what's in a name?
Jacaerys x Selkie!OC | Rating: Explicit/Eventual Smut| Slow-Burn, Angst & Hurt-Comfort, Explorations of Grief, Politics, Trauma | Loose Retelling of the Little Mermaid| WC: 2,480 | Read on AO3
that which we call a dragon by any other name would grieve as deeply.
Or;
A selkie pulls Jacaerys Velaryon from the waters of the Gullet before he is killed. For one glorious week, he knows what it's like to be treated not as a prince, a bastard, a dragonrider, a Velaryon, or a Targaryen. But as a man. Of course, he could not help but fall in love.
But if he cannot have both his duty and his selkie love, what is Jacaerys to do with the life he owes her? With the Dance of Dragons still raging on, what does the bastard prince covet more: love or a throne?
Dragons did not often visit her sea. In fact, most of them only did so when they were sinking to a watery tomb. And most of the time, she was not aware of it when it did happen. Only the clicking and chittering of other seals and selkies told her of it after the fact.
This time, however, she was there to witness it all.
Dragonstone, called Dragon Rock by the other sea denizens, was not where she usually coasted by. But the currents back to Westeros from Pentos were strong, and she somehow managed to swim through a battle that waged brutally along the surface. She wanted to crest, gather more air before diving again, but each twist and lurch to evade shrapnel and wreckage from the ships made it impossible.
The dragon was pulled beneath the water by a massive anchor and a rope tethered to a spear. She dove, snapping the rope with her teeth, only to find the massive creature already bleeding out. The dragon would find no benefit from the shed weight now. But the human, the rider above her…
He clung to a wooden beam of a ship, trying to swim to safety. He would not make it. Even through the water, her ears could hear arrows being knocked, crossbow strings being pulled. She did not think as she ascended, as his body grew closer and closer with each kick of her mighty tail.
She grasped his legs right as the first arrow struck his shoulder, flippers folding over his ankles. Then she pulled, yanking him beneath the surface. His lungs would fill if she weren’t quick enough. She knew they didn’t have much time.
She swam fast, sweeping below a line of ships and pulling him up for breath. He gasped, coughing and spluttering. The moment his breathing steadied, the panic and thrashing followed. Understandable, even if annoying. She smacked his face with a flipper, trying to get him to calm down.
The human spluttered, his curls twitching. A noise like a growl sounded from him before it somehow bubbled into an incredulous laugh. “Did you just smack me?” he demanded, out of breath and somehow slightly appalled. Perhaps even dryly amused.
She tilted her head at him. Her dark, fathomless eyes trying to communicate that she did, in fact, just smack him to make him bloody relax. The man scoffed, shaking his head. “What, like you understand me?”
Another smack. “Ack! Okay, okay. Evidently you do. Seven Hells…” His muttering seemed to signal the end of his resistance. With how fast she swam, he ended up twisting slightly in her hold so he could secure himself against her.
They swam until they reached an outcropping of stacks that she knew fairly well. One looked like a normal sea arch, but a crater that was perhaps wide enough to fit an empty rowboat revealed an interior. She pulled the human through the gap, floating them both to the sand bank.
The human groaned as he was deposited onto the small, hidden shore. Various holes in the cave let the late afternoon sun illuminate the space that was clearly lived in.
“Gods, I escaped a battle only to be eaten by a fucking seal,” he hissed, holding his shoulder wound. He scrambled for a dagger, a rock, anything—
“I’m not going to eat you,” she said. The man startled, grabbing a discarded, empty crab claw as if it would prove a faithful weapon.
And there she was: shed of her seal skin and completely naked before him. He startled again, immediately averting his gaze as his cheeks burned bright red.
“M-my lady, I apologize. I had no intent to intrude upon your home—I was brought here by circumstances you are not like to believe, but I swear to you, they are true.”
“I brought you here,” she said, wringing out her long, coal-black hair over the tiny shore. Then she turned, the pink bottoms of her feet gathering sand with each step. “I recall hitting you with my flipper, in fact, for you to be more complacent with your rescue. You are welcome for that, by the way.”
“You…surely, you jest,” the man insisted, still looking anywhere but at her.
“You humans and your delicate sensibilities. I forget how scandalous a nude form is to you.”
She appeared in his sight again, this time wrapped in a white, Pentoshi frock. He seemed to allow himself to finally look upon her. “...I do not understand,” he finally murmured. “A sea creature saved me. You are a woman.”
“The sea creature and the woman are one and the same,” she told him, striding around to get a look at the arrow in the back of his shoulder. He twisted to continue facing her and she rolled her eyes. “If you do not sit still I cannot mend your wounds. Do you intend to keep that arrow as a present?”
“I—I do not, but I cannot blindly trust a completely unknown person—”
“Gods be merciful, I am the seal. Do you understand? This—” She lifted her seal skin from the rock she had rested it upon.“—is my skin. I am a selkie. I assume you’ve heard of my kind before, at the very least in stories. Now, please, sit still so I can remove the arrow that has impaled you.”
The man swallowed, but nodded curtly. “...As you wish.”
She almost mockingly repeated it back to him, but thought better of it. Instead, she got to work removing his leathers and chemise. She breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the arrow head coming through the other side of his shoulder. “Good. It looks brutal, I am sure, but it is easier to remove this way.”
The man hissed in pain as she snapped the offending arrow into two pieces for easier extraction. She carefully eased out the “front” of the arrow by the tip, and the back similarly. “There,” she murmured. “All things considered, you were quite lucky. No vital organs were hit.”
“I am sure I would be far worse off had it not been for you. Do I get the honor of knowing my savior’s name?” The man asked.
The selkie tore a strip of fabric from her dress. “Saffia,” she murmured after a moment.
The man watched her carefully wrap the cotton around his shoulder, fastening it as tightly as she could. “Saffia,” he repeated. “Is that Westerosi?”
“I do not know,” she confessed. “My people do not typically hail from any particular area of land.”
“Right,” he said, perhaps a tad sheepish. “Of course. I'm Jacaerys Velaryon. Son of Her Majesty, Queen Rhaenyra and rider of—”
The man’s—Jacaerys’—face twisted, as if the words had died in his throat and left the rot to taste. His lips thinned as he sucked in a shuddering breath. “...I was the rider of Vermax.”
Sympathy cut through Saffia like a knife. “I am sorry for the loss of your dragon. For what it is worth, it seemed like he went quickly. He did not suffer long.” The gods granted that mercy at least.
“I failed him,” Jacaerys whispered. “And he died for it.” Tears welled in his eyes. Saffia’s sympathy swelled, her own eyes filling at the rawness of his pain. It was almost tangible, as if it pulsed with an aura.
Saffia shook her head. Her voice was firm but not unkind as she said, “You did not fail. Humans evolve, Jacaerys. They always have. Any one of my kind could tell you that. We've witnessed much in our individual lifetimes, let alone as a collective. It was only a matter of time before a human perfected a way to kill a dragon.”
His shoulders hunched. In shame or anger or both, she could not say. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It is supposed to be evidence that you are not uniquely at fault for the loss of your dragon. Anyone else would have suffered the same fate. It is just the truth.”
Jacaerys scoffed. His eyes shuttered in disbelief, as if his faults were as apparent and true as the sand beneath them. As if denying his blame was a falsehood. He lifted his arm to gesture, but then winced and let it fall back to his side. “The truth is that a better rider would have been able to evade. To dodge or destroy the ship bearing the weapons, or—”
“It is easy to say what a better rider could or would or should have done when it is not the heat of battle, I have noticed,” she reminded him. “If any of your fellow riders suffered the same, would you speak to them how you speak of yourself now?”
Jacaerys’ eyes flickered, looking from Saffia and then away. “That is different.”
“How so?”
“I am a king to be. I am the heir to the Iron Throne. I cannot make mistakes like others can.”
Saffia pursed her lips. “So a human king is doomed to be perfect?”
Jacaerys’ jaw worked, as if the answer should be obvious and he was actively exercising patience. “Yes. Of course. With all the lives depending on him, he must be. Is that not the same for Selkie Kings?”
Saffia snorted, getting up from her seat in the sand. “There are no kings in the ocean, Jacaerys. Anyone who claims to be one is proven wrong more oft than not.”
“...Is there no Merling King, then?” Jacaerys sounded genuinely curious, perhaps even surprised.
The selkie shrugged, her large, rounded teal eyes indifferent. “If there is, I’ve never met him. Nor does he seem to care much to reveal himself as such. So…perhaps. Perhaps not.”
“Oh.” The word was soft, perhaps disappointed. “I see.”
Saffia's head tilted, sea-green eyes catching the light from the overhead craters. “You sound displeased by this.”
“I lost someone close to me some time ago. We assumed his body found its way into the sea, if…if there was anything left of him.” That grief pulsed from Jacaerys again as he sucked in a steadying breath. “I'd hoped that…if there was a Merling King, then mayhaps he was watching over him. Perhaps my brother was not alone in…in the end.”
“Selkies are born of sea spirits. So, if he was lost at sea, even if there is no Merling King, mayhaps those spirits that created my sisters and me did receive your brother. I am sure they would have guided his way kindly, if they did.”
“That brings me much peace to consider,” Jacaerys murmured quietly. There had to be something about caves, he thought, that made it so easy for him to speak like this. Candidly. No witnesses to take what he said and run them back to any spies sent from foreign parties. No masters of whispers or gossip.
Just him, and a woman of the sea who knew no kings or lords.
“I thank you,” he continued. “For rescuing me, and for your kind words. You have a talent for kindness and empathy despite your bluntness.”
Her nod was slight. The first hint of a smile touched her full lips, and Jacaerys swore his heart stuttered at the sight. At how the fragile warmth in her expression seemed to make her freckles more prominent. “You should get some rest,” she said. “I’ll gather us some supplies for the coming days. This way, there’s a place you can lie down.”
Jacaerys wanted to ask how long she anticipated him being there for, but the pain of his injury had taken more of a toll on his body than he’d initially realized. He took her offered hand with a grimace. His eyes had lightened with gratitude for the assistance, but his lips drew tight as a spike of pain lanced up his shoulder and down his arm for even the slight movement.
With Saffia’s assistance (despite how his royal pride prickled at needing it in the first place), Jacaerys was able to hobble through the sand. Stalagmites huddled in clusters the farther they ambled into the cave. The golden sand eventually petered out, leaving them trudging across a damp stone floor.
The stalactites merged in a way that resembled an arch, with what appeared to be a sewn ship’s sail fastened between the two stone pillars—if they could even be called such a thing Perhaps it should have dawned on Jacaerys when Saffia had suddenly dressed, but it was becoming clearer this was not a random location. Not with a variety of crates and barrels from various merchant houses gathered along the closest wall.
This was a home of sorts, makeshift as it were.
“Do you live here?” Jacaerys found himself asking.
Saffia’s nod was noncommittal as she guided open the “curtains” separating the cave from this smaller respite. More crates lined the right-hand side of the alcove. Candles with varying lengths of melted wax dripping down the wooden crates’ exteriors nestled amongst one another. To the left of those was a makeshift bed.
He could see the mounds of sand that Saffia must have brought in from the interior beach piled on the floor. Overtop of the sand was more of that same torn and sewn-again sail, weighed down by stones. More dresses, all Pentoshi in fashion, hung from the opposite cave wall.
“In a sense, yes,” she said. “It is a place to rest my head between travels from this place, Driftmark, as I believe humans call it, to Pentos. I keep with the Summer Seas as much as I can, and follow the warm weather from this land until it grows cold in the winter. Though the Narrow Sea is faster to travel between the two.”
As humans called it. Jacaerys idly wondered if perhaps switching between whatever language she spoke, if any, as a seal, to the common tongue of humans was difficult. Despite his eventual achievement of fluency in Valyrian, even he found himself trading words for another by mistake.
“A creature of warm weather, then, I take it,” Jacaerys noted as he eased himself carefully down onto the “bed”. It was more comfortable than he anticipated.
“For myself, yes. Though, some of my sisters prefer the cold and chill, and reside on the parts of the land that are cold all year.”
“Not you, though?” Jacaerys asked, leaning his head until he was completely flat. A crater in the roof of the cave showed a blood-red sky overhead. It would be evening in mere hours, if not less.
“Not me,” she agreed. “You should sleep. I shall return likely before you wake.”
Jacaerys’ eyes grew heavier as he let himself ease into stillness. “Be careful.” Slipped from his lips, unbidden, as his consciousness drifted away into the slow tide of rest.
