle, not woken up when Dunk had arrived and Kiera had banished them into the garden to keep it that way. "Scared the living daylights out of Kiera."
Yeah. Dunk could imagine that. He remembered the unfamiliar expression of fear on Aerion's face and brought the blunt to his lips, inhaled deeply.
"How'd Aerion take it?"
Dunk huffed. "Ah. Mix of angry and scared. I didn't really... handle it well."
"No shit", Daeron said and waved his phone around. "He's been blowing up my phone since I told him you're here and you're safe."
"And he trusts your judgement on that?", Dunk asked, unable to ban the sarcasm entirely from his tone.
Daeron shrugged. "Seems like it. But I'm sure he's terrorising Daenora and Aemon as we speak."
Dunk sighed and took another deep inhale of the blunt. The pounding in his head was finally lessening, giving way to a pleasant lightheadedness.
"Who else?", he asked. "Does Egg remember?"
Daeron shook his head. "No. No, Egg's too young. Frontal cortex is still developing, you know."
Dunk dimly remembered a saying that the frontal cortex was only fully developed by 25. He had no idea if that was actually true but it would explain why Egg didn't remember yet, though it would not explain Aerion's lack of memories. Aerion was a month older than Dunk, after all.
"So who does? Your father?", Dunk asked. "Baelor? What about Valarr and Aemon?"
Daeron leaned back and the swing creaked. There were cicadas chirping in the grass.
"Father remembers", he said. "So do my uncles. Actually, we're not sure about Uncle Rhaegel. As for us cousins... Valarr and Matarys, Aelor and Aelora, and me."
Gods, Valarr. The memory of the young prince after Baelor's funeral flickered through his mind and Dunk bit the inside of his cheek until he could taste blood.
"Do you believe", Dunk started and his throat felt tight, "that we are just repeating our past lives? In a... modern day setting?"
Daeron sighed. "We make some of the same choices, I reckon. At our core, we are the same people."
But could that really be all? Dunk still met Egg, that was not an active choice either of them made, was it?
"But some things are different already, aren't they?", Daeron went on. "Uncle Baelor is alive, so are Valarr and Matarys, and Grandfather. And, don't take this the wrong way, man, but I don't think you and Aerion fucked at the tourney at Ashford."
Dunk choked on the smoke and started coughing violently. Daeron only helped by taking the blunt.
"No", Dunk managed to wrench out. "And I sure as hell didn't want to marry him either."
Daeron fell silent and turned his face up into the night sky.
"Do you still want to?", he asked.
Dunk stared at his hands, laced together on his thighs. Big hands, strong enough to carry people out of burning buildings today, and strong enough to wield a longsword in his past life.
But they were also big enough to cup the back of Aerion's skull to tilt his head back so he could kiss him easier. Gods, he could see the challenging glint in Aerion's eyes in his mind as he recalled doing it. The little self-assured smirk because Aerion knew he'd gotten his way when Dunk tilted his head up like that. The softness of his lips, the slight scratch of invisible stubble, the heat of his tongue, that moment that Dunk could never get enough of, when Aerion finally melted and let himself be held and steered.
Dunk's chest ached.
How could Aerion Targaryen, his fiancé, the man he loved, be a reincarnation of Prince Aerion Brightflame, the most baselessly cruel man Dunk had known?
"Duncan."
Right. Daeron had asked him a question.
Marriage. Dunk and Aerion were engaged. They had already decided on a date and asked their best (wo)men – Raymun for Dunk and Daenora for Aerion.
Could Dunk still marry Aerion with the memories he had reacquired?
"I don't know", Dunk said and felt as hollow as his voice sounded.
He hadn't had an easy life in this lifetime either. Not comparable to growing up an orphan in Flea Bottom, sure. But poverty and violence had still played a big role in his early years until his P.E. teacher Mr. Pennytree had taken notice of how thin and bruised he was.
The system was still the system so it had taken years until little Duncan Waters became Duncan Pennytree and only then did his life improve, at least until Arlan had died and Dunk had wandered back into the system at 16.
His first meeting with Aerion had not been quite positive in this lifetime either and back then, Dunk would have never imagined one day asking the silver-haired prat to marry him and then cry when he said 'yes, you big lug'.
And yet.
"Aerion doesn't know", Daeron said. "He won't understand if you dump him now. And while Aerion is far from my favourite brother, or even my favourite extended family member, I don't think we can be friends anymore if you break his heart like that. He does love you, you know."
Of course Dunk knew. Aerion did not say it out loud often, but he knew.
"But I can't go on like nothing happened", Dunk said. "That's wrong too."
"Of course you can", Daeron said. "We all could."
Dunk scoffed. "Well, did Kiera torture those you hold dear, make sure you would be sent to certain death and beat you half dead?"
Daeron fell silent. "No. I suppose she didn't."
"And what when Aerion regains the memories?", Dunk went on and dug his nails into his palms. "He might remember he is not too fond of the man who kicked him in the mouth, beat him bloody with his own shield and humiliated him for all the world to see. And then what?"
Daeron brought the blunt to his lips, inhaled and blew the smoke into the night.
"I'm not cursed with prophetic dreams in this lifetime", Daeron said. "I wouldn't know."
Daeron's phone buzzed between them. Caller ID Daenora. Their cousin and Aerion's best friend.
"You should go", Daeron said, ignoring the phone. "Aerion will be here tomorrow at the latest. I don't think you should see him until you've made up your mind about him."
Dunk nodded and took the blunt from Daeron.
His mouth tasted like ash.