Dead End 2: Deathly Di-Di-Doo Ch.2 (Patreon)

['Small' Stories]

— Sean Caine —

“Do you know what stubbornly, stupidly running from your perceived problems and everything you know in life tends to get you?” I asked my audience.

“Oh!” Harley exclaimed, throwing her hand up like she was in class. “Oh, I know! A bad freaking time!”

“It was not a well-considered decision from Life One me,” I chuckled. “But it was a defining one.”

“¯\| ✖ ～ ✖ |/¯” Cass shrugged. ‘Meh, if you can’t run from your problems, you aren’t running fast enough. Me? Self-doubt and my own idiocy can never catch me!’

Damian nodded in agreement, “As they say: Get Gud.”

“Oh, yeah? What if your problem is a bullet?” Alice snarked.

Ivy chuckled, “To be fair, plenty of people can outrun bullets. Not that I advocate for running from one’s problems. That is how good Mother Nature got into this sorry state, after all: cruel and greedy men who would rather run from their problems and bury themselves in ‘profit’ than work to find any better way at all.”

“It’s the opposite in your case, Ivy. You just run towards your problems and sic a hundred carnivorous plants on ‘em!” Harley joked.

Penguin laughed, “I’d argue that’s almost the Gotham Condition. When your city is as mad as ours, the ‘running from problems’ equation tends to reverse itself.”

“In a way, though, that’s just another method of running from one’s problems,” Didi said. “Over-confrontation can be considered avoidance, too.”

“Bah! Confront them and fight for your very life! Run from them until the ends of the Earth and then jump off! Anything but giving in to them; anything but surrender!” Savage declared.

“I didn’t choose surrender in my first reincarnated life, but I did choose to run from some of my problems and straight into others,” I said. “I left royal privilege because I felt it was… fake, I suppose. A dream I was dreaming while everything else in that life was made to be so much more real, no choice to even dream. I thought I was undeserving of it; I thought I was… nothing special, certainly not more special than all of the masses of that world.

“I wasn’t in my right mind, of course. Mad from reincarnation. Now, I can recognize how little I actually recognized of reality and dreaming in that First Life. For one, ‘special’ is the entirely wrong lens to view the circumstances of one’s birth through. Lucky and unlucky? Sure. But everyone is special — unique and worth the world unto themselves in their individually lived experiences.”

“Some would argue that everyone being special makes no one special,” Jason put forth.

“Not when it comes to Life,” I shook my head. “Life and the circumstances within simply… are. Every story lived is special.”

“Indeed,” Didi agreed, smiling brilliantly at me. “Life, each soul being so specially significant in their own way, is the exception to that logic. Even the blackest soul and even the brightest, the smallest and the largest. We are all special at Conception, and all the same in Death.”

“Hard to argue with that. No one’s more qualified to speak on the subject than Lady Death,” Jason ceded the point, nodding thoughtfully.

“(・_・)/ Yes ~” Cass nodded stoically and, somehow, waved a whole word into existence alongside her expression, without a single sound leaving her lips. ‘Yes.’

Barbara just stared at her; she wasn’t alone.

“Cass…?” She asked, strained. “What… the… fuck was that…?”

“(。-｀ω´-) Yes ~!” Cass smirked and repeated her impressively impossible feat of communication. ‘Yes!’

“Right…” Riddler goggled, barely finding his voice. “Black Bat is just… like that, it seems.”

“(^.~)☆” Cass just winked. ‘Built all kinds of different, choom!’

“Oh… Oh, no,” Barbara paled. “Have you been hanging out with the Edgerunners?!”

Damian nodded, answering for Cass, “She makes for a good chaperone for my courting of Lady Ciri. Mostly because she isn’t much of a chaperone at all.”

“How are the two of you doing, Tomcat?” Catwoman asked, leaning over Penguin and Riddler to get a taste of the (milk)tea.

“When we both have free time in our schedules, we bond through murder-dates,” Damian said. His tone was flat; he saw nothing wrong with his words.

“No murder!” Barbara exclaimed.

Damian scoffed at her, “I make sure to follow Father’s rules. Ciri is always the one to land the final blow.”

Didi nodded in confirmation, “It’s brutally adorable. Even the souls I walk to their eternities from Damian and Ciri’s dates think so.”

“Robin-… Damian,” Jim sighed. “Please don’t say things like that around a Commissioner of Police.”

“Hmm,” Damian hummed, sounding unconcerned. “Yes, that was ill-advised. Quick, Mr. Barkeep, Liege of She-Who-Gives-Perfect-Headpats: a distraction.”

Laughing lightly, I obliged him, “In the madness of my First Life, I left behind everything I knew for no reason more than madness. I ran from the security I enjoyed as a prince of the realm and all the resources I could’ve asked for. I ran from family: a loving mother, an admittedly distant father, and thirteen royal siblings, including my own twin who I was too self-obsessed to see suffering from madness just as much as me.”

“Twinsies~?” Harley gasped excitedly.

“How auspicious!” Savage declared.

“Saera Targaryen,” I nodded. “Born minutes after me, and touched, I suspect, by my reincarnating nature.”

“Oh, dear,” Didi worried, her brows knitting together. “Yes, I can see how that would happen to a twin of yours, Sean. And with this life so early in your reincarnating journey, you weren’t even able to see it or help her with it, were you?”

“I was not,” I sighed. “I was too self-absorbed, dreaming that dream while she did just the same. I wish I had seen more of her story at the time, but I didn’t, too caught up in my own until I ran.”

As I spoke, images from that First Life appeared in the mirror behind me to illustrate my tale. My audience saw me — Prince Sean — in the heat of obsession. The glimpses started when he was young. We watched Prince Sean flail in madness, searching for a sign.

And as I — he — did, we saw the twin who followed as his shadow. Saera was an ethereal little girl, but more wild than serene in any way. She grew into a maiden of Fae beauty and Fae unpredictability. Her hair was silver, and her eyes were a deep violet, not just in color but in intensity, too.

When Prince Sean buried himself in texts from the royal library, Saera bore a thousand-yard stare in the corner of the room. She was the real dreamer between us.

Prince Sean reached for any magic he could grasp, ignorant that magic had always been so close at hand. My First Life’s twin lashed out due to dreams and visions she couldn’t hope to understand. She tore through belongings and privileges, abandoned duties, and took only after her twin’s obsession. Prince Sean hadn’t seen it then, too caught up in himself, but Saera had always been beside him, searching through lost magicks for a sign she needed just as dearly.

Both twins were terrors, wild and mad. Where she saw only him, an anchor in her dreams, he saw only himself, lost and blind to the anchor she would’ve offered him in turn.

“[Curious. Magical Cognition?]” Simmy asked.

“The girl was blessed,” Hecate nodded. “Or cursed. My heart goes out to her. She needed guidance, and by the looks of it, she didn’t get it, not even from you, Sean.”

“Not in any positive way,” I admitted frankly. “My obsession with finding meaning in that life was imprinted onto her. If it wasn’t, I can only imagine that she would’ve been a very different girl. Better off without me, perhaps.”

“I doubt she felt that way, Sean,” Didi said. “Look at her there. She isn’t looking anywhere but you. She’s peering past Death, and she’s enthralled.”

In the mirror, Prince Sean gazed into a pyre built around a cold dragon egg. Saera, beside that past me, gazed only at his mad and obsessed form. It was a desperate reaching from one twin and a madness already in hand from the other. Which of those was which wasn’t clear, couldn’t be without seeing through Saera’s dreaming eyes.

“d(⸝｡⸝◉⸝ω⸝◉⸝｡⸝)b” Cass, excitedly blushing, gave a double thumbs-up as she took in the relationship in the mirror. ‘Yandere Princess Twin… That’s just good culture! Please tell me you tapped that twin sane, Gothboy!’

“There was actually a precedent for incest in our dynasty,” I said casually. “Valyrians… liked to keep the blood pure, and went so far as to invest blood magicks in their bloodlines to prevent the usual issues of incest. My conquering ancestor Aegon took both his sisters as wives and queens. Jaehaerys and Alysanne were siblings, too. It was almost inevitable that Saera and I would be betrothed at some point.

“But to be fair, there was a more practical reason for the incest than just tradition. House Targaryen united the realm with dragons, and they ruled with dragons. Keeping a royal monopoly on the medieval and fantasy version of nukes was just prudent.”

In the mirror, the illusions transitioned to show the dragons of House Targaryen. They were far from invincible, far from Dragons with a capital-‘D’, but they were still beasts worthy of worship and fear and legend. They were a diverse species of magic, fire made flesh, each with a personality all their own and an inhuman sort of intelligence to them.

Balerion the Black Dread, largest of the dragons to ever grace Westeros with his royal presence, dove from on high, decimating an equally monstrous castle with his black flames.

Vhagar, an old, grumpy lady of a dragon, lounged lazily as dragonkeepers cleaned her scales; her massive bulk could’ve crushed any of the mortals tending her with just a twitch, but Vhagar couldn’t even be bothered to notice them.

Dreamfyre, a beautiful blue beast, ethereal and almost Fae, crooned a lonely song to herself in the depths of the Dragonpit, chained and dreaming, dreaming, dreaming.

Vermithor and Silverwing, a mated pair like their ruling royal riders, spiraled through the sky in a dragon’s mating dance, chasing each other’s tails until they formed a bronze and silver ouroboros.

Caraxes, sinuously lethal, dove into the surf of the ocean and constricted his long form around a whale; the dragon’s prey was dragged onto a beach, bathed in fire, and torn into.

Meleys, red as flames and horned as the devil, raced through the skies with her rider driving her into daring dives and spectacular spirals

Each of the dragons of House Targaryen was a lived universe unto itself; a unique tale, a ‘small’ story of Life, so special…

“Mm. Cute,” Ophy mumbled from her nap, still well aware of the world outside of the Silence I granted her.

“Cute? Nay, glorious!” Savage declared. “What great beasts! I would certainly try my hand at mounting one if I got the chance! Goodness, look at the personality in each of them! They are bestial celebrations of vigor and power!”

“How… ‘Dragon’ were these dragons?” Jason asked.

“Not very, by Ophy’s standards,” I answered. “Which must be why she called them cute. But for my First Life, they were certainly something fantastical. A dragon egg was placed in my cradle as a baby, and one for Saera, too. Both failed to hatch.

“Though, to be fair, of our fourteen siblings, not one cradle egg actually hatched. If our generation of House Targaryen wished to be dragonriders, we had to claim them fully grown.”

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around that,” Ivy said, shaking her head in shock. “Fourteen children. My goodness, Queen Alysanne. What a… fecund woman.”

“Four died early, but Saera and I did grow up with eight other siblings of various ages,” I said.

“That’s about…” Harley made a show of counting on her fingers before nodding. “Yeah, fourteen too many for me. Not sorry, Gothboy, you ain’t ruining this perfect bod with sprogs.”

I waved her off, “I’m not about to go on a breeding spree and build a whole medieval dynasty, Harley. I’ve always been relatively careful about siring children, considering my condition.”

“We’ve met some of your natural kids, Sean,” Barbara pointed out.

“And they are loved. Cherished. Enough,” I emphasized, shrugging. “I said ‘relatively’, didn’t I? That caution will continue until Didi carries my lastborn.”

I wasn’t looking my Death’s way when I declared that, but I heard the startled squeak that escaped her lips. When I turned, smiling gently and patiently at her, she was blushing so deeply that I could see it upon every omnipresent iteration of herself, no matter how distant all but one of them was.

“I-I’ve never…” She stammered slightly. “Never… really given it much thought for myself, even if Conception is half of my being…”

“We’ll talk about it,” I assured her. “And whatever we decide, you’ll be brilliant, Didi. You are already a mother, after all.”

I tilted my head towards Alice. She was shifting awkwardly where she stood beside us, not meeting either of our eyes. She was our daughter in everything but blood, but that last factor still weighed on her, it seemed. Didi’s hesitation melted away when she saw Alice’s internalized doubts.

She pulled Alice into a loving, motherly, Deathly hug, and Alice melted into her in turn.

Turning back to me without breaking her embrace with Alice, Didi smiled and nodded, “We’ll talk about it. For now, our Alice is all I need, Sean.”

Alice grumbled halfheartedly, “… I wouldn’t mind a baby sibling at some point.”

“┌༼ σ ‸ σ ༽┐” Cass stared, but she only had eyes for me. ‘… Be calm, mine ovulating ovaries… We still have time to shoot our breeeee~eeeeeeding shot.’

“He did say ‘lastborn’,” Jason teased her. “Just shoot for the penultimate, Cass.”

“(　｀_ゝ´)” Cass nodded to herself. ‘I never miss.’

“Great, she’s on a mission now,” Barbara groaned.

“You know,” Catwoman considered aloud, changing the subject back to my story. “I’m honestly struggling to see why you threw all of this away in that life, Mr. Barkeep.”

I smiled sadly, “I struggle to see my reasons, too. Now, at least. Then, it made perfect sense to me. I had eyes only for my own story, so much so that I abandoned all of the stories closest to mine. Considering how my First Life played out after that decision, I don’t regret it. But it was, quite plainly and with no other explanation, mad to do so.”

“Madly, I ran from my problems, perceived and selfish. I ran from a mother who would sit peacefully and listen to me ramble obsessively about lost magicks, always supportive, even as she worried for me.

“I ran from a brother who actually worried for me, despite all his duties as heir, and once laughed so hard at a dismissive quip I gave our father that he pulled a muscle.

“I ran from a brother who accidentally stabbed during sword training just once, and never stopped apologizing for it until the end of his days.

“I ran from a wild sister who took me and my twin riding on her dragon at every chance, and always triple-checked that we were securely chained to the saddle so she could do the aerial stunts she so loved.

“I ran from a sister who would go out of her way to fetch me at the heights of my magical obsession and take me to quiet places so I could just be beside her.

“I ran from a brother who always had his nose buried in some tome or another, but who, when my obsessive research hit a stall, would leave just the tome I was looking for by my door.

“I ran from a sister who loved nothing more than birdwatching, for the birds flew confident and purposeful and free as she could never be. 

“And I ran from my twin, the forgotten shadow to my maddened youth in that life, who was always there beside me, always the second hand to my obsession, even if I couldn’t see her.

“I ran because I got it into my mind that the ‘large’ stories around me, born so high and important, were just the dream and that in the ‘small’ stories of the world, downtrodden and ignored, I would find something real.”

“But truthfully, there is no such qualifier to the stories of Life,” Didi said with understanding and sympathy in her voice. “Every lived story is real. They were real all around you. They were real, and you couldn’t see them.”

I nodded, “I was blind.”

“You could’ve been doing dragonriding-y and prince-y and magick-y things, though!” Harley exclaimed.

“I was blind and lost.”

“(´·ω·`)?” Cass furrowed her brow in confusion. ‘Not even twin-ussy knocked some sense into you?’

“I was blind and lost and kinda dense,” I chuckled. “Not even dragon-dreaming twin-ussy knocked any sense into my selfish, stubborn head. And so, I ran.”

“Did you find what you thought you needed?” Barbara asked.

“I did, but not because I ran. I found something real because I was actually looking for it instead of having my mind dead-set on the dream,” I answered.

The mirror shifted to show my flight from royal life. Prince Sean wandered the worst streets of the Westerosi capital, seeing that life with open eyes for the first time.

“Immediately,” I recounted. “I thought I found something real in the suffering of the city’s lowest. And yes, suffering is real. But it alone doesn’t have meaning. The real meaning I found there, just the barest glimpse of it then, was in the story behind the suffering I saw.”

In the mirror, Prince Sean sat beside a beggar and shared a loaf of black bread. The beggar was wary at first, but desperately devoured the food once Prince Sean took a bite. He was skin and bone and rag, a terrible contrast to the healthy figure of the runaway prince beside him.

Prince Sean sat with the beggar for a day, just waiting and selfishly trying to find meaning in his suffering. Eventually, the beggar began to speak to him; he remained silent, but for once, he was actually listening to the stories around him.

“His name was Paps,” I told my audience. “He had a daughter whom he sent to stay in a motherhouse, an orphanage, after Paps lost his job due to illness. Paps was dying; even he knew that.

“Every coin he managed to beg was given to his daughter. He maintained himself day by day with nothing more than scraps, unwilling to waste a penny on himself when he was already doomed and his daughter wasn’t. His dying wish was to get her something shiny to remember him by.”

We watched Prince Sean leave Paps’ side to fulfill that dying wish. He bought a small silver brooch, nothing so flashy as to attract attention. When he returned, Paps was bleeding out on the dirty ground of the alley Prince Sean had left him in. Another beggar scrambled off with the rest of the black bread he had shared with Paps.

Two-Face reacted to the scene with a croak that caught in his throat, “Ah, fu-… fuck…”

“A story of Life, ended so abruptly,” Didi nodded sadly, mourning every death, no matter how distant.

“Not just yet,” I smiled.

In the mirror, Prince Sean went to Paps in shock, blood still pouring from the beggar’s body. Paps didn’t rage at his killer; they shared similar stories, after all, and Paps had already known he wouldn’t live to see the moon turn once more. He just asked, after Prince Sean showed him the brooch, that it would end up in his daughter’s hands. Prince Sean promised just that and carried out the final notes of Paps’ song.

“At his daughter’s motherhouse, I saw many more lives so 'small',” I said. “Orphans tend to have sad ones, but no less rich than anyone else, no matter their circumstances. Paps’ daughter was happy there, under the care of a kind woman of faith. She didn’t remember her father, but his coin reached her, and thanks to me, so did his last gift.”

“Good,” Damian nodded seriously. “His commitment was not in vain.”

“Did you tell her about her father?” Jim asked.

I shook my head, “I wasn’t that far along my eye-opening journey of that life. I didn’t think of it, didn’t think to tell the story I’d just heard. I do regret that, even now.”

“You… really were so different then from the Sean we know,” Barbara said.

“I was blind and lost and kinda dense,” I nodded, repeating myself. “But I was beginning to open my eyes, beginning to find my direction, and beginning to work on recognizing the world past myself.”

“How did your family react to you running away?” Riddler asked.

“I know my father saw it as a youthful flight of fancy,” I answered. “And I know my mother worried about me surviving that supposed fancy. They sent men to track me down and bring me back whole. That manhunt was what sent me farther afield; it and the newly burning need I felt after Paps, the so very real call to witness more of the world.

“I… finally felt like I was living again, then, and I wasn’t quick to give it up for what I saw as a dream.”

“But it wasn’t a dream. None of it was, even if you thought so,” Jason noted. “If you returned then, would you have seen that?”

“I might’ve,” I smiled in approval of his insight. “And it might’ve solved quite a few problems that arose down the line in that life. But at the same time, it would’ve robbed me of so many other songs in that world, just as rich as my family’s.”

In the mirror, Prince Sean ventured forth on his quest to see more and more that he could consider ‘real’. He found it, of course, for everything was real and his eyes were open to that fact now. He didn’t, however, look back yet.

On the road, he encountered travelers. He stopped for each of them, sharing food or drink or coin to hear their ‘small’ stories. The truth that there was no such thing began to set in as he heard more and more of Life.

“A merchant named Keltin: he boasted that he’d seen every corner of Westeros, from the freeing and heated sands of Dorne to the impossibly magnificent, magical icy construction of the Wall,” I narrated. “He told me of all he’d experienced and how he’d found some kindness or another everywhere he’d been.”

The mirror showed Prince Sean’s conversation with Keltin, one that continued deep into the night. He was enthralled with the worldly tales Keltin told, and how they added so richly to Keltin’s own Life, one that could never be called ‘small’ with all everywhere he’d been.

“Gods, sharing a hearth in the night with simple merchants on the road!” Savage exclaimed, laughing. “Oh, how that takes me back!”

“I was not expecting to find kindness like that in this world. Consider me pleasantly surprised,” Jason praised.

“Yeah, he’s so… so open about it,” Alice almost whispered. “Just a traveler looking for good company to brave the roads with.”

“The tales he tells, as well, those marvels of architecture? Monumental castles to great lords, ancient and grand beyond recognition… I wish I could’ve seen the magic at play in their construction,” Hecate sighed with longing.

I continued recounting my first travels in that First Life, “For a few days, I was joined by one Dyana Heartwood, the beautiful daughter of a minor landed knight, betrothed to wed a Reach Lord’s heir.

“She was dutiful, but it was clear for even my First Life’s density to see she fancied me at first sight. I could see her pining, see the note I’d added to her song, and I could also see that she was much too righteous to ever act on it. She would not betray her future, her own Life’s story, not even for a romantic affair with a runaway prince.”

The mirror showed Prince Sean riding beside a gorgeous and noble-looking young woman, Dyana. She watched him with longing as they traveled, and he saw that the lives he was coming to recognize didn’t exist in a vacuum. They added lines to his story; he added lines to theirs.

“That’s good loyalty and duty right there,” Two-Face grunted in approval.

“Good for her,” Penguin nodded. “I can’t imagine most feudal nobles would be that faithful when they aren’t even truly married yet.”

“(°ロ°) !” Cass gasped. ‘Shawtie dropped the bag of the century! She could’ve been a prince’s baby momma! She would’ve been set for life!’

“Yeah, and she also would’ve had to compete with his twin,” Barbara deadpanned. “Ya know, the one that was just as mad as him?”

“(─‿‿─)” Cass smirked. ‘That just sounds like a bonus to me.’

“Until that mad twin burns you with dragonfire for having her brother’s bastard,” Barbara shot back.

“¯\( ◉ 3 ◉ )/¯” Cass shrugged. ‘Just don’t burn.’

Chuckling at their antics, I recounted another of that Life’s encounters, “I was waylaid by a band of bandits that were, truthfully, anything but. The local lord declared them outlaws for daring to defend their town from his son’s noble whims. He subjected the daughters and wives of the town to revelry, him and his men, and the ‘bandits’ ran the heir out of town, knowing well what would come to them if they did.

“When I came upon them, they were surviving on the roads in the only way left to them: highway robbery. It was not good; it was not righteous; they didn’t have any other choice.”

The mirror showed the band of ‘bandits’. Prince Sean was ambushed by them; they robbed him blind, and he let them. He stuck around to hear their stories still, much to their confusion. He met Foul Paul, the Man Named Lime, Yoseph the Drunken Leader, and more. He learned how a Life’s story could be twisted around someone, deservedly or not, and he promised them their tales wouldn’t go unheard.

“That ain’t right,” Two-Face shook his head and scowled.

“Injustice, even in a medieval world,” Jim sighed. “No, especially there. Those men were entirely at the whims of their lord. I don’t think I would last a year in a society like that.”

“I would simply rally the ‘bandits’ and make highborn life hell for that lord,” Damian flatly stated.

“Robin’s Robinhood arc?” Harley joked.

Damian nodded, “Sometimes, justice must come from unusual places in society. If the ‘lawful rule’ fails those it is meant to protect, it is a man’s duty to rise up and ensure it does not fail a second time.”

My voice grew quiet and sincere as I recounted the last tale of my initial travels, “Further along the road, left with nothing after the ‘bandits’, I found a kindly inn matron named Avara and her quaintly lively establishment. She saw me and welcomed me without a care that I couldn’t pay my way.

“For a time, I sheltered with her, helping around the inn where I could. I became somewhat locally famous, for Avara was loved and her regulars were curious about the latest stray she’d picked up. She was good to me. She was good to all of us…”

The mirror showed Prince Sean serving tables in Avara’s Inn. It showed him listening to the sung stories of bards, each so lively in itself — ‘Sinning Septon Moon’, ‘Year of the Three Brides’, ‘Bleeding Upon the Iron Throne’, and more. It showed him drinking with Avara and the other strays she’d taken into her care after closing time. It showed him simply living out a ‘small’ story: a kind matron, a found family, and the nightly events of one inn out of thousands.

“I like this one,” Didi said, smiling softly. “You seem to have learned something important by this point in that life, Sean.”

I nodded in agreement, “I’d firmly opened my eyes to the lives all around me. It took a year on the road, experiencing the world as I never would’ve otherwise. The individual culminations of so many unique experiences: Life, in all the forms it came in then.”

“Except…” I sighed. “Even that eye-opening lesson was incomplete. I’d turned my attention to the ‘small’ stories, and I saw them at that point, but I was still ignoring a significant slice of my own Life's story.

“That story caught up to me at Avara’s Inn as royal trackers, seeking to take me back to King’s Landing and the Red Keep. My family was deathly worried about me. And still ignorant, still selfish, I scoffed at their worries, sure that they were living a ‘dream’. Ultimately, I was still blind and only seeing what I wanted to see.”

“That was never going to end well,” Didi noted with a sigh.

Continuing, I confirmed her assumption, “The royal trackers had stories like any other I’d encountered, but since they were acting on behalf of the dream, I dismissed them. For them, however, failure to retrieve the runaway prince was not an option. They moved to take me by force.

“I can’t blame them for the idea now, but then, I certainly could, especially how they went about it.”

The mirror shifted, showing Prince Sean as he scoffed at a knight armored in white plate and a white cloak — Ser Robin Shaw of the Kingsguard. He was backed by a dozen men-at-arms. Seeing that Prince Sean would not comply, and that he cited Avara’s Inn as the only place he would stay for the foreseeable future, the Kingsguard set about burning the inn so Prince Sean would not be able to do so.

In the mirror, Avara’s Inn burned. Avara, after stepping forward between Prince Sean and the Kingsguard to mediate, was cut down by an overly hasty man-at-arms. Ser Robin Shaw looked like he immediately realized the error there as Prince Sean stared at Avara’s bleeding corpse in shock, the flames of the inn casting eerie shadows across his face and form.

“Oh…” Barbara exhaled. “Oh, they fucked up, didn’t they?”

“Cut them down in turn! Make the wretches pay for playing at chivalry!” Savage roared in outrage. “I would turn those cruel fools inside out with my bare hands, to hell with ‘just following orders’!”

In the mirror, there was only stillness in the light of flickering flames. The men-at-arms quickly grew wary and fearful as Prince Sean did nothing but watch the woman who’d taken him in so unconditionally bleed out.

Suddenly, that stillness was broken, and Prince Sean exploded into a maddened whirlwind of action. We watched him slam into the offending armsman before anyone could react. A dragon roared, ethereal and echoing and impossible, and the armsman was savaged like Prince Sean actually was his family’s sigil.

Already bloodied, Prince Sean stood with the armsman’s sword in hand and charged the rest. Confused and panicking, the men-at-arms barely fought back. They didn’t know if they could, even as they began to die. Prince Sean slaughtered them — brutally — for their crimes against the ‘small’ story he’d come to enjoy being a part of.

Then and there, as loyal men of the realm — each with a life so rich on its own — fell following a costly misunderstanding, an unfortunate twist of fate, Prince Sean came to know how easily the stories he’d begun to see in everyone and everything could be snuffed out.

“In the end,” I said. “Ser Robin Shaw, one of my father’s Kingsguard, was the only one left. He refused to raise his sword against me directly. He would burn the foundation of a ‘small’ story like Avara’s, but mine was much too ‘large’ to cut short.”

“As you might expect by now, I didn’t look kindly upon him for that idea,” I deadpanned. “But seeing him kneeling in front of me and accepting whatever sentence I would give him roused me from my grief.”

The mirror showed Prince Sean stop and look around at the chaos he’d wrought, still illuminated by the burning inn. He saw a dozen stories cut short. He stopped himself, barely, from cutting short another one.

“For the Kingsguard’s crimes, I shredded his white cloak — the vaunted honor that defined his own story. To many knights in Westeros, that was a fate worse than death,” I shook my head. “I didn’t think it was enough.”

“Good,” Ivy scowled. “It isn’t. A man’s honor is a paltry punishment compared to the lost life and livelihood — the… story, as you say, Sean — of an innocent matron.”

I smiled and nodded, “Exactly. After taking his vaunted cloak, I opened his eyes to just that. I sat down beside him and made him watch the fire he started. I told him Avara’s story, ensuring one more soul would remember it.

“I told him how kind and lively and easy to laugh she was; I told him about the ‘will-they, won’t-they’ dalliance she had with a blacksmith in the nearby town; I told him how she’d taken me in for nothing and given me everything she could; I told him about the lives around her that had been made so much lesser by his actions.

“I told him her ‘small’ story and made damn sure it stuck in his mind as it’d stuck in mine.”

“Perfect, Sean,” Didi smiled at me, proud as only Death could be. “Perfect. Death follows Life, always, but Life should follow Death in turn. You gave Avara’s death meaning in a life that would’ve never noticed it otherwise. Even in your First Life, even retroactively, you go above and beyond as my Hand in Death.”

“Do you know if it did stick?” Jason asked.

“Better than I could’ve expected,” I confirmed, nodding. “Ser Robin Shaw returned to my father and told not just my story, but Avara’s, too. When Jaehaerys tried to reinstate his white cloak, Ser Shaw-… Robin refused.

“He laid down his Kingsguard honors, the culmination of his knightly Life's story, in favor of joining mine. Publicly — before the whole royal court as I would later learn — he swore himself to me.

“It caused something of a scandal. Robin was the first to willingly leave the Kingsguard, even if he did so to swear himself to a prince of the realm. When he found me again, I saw that his commitment was genuine and accepted him into my service. Our stories were intertwined until the end of that life.”

Savage laughed in exuberant approval, “Good man! He did not start as one, but you helped make Ser Robin into a true knight, Brother! Honor given pales before honor forged and learned, and to make a misguided man see that is the auspice of a great leader of men!”

“Respectable,” Jim smiled slightly. “The man made a mistake and dedicated the rest of his life to doing things differently.”

“( ˘ ɜ˘) ♬♪♫” Cass mimed a whistle. ‘I’ll bet there were songs written about Ser Robin the Redeemed~!’

“There are few better ways to spin stories in a medieval era,” I nodded. “I encouraged the bards and their songs whenever we happened to hear them, much to Robin’s embarrassment. I made sure each version of ‘Ser Robin the Redeemed’ I heard included Avara’s story, too.

“It eventually got to the point that if Robin heard one of his songs without Avara’s name in it, he would stop the bard in question and join them to make sure they sang it right.”

Didi laughed, light and free and delighted, “You spent that First Life opening your own eyes to Life’s stories, Sean, but you opened the eyes of others, too! What a fruitful story, what a fruitful Life; I believe I can still see its foundation in you today!”

“I am somewhat in the habit of opening eyes to stories they otherwise wouldn’t see,” I agreed, smirking.

“For good and for ill,” Barbara deadpanned.

“It’s nice to learn where the ‘for good’ half of that started,” Jason said. “The Stories of Life, all so… lively, so real, so… Complex… I doubt I’ll be able to walk past anyone on the street without thinking about that.”

I nodded my approval, “As thoughtful as you are, Jason, I wouldn’t expect you to pick up anything less.”

Savage laughed, “The body of a warrior; the mind of a thinker! I would’ve made you one of my greatest generals during my conquering days!”

“He’s smart, he’s strong, he’s skilled, he’s just good; history would weep and cheer and certainly remember his name if he’d been born in a different era,” Alice preened, not even seeming to notice how proud she was on her crush’s behalf.

Jason actually blushed at Alice’s praise; that crush was very much mutual, but even after a year, they were still dancing around each other.

Barbara, seeing the blush, hid a teasing smile behind her hand, “… Just precious.”

“… Ciri and I are more precious,” Damian said, the deadpan delivery hiding his pout well. “And we’ve actually made progress, unlike that eternal dance.”

“<(￣︶￣)>” Cass ‘smugged’ back at his pout with her hands on her hips. ‘I’ve made more progress.’

Barbara rolled her eyes, “It’s not a competition… And if it was, I was still first, Cass.”

“w(°ｏ°)w” ‘Betrayal!’

“Ohohohoho~!” Harley laughed loudly, dramatically, and tauntingly. “First? You? Don’t make me laugh!”

“You laughed right before you said that, Harley,” Ivy pointed out.

“And most accurately, Didi was fir-…”

Amused, I began to add to the fire before Didi stopped me, just as amused.

“Are you sure you want to encourage them in polite company, Dear?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Jim desperately shaking his head. I took pity on the father in the room.

“So!” I picked my Life One story back up where we’d left it before getting derailed. “After Avara’s Incident, I was left more than a little listless. Still, even in that grief, I felt I had a duty to her, to myself, and to all the other stories I’d encountered to continue expanding my own.

“I traveled onward to Oldtown, the oldest and largest city on the continent. Coming to know more and more of Life’s stories along the way helped me move past Avara’s, even if I never forgot. In Oldtown, the stories I could hear and see and live opened up even further.

“I met beggars like Paps, and merchants like Keltin, and ladies like Dyana, and bands of brothers like the ‘bandits’, and kind souls like Avara; I met stories similar and novel, each uniquely colored by Life.

“Sailors in Oldtown’s docks who spent all their coin on drink and company, never certain they’d come back from the next voyage. The whores of the city, more than a few who actually loved what they did and some who made pleasure business while keeping their love for others, the rare souls who could love a whore. The scribes of the Citadel, Westeros’ center of learning, who worked thanklessly for any opportunity to learn, to better themselves. The brothers and sisters of the faith, one of my own sisters now among them; though I was no longer so blind, I was too craven to seek her out.”

I sighed, “Soon enough, though, my story caught up to me again in Oldtown. In a better fashion, thankfully. One day, the city descended into chaos. A brilliant blue dragon circled above as if searching for something, someone. My twin rode atop it.

"Though our father had forbidden it for most of his daughters, the madness and obsession Saera shared with me, and her dreaming that took it even further, had finally had enough of my absence from our twinned story.

“She mounted Dreamfyre and ran just as I had. But where I ran from the dream, she ran toward it, dreaming of me. And with my eyes opened to more than just myself, I was finally able to see what I’d been ignoring all that Life.”

“(╯ ✧Д✧)╯ YES!!” Cass stood from her seat, ‘exclaiming’ vindication. ‘YEESSS!! Finally! Magi-mania-maxxing dra-goon-pilled yandere twin-cest! The dream is real!’

“Cass,” Barbara groaned. “None of those words are in the bible. I don’t think they’re in most dictionaries.”

“<(￣︶￣)>” ‘Then it’s a good thing I can’t fcukgin read.’