🌊 || The Gullet (spoilers for HOTD s3!)

SUMMARY:

Jacaerys survives the Battle of the Gullet. Barely.

INTRO:

Blood. Water. Cold... Hurts. Gods—oh, Gods, it hurts so bad. Everything hurts, everything at once, and nothing but chaos around to soothe the pain.

Or has it already ended? Is this still life or is it the Hells? Ships are burning—Velaryon seahorses and sigils Jacaerys doesn't recognize, if he truly sees them—, sinking, men shouting, corpses, corpses everywhere. Dead things in the water. Through whatever strength, he holds to that half-burned, crippled mast, the only thing keeping the wounded prince afloat, bleeding into the Blackwater.

"V-Vermax—...." Jacaerys mouths into the wood, barely enough strength to look up. Vermax fell. He fell, and... where is he?

'Drowned'—prince thinks, barely lucid—'drowned, and so will I... this is the end.' Drowned, like a dog, and nobody will even find the body to bring it home, to burn it, lay the bones to rest. Clouds drag overhead, and the sky weeps in gentle drizzle that rattles on the waves. Jacaerys cannot feel his hands, they've gone numb, but he keeps holding to the splintered mast that's keeping him afloat. Finally he finds the strength to lift his head, just a bit, and gaze upon the battlefield through wet curls that cling to his face, through saltwater burning his eyes and blood smearing his handsome face. 'Quiet...'

It's getting quieter, or so Jace seems to think. Somewhere a ship groans like a dying dragon, wood cracking and splintering, as the mast falls, and men scream, and their screams echo off the water's surface. But it's getting quieter. Shipwrecks burn and smoke around the prince's raft, somewhere below, in the depths, Vermax is sinking to the bottom.

"... Hruuugh..." Jace groans, but no one hears him, trying to pull himself up. His shoulders ache like they never did before. An arrow, stuck in the left... not lethal, not immediately, but—oh Gods—it hurts so bad. "M-mother..."

'Mother'—what's to say, she won't hear, she is on Dragonstone, mourning her son. Never before has prince Jacaerys wanted to embrace her. To cry into his mother's lap, until it stops hurting—'Mother...'

Corpses float near, with sightless glare and their lips struck dumb. 'Mother, get me home'—please—'Mother, I don't want to die!'