The Water Dance (A Song of Ice and Fire/Exo Crossover)
Title: The Water Dance
Rating: PG
Word Count: 561
Genre: General
Summary: Tao might be the greatest water dancer Braavos has ever seen, but that doesn't mean it was the life he would have chosen for himself.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Tao stood in the middle of the practice room, head down, shoulders relaxed. His sword, fashioned to be long and thin in the traditional Braavosi style, was clasped loosely in his left hand, pointing towards the floor.
He allowed his mind to clear and his breathing to deepen before settling into a fighting stance, his eyes still closed.
Moving his body through the drills that had been part of his life for as long as he could remember, his mind wandered. When he was younger, every swordsmaster in the city had told him that nothing was so certain to get him killed as a drifting thought, that his lack of concentration was the only thing stopping him from being the greatest water dancer Braavos had ever seen.
By now, they could no longer tell that he wasn’t concentrating, and no one disputed that the title was his.
Spin left. Downward cut. Block.
It wasn’t as though he was blind to the real reason that he was considered to be such a prodigy - after all, had any other boy ever been gifted with such vigorous training at such a young age? No. Talent had nothing to do with it - only his father’s insistence that he follow in his footsteps in the art of warfare, and be able to defend himself no matter how strong his foe, had made him into the killing machine he was.
Stab forward. Pivot.
He’d never actually killed a man - nor a woman, for that matter. He knew of a hundred different methods of draining the life from a body, but he’d never put a single one into practice. He’d come close, in some of the duels with other braavos that he’d been forced into, but he’d always managed to leave their life intact... if not their dignity or limbs.
Three steps backwards. Backhanded slash. Jump.
His father didn’t care - so long as everyone in Braavos knew that the Sealord’s son was no easy prey for an assassin, the length of his list of kills didn’t matter. After all, it was unusual for a Sealord of Braavos to have such a long reign, spanning almost twenty years - his current popularity didn’t necessarily mean that he, or his family, were safe. It was for the better that Tao knew how to fight.
Quick swipes. Press the attack.
Of course, there was the prophecy as well - when Tao had been a baby, some crone in Westeros had told the Sealord that his son would be murdered before he could produce an heir, or something to that effect. Tao put no stock in such things, but his father had been determined to ensure his son’s safety ever since. The dozens of duels, ostensibly to the death, that his father had insisted he fight in seemed a bit contradictory to that aim, but Tao knew that in reality, his survival was one of his father’s first priorities. It always had been.
Finish them.
And as Tao crouched motionless in a room full of imaginary dead bodies, knowing that this endless cycle of dodge, block, strike would continue to be the only life he knew, he found that he couldn’t bring himself to feel any emotion about it. It might not have been the life he would have chosen for himself, but it was a life that he was very, very good at.
END
Masterlist