Laughed at. Used. Abused. Mocked. That's all he had been, made a fool of since the day he had lost his mother. Viserys didn't start out bad. Didn't even want to be bad. He was warm, he had loved and cared for Daenerys, hadn't he? All her life, he had told her of the things she needed to know. Told her of their brother, and what he had been like. How Viserys had admired them. He told her of their father, who Viserys had loved and Rhaella had protected her son the best she could from, giving him the false impression he would admire of Aerys. Still just a boy when having to take care of the infant. He did as his mother had wished, he protected her, he took care of her. It wasn't till many years later he had started to crack under the pressure, some would say he was showing the first signs of going mad. They had decided already which side his coin had landed, without an ounce of understanding, he was doing what he had to do. He was doing what his mother had asked him, protecting his sister. Wasn't he?
She was still but a girl, but of age, when he made those decisions. When he gave her away to the Dothraki. He would, at that time, let a thousand men fuck her, just to get them both back to that throne. How pointless it all had seemed now though as memories started to fill him. All his life, he was the protector and in return, he was used. The feast he had made for the Golden Company, selling off the last of his precious possessions, his mother’s crown, had taken everything from him. It was the last straw to break in a handful he had been given. Daenerys, who had never had to deal with anything near the same treatment as he had to since the age of five years old. Who he had seen fed and taken care of, protected from those who wished to take her from him. Protected her from Stannis, from those who wanted to use her the way they had used him. The way the Golden Company had mocked him at the feast, requesting her in exchange. No. He would never. She was his, his mother told him to protect her. He had to.
Then why did he give her to those savages so willingly? Misguidance. They promised something, and delivered him nothing on it. An error he had recognized too late. The sister he had loved and protected watching as Drogo had poured molten gold on his head. Was that what she thought was right, for how he had treated her in the last few years? Was her abuse that bad? Did he kill her too? He had to wonder as he unwillingly collapsed to the ground, gold dripping over his face as the lights started going out around him. One of the last things he could see was those cold eyes, his sisters, staring down at him as he was dying. She had felt nothing, then. The world was dark but for some time he could hear as his death was treated with amusement and his body was tossed away in disregard. He didn't know how long he had stayed there until sound and life started coming back to him. It was still dark, but not because he could not see. The shell of gold on his head had blocked out his vision. Memories came rushing back to him still.
The night of his murder Daenerys had lashed out, slashing him open with a belt she had wielded, illegally spilling his blood on the Dothraki city. The cut had still stung, as much as the burned skin had. Lifting his hands up to his face he clawed at the molten gold that solidified onto his head. An ear had been deafened by the same gold. His nostrils flare in frustration before he turns grabbing at the ground for anything solid enough to break away some of the gold. Daenerys words coming to his mind ' He was no dragon, fire cannot kill a dragon'. Those cold eyes of hers coming back to mind. But as if all the molten hot gold had sizzled the anger right out of him he had found a rock, his face softening as he vented all his angers internally. Realizing, that death was the best thing that had to happen to him. Or at the very least, near death. Bashing the rock to the side of his head he attempts to break away the gold on his face. He debated tracking her and Drogo down. But they didn't care about him, he had nothing in them.
Viserys closes his eyes, inhaling, impatience would get him no where. Despite how impatient he had once been. He had not been almost killed before. It was like a switch had gone off in his head, and the old him had returned with vigor. Again he brought the rock to the gold on his face, harder than the last attempt to break the casing. Daenerys had showed her cards. The girl he had spent a life protecting, albeit not very well in the last few years, if anyone were to say he had mistreated her at all, it was only to get ahead. Which as he sat, smashing a rock against his head like an idiot. He realized how foolish it all had been. The throne, protecting her, using her the same way he had been used, selling her to the Dothraki. What did it get him? Made more of a fool than he had ever been made before. Maybe an attempted murder was what Viserys had needed to grow up, to come back to the boy he had been only a few years before, the one not whispered about, about a madness that was showing. Viserys knew who he was though.
Madness was not what he would describe his actions in the last couple of years. Viserys wouldn't have the words for it though, but he certainly thought that even if he had been going mad. If he had lost himself that much, then now was the opportunity to reinvent himself. If Daenerys no longer needed him. If she had hated him, then Viserys would let her go. Did he like it? No. He had still loved his sister, despite his annoyance with her, despite her hurting him and then seemingly not caring about him dying in front of her. She could be the Dothraki whore if she wanted. But he was going to get his throne back. Again, the rock smashed to the side of his head a crack appearing, spilling light onto his sore eyes. He would show everyone that he was not a beggar king, nor would he be called stupid or a brat any longer. At twenty two years old, he had faced the end and came out of it, he was a dragon. He is a dragon. Viserys hit the weak point of the shell once more, breaking free a piece over his left eye. That was all he had needed, for now.
Standing on his feet he laughs a bit a under his breath " I will be Viserys Targaryen, brother of Rhaegar Targaryen, son of Aerys Targaryen and Rhaella Targaryen. No more childish games." He had not always been so stupid. He had not always known nothing. But now he was going to reclaim the piece he had lost along the path of exile he had been forced to walk all this time. Viserys stood then, no longer the boy that had been murdered in the Dothraki tent. He looks around, seeing nothing around him. Clearly guessing that they had long been gone now, taking his sister with them. He walked for days then, he couldn't say how many and how he had managed to survive the trek overall. But eventually someone found him, and taking pity brought him to a small village, they took care of him, fed him, gave him sight back. Several years he had stayed there, recovering from his wounds both to his mind and to his body. Every so often he would hear stories about Kings Landing, and others around Westeros.
In his time spent in the village he had become more and more like he would have been. The people weren't aware of who he had been, his eyes had been reddened from the heat of the gold as it encased his head. He had kept his hair short these days, after getting it entirely shaved off in order to remove the gold from his head. It had been a long process for him. His hair had grown back, thankfully, but he had not wanted to be Viserys Targaryen to those people, thinking they would no longer see him the same. He had been suggested a special kind of potion that had changed his eyes and the color of his hair for certain periods of time. With it he had kept his hair cut short and the color of sand. His eyes had become a green color instead of the pale lilac they were becoming once again as he stayed in the village. As he took on a life within the village, many thinking he was an amnesiac and, in some instances he had been. Only remembering a few things every so often and then almost as quickly forgetting them again.
He was, as an alias, Valka Hatelear, one of them. As he lived a normal life among those people, he kept remembering the jealous he had felt toward his sister when she was loved by the Dothraki. Remembered no one having every treated Viserys Targaryen the same way, no one had loved him. Sometimes he would remember these things and the anger from back then would come crawling back to the surface. But in this village, with the people he had made friends with, they seemed, at the very least concerned. Catching those little spells of his and ...asking if he was okay. How he was doing. As if the molten gold had in some way given him this new identity to show him that he was stupid, and angry, and a brat,...and yes, knew nothing. While his ambition had stayed the same, the years he spent living among the commoners, this time as one of them, instead of just the King that was meant to be. He could relate to the poor, having spent most of his life scrounging, saving every penny, protecting the person he had loved most in the world.
Valka Hatelear was not Viserys Targaryen, no, he was a man who has survived death, and his own stupidity to be broken entirely and revive come back to learn he could be something more. But still, he never forgot that he was still a dragon, and it was only dormant for now. A true dragon, he had figured out, wouldn't been so reckless, wouldn't have been playing the game as wrong as he had been playing it. After two years he however, knew he needed to get moving on. He still had a kingdom waiting for his return, in his mind. Even if he wasn't going to be as stupid with his decisions, did not mean he had lost his ambitions. His intentions had remained the same. He would reclaim his families honor, and take what had, in his mind, always been his. If he had to suffer so much to get there, then he would have done everything all over again. His eyes were opened now. Daenerys had never loved him, he was never loved until he had to depend on others to help him survive. He was ready to leave and build his army. For then ext few years that is what he worked on.
Secretly creeping ever closer to his goal, behind the veil, in the shadows. After getting far enough from the village he had been calling him, he kept his alias but never forgot that he would always be a Targaryen, and he could reclaim his true name once he reclaimed what was always his. It was not, now. Viserys had gotten some training in close combat over the years, something he had never considered until he had acted so foolishly stupid and paid the price for his immaturity back then. A real man, a real dragon, knew how to defend himself. He would fight Drogo or anyone else who stood in his way. It was time he stepped out of the corner those in his life since the rebellion had place him in, and tear down the walls that he made in his less impressive moments. He was almost twenty nine now. His sister was with her dragons, he had discovered. Guessing they had to have hatched. He had never heard anything about Drogo though, even as he knew she was leading the Dothraki. He had been in the north for a while, easily slipping in.
It wasn't as big of a problem when you were technically dead and no one knew better to look for you. While in the north he had kept his ear to the ground and appeared nothing more than a passerby. He had stayed their, quietly observing the Starks and other nobles in the north. Even his sister he had spotted from the shadows, but otherwise carried on with his own business. Viserys kept in contacts with the scattered apparently ordinary members of the army he had managed to gather. Though he knew it was far too small to act rashly and so ordered them to keep up their disguise and hide among the locals of the area. But still he remained as close as possible to the action, gathering details from the common people as word trickled down from Stark to staff to the ordinary.
