#[ i couldn't remember if i killed vermax off in this arc of the au ]

[worthyheir]

❛ maybe you’re already dead. ❜

MEMES

Those words still his blood - perhaps he is, or he seems to be. There has been little life in his eyes, he's noticed, any time he's caught a reflection of himself. He is trying, though probably not with much heart. His nights are often sleepless, and he finds his mind reliving the past year more than he finds himself resting. The little sleep he does get doesn't provide him much energy, and while he is healing at a pretty normal rate, he is angry about being stuck in the North, cut off from both his family and the war, and the little information he does get sent is vague or incomplete.

The only news he has gotten in weeks is that his mother has taken King's Landing: he assumed she would request him to return, but so far, she seems content to leave him in the North. A punishment, it seems, and one he does deserve. Jacaerys had disobeyed his Queen, and nearly died for it, and still failed in his mission.

Cregan has been as gracious a host as he was the first time Jace had arrived North, atop a dragon and only his word that he was not there as a threat. This time, he had arrived on a horse, injuries bound tightly, a long journey, especially considering his dragon still lived: Vermax was recovering as well, still on the cliffs of Dragonstone, if Baela's letters, few as his mother's, were to be believed. Isolated. Melancholy followed after him as closely as his own shadow, footprints in the snow that he found far more unbearable this time around.

"It feels that way." Or that it should be that way, more-so. While he is recovering, the physical injuries cut him far less than the knowledge that he has lost three siblings in less than a year, that his mother was losing the war, and might still be. Taking King's Landing is one thing - how are they going to hold it? There is an exhale, a long breath taken in, and while he does understand Cregan's point, he does not know how to change it. "Apologies, My Lord. I would say it is the war that has changed me, but I do not think that is wholly to blame."

He has made several good, strong decisions in this war - the alliances he has forged for his mother, the dragonseeds (though he has since two have defected to fight for the Usurper, given his mother reneging on the promises he had made to them when they claimed their dragons). Only for him to be judged on the one poor choice he made, and he might regret failing, but he did not regret trying. "Have you any suggestions for navigating grief? I have been doing nothing but trying for nigh a year now, and when I could focus on the war effort, it was easier. A distraction, most of the time. Now? There are no distractions here, unless you count the biting cold."