winter is coming

🏳️‍🌈 June 23-29, 2025

🏳️‍🌈 Art by @aonugsvape

🏳️‍🌈 All ratings/tags allowed

🏳️‍🌈 #JaceganWeek2025

🏳️‍🌈 AO3 Collection

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"Cregan and Jacaerys took a liking to each other, for the boy prince reminded the Lord of Winterfell of his own younger brother, who had died ten years before. They drank together, hunted together, trained together, and swore an oath of brotherhood, sealed in blood."

They were bound by blood, by an unspoken oath witnessed by both the Old Gods and Valyrian gods alike.

- Day 1; Rituals for Jacegan Week 2024

Read the accompanying fic; Bound in Blood on AO3

AU, where instead of training the dragons, Valirians were taught to turn into them, albeit the Doom still happened. However, instead of conquering Westeros, they decided to concentrate on Essos and create their kingdom at former Slaver’s Bay lands. So by the canonical Dance of Dragons time, Westeros is divided between Hoar’s kingdom(which includes not only the Iron Islands, but the Westlands, Reach and half of Riverlands)(another half is held by Arryn kingdom). The North is still an independent kingdom and Cregan is its king, newly got rid of his uncle Bennard. One day, Cregan decides to take a ride to Deepwood Moot with his half-sister Sara and lord Servin, his friend. The Hoar still attempts to conquer the North, and the castle is still the stronghold against them. 

Once they get near the castle, it seems that a big shadow flies over it, but it disappears as soon as Cregan looks away. 

And the next day, a young man appears at the village nearby. This man looks quite ordinary - dark hair, grey eyes, slender build - and wears simple clothes but no weapon but a simple knife. He wanders along the shore and village, chats with smallfolk, exchanges drinks with guards and relentlessly asks if some strange things happened here. 

At first, Cregan doesn’t notice him - until he notices that the boy’s clothes are not really made for North’s weather. They are made of linen, and not of wool or leather and totally are not suited even for summer in the North, yet the man seems not to give a damn about this. He doesn't even seem to feel cold.

Cregan is overcomed by curiosity and, despite Lord Cervin’s and Lord Glover’s objections, calls him in, while at the same time attempting to dig where this man comes from. 

At first, it seems it’s necessary, because the man(whose name is Jace) seems to wear his heart on his sleeve. He simply talks that he came from the Bay of Free Men in Essos, where he lived with his mothers, father, four little brothers and baby sister and he just came to travel the world. He tells of high pyramids and earthly gray rocks, of deep blue sea, orange trees and the dragons living among the people. He is ready to tell about long channels of water built and the gardens of thousand trees and flowers blooming in the places where there was nothing but sand one hundred years ago. He tells how the family running from the Doom of Valyria had taken these places for themselves and rebuilt these Bay from nothing.

From the distances of thousand miles, the story of the place is like a fairytale or a legend dating back to the Long Night, and maybe it is hard to believe it here, but Cregan finds it interesting. So, he starts to spend more time with the man from the Free Man’s Bay. He is still interested in why this man came to the North.

When he asked Jace about it, he just shrugged his shoulders and said:

— I need to complete one ritual here.

Cregan doesn’t understand. He knows of rituals people practice: of blood oaths and self-sacrifice, which was used by heathen priests of the Old Gods until the said priests were caught and executed. But what type of ritual does this man want to complete? 

It does not help that Jace is actually a very interesting person to speak with. He is smart, knows a lot of things, is ready to talk a lot about everything including the history of different lands and their legends, and nevertheless, never seems like he wants to boast about everything he knows. He is ready to allow other people to express themselves and listens to them patiently before starting to speak. He does not seem the man who is ready to immolish himself for unknown reasons. And so he soughts to spend as much time with him as possible.

One day, the Ironborn of Hoar attack the coast. Cregan, of course, can’t just stand and watch and enters the battle alongside Cervin. However, since the forces of Hoars are stronger than canon Greyjoys(because their kingdom is bigger and richer), the battle ends up being bloody and Northern men lose a lot of their men. 

Until the green dragon arrives. He flies over Ironborns ships and burns them, and then attacks and starts to kill those Ironborn, who are standing nearby them. The remainings understand what that means and start to throw themselves at Northern positions and one of them hits Cregan into his head and the latter loses his consciousness.

He wakes up at the cave. Nearby, the sea hums. The first man he sees here is Jace, with part of his clothes torn and the green-grey scales on the cheekbones.

Cregan asks for answers.

And Jace - who reveals himself to be Jacaerys Velaryon, son of the ruler of the Dragonmen of the Bay of Free Men - tells him everything. Tells  not only about the kingdom, which is ruled by his mother now, but about his relatives as well, about his brothers and little sister, about his uncles and aunts. He also explains what brought him to the North. The Dragonmen have their special initiation rituals and the young dragonman should make his 12 feats - 6 by his own volition and 6 by another’s choice. He already completed 11 of them and now is doing another the last. He came to the North to complete his ritual and rise to full-blown member of Dragonmen society.

Cregan remembers the stories coming from Vale about dragons kidnapping young maidens, and asks if it is a ritual too. Jace laughs and says that they do not kidnap only the maidens but the handsome knights too - it is how his mother meets his father. However, they do not cause them any harm and the only dragon who burned them alive was his great-granduncle Maegor, who is considered a monster by their tribesmen.

Cregan doesn’t remember, for how many time they kissed eachother after this. 

After that, Jace suddenly gets more serious and tells Cregan about the reason he came to the North - to stop one of the sea snakes terrorizing the costs of the islands. The sea snakes are the bitter rivals of Dragonmen like the fireworms(From whom they descend) and unlike them, are pure animals. He says that those creatures crave human blood and arrive at the places of battles to eat it and leave them after catching humans to be eaten alive. He says that smallfolk believe that giving a young woman to them to fend it off and bring prosperity in winter. For a lot of them this is the ritual. Cregan suddenly understands what those implications mean, gets what to do with it and gets up to rush to the shore to help. Jacaerys understands and goes with him.

And they turn out to be right. After the sea snake comes to the battlefield, the smallfolk uses the usual panacea - Sara ends up as the sacrifice for this sea snake. She ends up chained to the rock formation. 

King Jacaerys Targaryen, First of his name; King of the Andals, The Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.

Read the Accompanying Fic Heavy is the Head on AO3

drabble, 1.4k words

King Jace, AU, minor jacela(political marriage), mentioned jofhaera and Addam/Rhaena

The sun sets over King's Landing as Cregan stands near the Princevault — so this building with the slate roof and high carved doors is called now, with prince Daeron Targaryen, formerly the Daring, kept here. 

It was the surprise when not so long after the war ended, King Jacaerys Targaryen, former Velaryon, declared that his uncle, who barely survived the battle of Tumbleton, would not be executed, but instead held in lifelong captivity.

« I understand your concerns, my lords». — he said to the Small Council. — «But my uncle is not dangerous now. His dragon is dead. He lost his left arm and half of his foot in the last battle, he has numerous burns… He will not be able to fight for the throne. Nobody will follow the king who is crippled to such an extent. And he is still my uncle, and I don’t want to spill the blood of my relatives.»

«Why won’t you send him to the Nightwatch, your Highness?» asked Corlys Velaryon, Master over the Ships then and Cregan, who stood by here with Hand’s brooch on his doublet, was more than agree with him. 

If there hadn’t been a Bitterbridge massacre, Cregan could have even felt pity towards the fallen prince. But not after him demanding to kill all of his inhabitants even after the true killers of prince Maelor were executed. No, he does not understand why Jacaerys spared him. 

« He may be kidnapped by remaining Green supporters during the trip. Here, he would be under supervision. His niece may still visit him, though.» — Here he chuckled.

The only niece the imprisoned prince had was princess Jaehaera, who just goes out from the Princevault, in her blue dress, with her hands hold by both King Jacaerys and Queen Baela. The girl looks not really happy, but content — a wildly different from the tear-eyed, trembling girl Jace described here to him they found when the capital was captured. 

At first, when they didn’t know what to do with her. She was the daughter of the fallen king, of the man, who usurped his mother and abandoned his wife when she lost her son and went mad. But she was still a young, eternally frightened girl too. The better choice was to marry her to someone loyal to the king, who will not rebel to get a crown and has the possessions of his own. There were four men who may possibly wed her - king’s brothers Joffrey and Aegon, or his bastard brothers Alyn and Addam. Some people expected young Aegon to wed Jaehaera, but the King stopped those talks and decided to marry the girl to the middle brother, and also to marry lady Rhaena to Addam, who became the heir to Driftmark. 

«I do not think that Joffrey will be against his bride visiting her uncle when they visit the Red Keep. I am not gonna wed them now cause it’s gonna be nothing, but a farce in this case. I’ll wait until the princess turns at least thirteen and their wedding will happen here.»

«And your brother?»

«Will get a Dornish mark. It’s a hardly controlled region and we need  strongholds both against Dorn and usurper’s sympathizers in the Reach.»

Here, the king doesn’t tell all the truths. Jacaerys never told about it to the Small Council, but said once to him that the reason his uncles usurped his mother may lay in the fact they would not get anything except reduced to mere toadies if she will get a throne. His uncle and stepfather was a son of the king, but didn’t get anything except a place in the Small council and nothing to give his children except the dragon eggs. Cregan thinks there is nothing to pity the usurpers for, but he more than agrees that Jace’s brothers deserve to get their own lands. Granted, prince Joffrey has Dragonstone now, but when Queen Baela will give birth to the son, it will come to him. So, there are the Dornish mark for Joffrey, Cape Kraken for Aegon and Rain House, whose Lord’s family lost  it due to its association with usurper, for young Viserys. And two of them will get new keeps for their families, when the said keeps will be built. 

Cregan sighs as the King gets down on one knee, hugs his niece and then rises and kisses his cousin and wife, who looks gorgeous in her red dress despite being heavily pregnant, on her forehead. He is not of those who can think a lot about his past, but he hardly can believe that only two years have passed since the green dragon and his rider landed nearby Winterfell. Once they hunted together, played snowballs in secret,watched the night sky and  shared kisses in its darkness. Once merely a young grandlord and prince with a young dragon — now Hand and his King, who is gonna be father soon.

But are they the same persons who have fallen for each other during the visit to the North? 

Once they reunited after Jacaerys’s coronation and his mother’s funeral, he voiced his concerns about it. Jacaerys, who there did his best to make Cregan call him «Jace» again, didn’t smiled in vain attempt to make the situation look easier, but lowered his gaze and genuinely said that he didn't know this. He was thrown out of balance by the betrayal of the dragonseeds he recruited, his brother's death and his mother being killed by one of Larys Strong’s spies. Than, they couldn’t find the words to sooth each other and barely sat alone in the cabinet,  pressing their foreheads against each other, and somehow, this was enough. 

And so they decided — no matter what, to be here and watch for each other.

The princess and the Queen leave King Jacaerys, as he goes to him. In the sky, the dragon’s cry is heard, and Cregan wonders, what sea monster is brought to keep by Moondancer now. Last time, Queen Baela’s dragon dragged the whole shark to the Red Keep. 

«We need to discuss some things privately.» says Jace, when he comes to him and Cregan nods. 

Since the war, huge numbers of armies of North, Riverlands and Vale and Blacks supporters from other Kingdoms have occupied the Westlands, Stormlands, Kingslands and Reach — as the lands whose lords betrayed their true queen. In retaliation, they will be put under direct control of the king’s through loyal people for a temporary time. Kermit Tully got the Westlands, Lord Rovan got the Reach, Corlys Velaryon got the Stormlands, and Jeyne Arryn’s heir Joffrey Arryn got Kingslands. And Cregan thinks that the reason Jace called him to his rooms is somehow connected to this. 

They reach the king’s cabinet in a minute and the guards salute to them. They enter it a second after and Jace closes the door. 

Cregan can see the said cabinet. Poets and bards often talk about how wonderful the Red Keep looks like, and sometimes Cregan is ready to agree with them. There is the broken model of old Valyria made by Jace’s maternal grandfather, king Viserys, a huge table, a chair nearby and a fire burning in the fireplace. There are a bunch of letters on the table and a  ream of sheets next to them. 

Then, Jace shows him a bunch of letters. Cregan reads them patiently. These letters come from different cities - or better to say, from unions the prominent ones of these cities, like merchants or most skilled craftsmen. The number of cities are impressive: Weeping town, Vinetown, Pebbletown, Hull, King’s Landing itself, Duskendale, Lannisport, Tumbletown, Bitterbridge… The prominent ones of these cities are afraid - it’s visible in the tone of their letters. The war left them with no protection from the marching armies of lords, especially the traitor lords and so they are asking the king for protection. They will pay money directly to his representatives, will form city militias or empower the existing ones and put the directly to the king’s service if he’ll support them in their initiative.

And there Cregan understands. Now, there are Tully, Stark and Arryn armies keeping the order in former rebel territories, but it ain’t gonna last forever. Sooner or later, but they need to leave home… And then…

« Are you going to use city councils against the former rebel lords?»

And the smirk blossoms on Jace’s lips.

Alternative title: The Inherent Homoeroticism of Jacaerys Velaryon and Cregan Stark's Relationship that Has Taken Residence in The Deepest Recesses of My Hyperfixated Brain