Archive of Our Own

Greyjoy daemons usually settle young because the Ironborn know who they are.

When your daemon settles you become a man, settling late is a sign of uncertainty.

They are always something sea-faring; birds or serpents or aquatic monsters or furred beasts that swim more often than they walk and have teeth built for tearing. Sometimes they settle as dogs or cats or rats but they are worlds away from greenlander's daemons, all prim and proper with soft fur and clipped claws. If your daemon can't swim or fly to escape the waves you're already lost, the Iron Islands are not a place for weakness. There have been many men who've met quick deaths because their daemon wasn't up to scratch. There are many more who have been lost because their daemon fell overboard.

Halimeda is a dog; long limbed and shaggy, just this side of feral. Her fur is stiff with sea salt and brine and blood and braided with seaweed where it's grown long enough. (There is a scar on her left paw from the frantic scrabbling of an otter's claws but Victarion doesn't like to think about that.)

Her long claws clatter against the deck of the Iron Victory towards him. The driftwood daemon crown would sit prettily on her head, Victarion thinks.

____________

Victarion is eight summers old watching his brother clamber up the rigging of his father's ship. Halimeda perches on his shoulder as a tern. "You'll fall." He calls up to his brother.

Euron smirks, "No, I won't." He calls back, shimmies across to grab another rope. Kailani sits beside Victarion, a mottled cat watching her human get further and further away. Euron is forever testing their bond; it makes Victarion shudder.

Balon and their father are below deck, plotting their course back to Pyke.

If Euron falls there'll be no one to catch him.

"You will," Victarion insists.

Euron chuckles, high above them, swaying in the breeze. "So pessimistic, little brother."

In the end Victarion is right, his brother falls.

He reaches out for a rope and a particularly vicious wave slams into the ship, jerking it violently and jolting Euron off the rigging - throwing him overboard.

He doesn't cry out (though Victarion is hardly surprised) but his daemon does. With a yowl of terror Kailani leaps in to the air flickering through shapes faster than Victarion can take them in and leaping after Euron.

There are sailors yelling somewhere behind him and Victarion sprints across deck, his brother is a strong swimmer but the sea around them is far from calm.

 

There are thick tendrils holding Euron clear of the water. "Where's Kai?" Hali is whispering, "Where is she?"

 

Euron is safe in the clutches of a hundred tentacles, blinking and laughing. There hasn't been a Greyjoy with a kraken daemon since the Grey King in the Age of Heroes. Victarion knows by the way Hali gasps that his brother's daemon is settled.

____________

"Walk," their father says when Euron falters as they disembark at the docks.

For most of the voyage back to Pyke Euron has been glued to the side of the ship as Kai slides alongside, tendrils waving, brushing against the deck gently. Victarion knows that Euron is almost sick with pride, their father is too in his own way, but there are drawbacks to having such a large daemon, a daemon that can't walk on land. Their father's daemon is an orca, settled when he was fourteen summers old. For an Ironborn of fourteen the separation process was taxing. For a boy of ten summers (for Euron is a boy no matter how often he asserts that he is a man) the process will be impossible, Victarion thinks anyway.

It is not uncommon amongst their people, many have shark daemons, fish daemons but not everyone survives the separation; Victarion is not entirely sure he could. Victarion remembers his mother telling them how strong their father was for surviving it; if Euron does not falter, if he makes it back to their rooms without crying out, without falling, he will have proven himself to be a strong man indeed.

Balon watches with cool disinterest; his daemon is a wolverine the colour of sea foam with the temperament of a thunderstorm but she trembles slightly and presses closer to Balon's leg.

Hali whines in her throat by his side as a dog, Victarion curls a hand in her ruff.

They are Ironborn, they have to be strong.

Euron's hand is trembling and his jaw is clenched but he walks off the ship as though his heart isn't being torn out of his chest. He walks slowly, determinedly and their father walks behind him, one hand on the back of his son's neck.

The sea behind them sounds like its screaming.

Euron doesn't falter until they reach their halls.

He drops to his knees and his shoulders are shaking and for one brief moment Victarion is sure his brother is crying but as he gets closer he realises his brother is laughing.

(The Ironborn do not cry - even when their souls are being torn away.)

____________

Theon is ten summers old and his family is preparing for war. His father is a king he and his daemon wear the driftwood crown, his brothers are soldiers, his uncles are captains. They will win their freedom, Theon is sure of it.

"We should be fighting," Cordula says, a mottled cat at his side as they watch the soldiers pile onto their ships. Rodrik and Maron with their sea birds, uncle Victarion with his dog and Aeron with his, loping after her human clumsily, no doubt stinking of rum.

Asha is beside him, two summers older, daemon already settled as a sea eagle. "You're too young to fight, little brother. As I am." She's grumpy, Theon knows, her daemon settling should make her an adult in the eyes of the Ironborn but she too is being left behind.

He shudders as he spots uncle Euron, their father doesn't like them, spending too much time with his eldest younger brother. Cordula flickers into a gull and perches on his shoulder, "I heard he cut his daemon away before she settled." She whispers.

On Asha's shoulder Seger snorts. "You're an idiot," he says just as Asha says, "You shouldn't believe everything you hear, Theon."

"Makes more sense then him having a kraken daemon," Theon mutters. "No one has a daemon that big."

"The Targaryens used to have dragon daemons big enough to burn down entire cities."

"Well, no one has daemons that big anymore." Theon concedes.

Asha shrugs, "I believe it, anyway."

"Must be awful," Cordula murmurs. "To be so far away from your daemon all the time."

____________

His daemon changes after they drown. After he watches her drift apart underneath his grasping fingers. Gold dust amongst the churning waves.

She was a dog, like Victarion's. Slighter, ragged, but just as vicious. Now she is a bird with seaweed in her feathers. Huge and silent.

Aeron woke up on the shore staring up at her beady eyes.

(People believe that Cliona stopped talking after they gave themselves to the drowned god, he lets them believe it. It has nothing to do with a creaking door and his brothers empty hands - no. Never. And if Clio flinches, flutters away to seat herself as high as possible when The Silence returns well, so do many others.)

She's more like Urrigon's daemon now.

He thinks perhaps that's part of his penance; seeing the ghost of his brother's daemon everywhere.

____________

The small folk whisper that Euron has no daemon because no one has a kraken daemon, not since the Grey King. Some of them say he cut her away when he was banished, others say his daemon was killed in the rebellion, or that he sacrificed her when he began drinking the warlock's draughts.

He likes their whispers, likes the fear it builds. (They shudder as he walks past - all of them, kitchen wenches and serving boys, salt wives and sailors, knights and lords and would-be kings.)

He stays at sea because he can be near his soul, because on land he can't ignore the gaping hole inside him (so he fills it with death and magic and laughter.)

He severs his crew after he cuts out their tongues. They scream all the same.

Maybe it's jealousy. (Why should they get that closeness? Why them and not him?)

Maybe he just likes the way they scream and beg and plead (he laughs and sea around him laughs too, tendrils waving around the ship, Kai likes it just as much as he does.)

He uses a blade he found in the ruins of Valyria where every step away from the ocean was a knife in his back and hot oil on his skin. (Maybe he's been searching for a way to dull the pain all along.)

If you use that on us I will crush your ship and drag you all down to the drowned god's hall.

He's seen her destroy vessels, in the rebellion and before. Crushing them between her tentacles as the sailors screamed.

You know I will, Euron Greyjoy.

He laughs because he knows she will.

You'd die too, he thinks.

The ship creaks.

Would I?

She's more a sea creature than a daemon. Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn't.

(Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn't.)

He could send her away, he thinks. Send her far from him to navigate to oceans, to wreak havoc on any in her path.

No, you couldn't, she says.

(With his hidden eye he can see as she sees - can see the outside of his ship, the sea beasts that flee from her grasping tendrils, the dark, deep oblivion of the sea - it terrifies him, it excites him, it drives him mad.)

"Your soul is a monster," his brother had said - which one? Balon probably. Maybe Victarion. It doesn't matter. Euron's always know what he was. Never tried to hide it. He'd laughed. Laughed and laughed and laughed.

(The Ironborn don't cry - not even when they're ten summers old and cold and alone and a man now, his father had said, even with no soul to guide you.)

She isn't a monster, he thinks. She's a kraken. The only true kraken. The Iron Islands are his by right.

So take them, she says.

And he does.

____________

Asha and Seger watch as Theon steps off the ship. "Not as bad as I would have thought," she says, eyeing him up, he has aged into a handsome man, her brother has. When last she saw him he was still a boy, clutching Cordula to him and trembling.

"I don't want to go," he'd whispered, eyes brimming with unshed tears.

"Ironborn don't cry," she'd replied, Serger's claws digging into her shoulder. But she'd held him to her anyway as Ned Stark and his wolf (not a dire wolf, as her father had pointed out - no dire wolf daemons for years.)

Theon's daemon steps off the ship behind him and Seger makes a noise of disgust, "What is that?"

Theon's daemon is a tall grey dog, fur neat and shiny, a pendant around her preened neck like a greenlander princling. Wolfhound, her mind supplies. Asha curls her lip, "Father will be proud," she mutters. Their father will rage about this, will wither in shame and his wolverine will howl with rage. That daemon is not a daemon of the Iron Islands, never will be. "Lets see if he recognises us, Seger." She says with a smirk.

____________

They say the lost Targaryen princess has a dragon daemon, the first since Jaehaerys I. It has been happening more often, daemons settling as their sigil animals; his brother, the Tagaryen girl, Ned Stark's boy, until the Frey's cut off his head at least. Animals of old.

Victarion doesn't like to think about what that might mean.

The people follow his brother because of his charm, because of the tales that follow him. The only undefeated Greyjoy, the Ironborn with a kraken daemon and a dragon horn.

Victarion knows that he will make a better king than Euron, he knows that he will take the Daenerys Targaryen as a wife and they will conquer the Seven Kingdoms together.

Hali leans in to him as they near Meereen. "Our queen awaits, captain," she says. She looks beautiful, he think, as they gaze out at the city on the horizon. Beautiful and proud and strong. Ironborn through and through.

The driftwood crown would sit prettily on her head indeed.