Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She watches his face, curious. He’s not looking at her now, but at her hands. His large thumbs run over her smaller knuckles, caressing them softly. The glance they’d shared only a moment before spoke of farewells and renewed affection but didn’t divulge the nature of the words he’d almost said.

Your Grace, I…

She’d stopped him before he could finish, by reaching out and taking his hands. She’s not sure why she did that. She’s not sure what she’s afraid of hearing. But she’d taken his hands on impulse, perhaps guessing the danger, and now she nearly regrets it.

And yet, she doesn’t. If only for the familiar feel of his hands running over her own. Calloused and strong, but gentle too. Her hands fit his so well. They always have. She’s missed his hands. She’s missed him. More than she can say.

More than she should.

But Jon Snow’s coming down the beach and the moment is passing quickly. It’s time for the men to go to Eastwatch. Jorah’s noticed the King of the North and his eyes make a slow pass to Ned Stark’s bastard and then back to her, his fingers still restless over her own, his jaw moving just slightly.

She knows that look. He’s considering. When he returned to her, he found her up on the cliffs with Jon Snow and the implication was clear enough. Tyrion and Ser Davos can’t stop talking about it. Their hopes buzz in her ears. An alliance, a plan, a prophecy…

Ser Jorah’s return has complicated things. He knows it. She knows it.

He cannot be by your side. Tyrion had said in Meereen.

When I take the Seven Kingdoms, I need you by my side. She wouldn’t give him up.

Jorah’s about to pull away. But his eyes find hers for a beat. And there’s indecision there. A hairline fracture in the pact they’d both silently agreed to. To forget, to put duty before inclination. A disgraced knight from a lesser house would never be fit consort for a queen. That much was certain. Wasn't it? She finds herself wondering at his indecision. Wondering at his thoughts. Wanting to know them. Wanting…

What do you want? Tell me.

He might have kissed her hands and released them back to her keeping. He might have stepped aside for Jon, giving her his blessing. But her violet eyes begged something then, just enough that he dared risk one thing more.

Squeezing her hands gently, Jorah leans forward. To kiss her? She finds her lips parting on the sudden, unexpected, unplanned notion, her heart hammering with emotions that she couldn’t untangle if she tried.

To forget…

To forget would be to forget the scent of the sea at Pentos and the flowers in the market of Vaes Dothrak. To forget the first time she stood up to her brother. The first time she'd smiled, truly, the iron taste of that horse's heart still on her tongue and too much blood on her face, but oh she smiled, for the first time since she was a little girl. She remembers Jorah's smile too, broad and proud.

And all the rest that came afterwards. Rhaego's cries—did she hear him cry or was he gone before he drew breath? She can never be certain—blue eyes through smoke and ash, baby dragons singing in the desert, shadows in Qarth and anger in the Plaza of Pride. The day she walked into a swelling crowd that chanted "Mhysa!" and she felt purpose fill her soul to the brim. He stood by her side through it all. And to forget him would be to forget it all. She would have to forget herself, where she came from, who she was before.

That's what they want. That's what they expect of her.

But she doesn’t move away. She knows nothing of her own feelings in that moment. She can’t trust them, just as she couldn’t trust him all those years ago. No matter how much she wanted to. But the crack widens, sunlight pouring out, and she finds herself waiting for an elusive answer, one way or another, of doubts that have plagued her since Jorah returned.

There is danger here. She knows that if he kisses her, she will likely kiss him back. And oh, what will Tyrion or Ser Davos have to say about that?

Much…she thinks wryly.

But no, he comes close to her ear instead, pressing a slow, chaste kiss against her temple, a knight’s kiss for the princess he’d followed across two continents, a soldier’s kiss for the woman he is leaving behind. She finds herself turning into the caress, inclining towards his tall frame, liking the way his body radiates warmth this close and blocks the cold sea breeze from chilling her to the bone.

He protects her just by standing beside her. He’s done that since the beginning.

His lips linger near her ear for only a few seconds longer.

“I meant what I said in Qarth. I meant what I said in Vaes Dothrak,” he whispers as he pulls back, his raspy voice heavy with emotion, his thoughts now written too clearly across his rugged features. He acts impulsively. But if this is the last time they’ll see each other in this world, he needs her to know. “I meant every word.”

He says the words like a vow and she shivers on the sheer power that his soft voice holds over her. All these years later. His words curl around her heart, scrolling in fiery script. He pulls back and her eyes seek his out, reeling on the revelation.

To forget…

He hasn’t forgotten. Neither has she.

Chapter Text

Jorah’s on his way back down to the underbelly of the ship, having conferred with the captain and Ser Davos on the voyage plans that will take them from Eastwatch to King’s Landing. Once they pass Dragonstone, they will need to take special care, as they will be joined by Lannister or Greyjoy escorts for the remaining journey.

The negotiations to come will be tense and uneasy, even if handled with the utmost delicacy. They will need to stick to the route and all agreements made under parley, or risk an abrupt break of Tyrion’s already tenuous treaty.

It’s been years since Stannis Baratheon sailed into the capital. But the Blackwater still spits out drowned bones and charred driftwood from the stag king’s doomed assault on the city. And these days, Cersei Lannister has no children left to temper her madness.

With two dragons flying alongside the fleet, they might yet triumph, should the negotiations turn sour too early. But no one aboard wants this to end in bloodshed. They’ve seen what gathers above the Wall. They need Cersei’s soldiers to join them against the grim hordes marching south.

Two dragons might be enough to conquer King’s Landing. It will not be enough to stop the Night King and his army of dead men.

Two dragons. Only two remain…

On his way to his own quarters, Jorah sees Daenerys leave Jon Snow’s cabin, where the boy is convalescing after his mad-dash escape from certain death, riding a dead horse through biting frost and blinding snow. Jon’s unlikely survival gives them all a glimmer of hope.

Twice over now, that boy should be dead. But he’s not.

Ser Davos has divulged the full truth of what happened at Castle Black to Ser Jorah. A red woman, a desperate spell, a gasp of air filling that dead boy’s lungs. Jorah might be impressed by Jon Snow’s resilience but he’s seen too much.

And he cares too little, all his worries and fears and grief for one person alone.

He slows his steps, watching Daenerys sink back against the cabin door, shutting it tightly behind her, while shutting her eyes at the same time, her shoulders slumped, her hands covering her face for the briefest of moments.

If he didn’t know any better, he might think she’s indulging in a moment of relief—for the sake of Jon Snow, who lived when he should have died.

She straightens up soon enough, but her eyes remain shut. By herself, in that passageway, she sheds no tears and attempts to keep her breathing steady. Her expression is impassable. She is their strong, immoveable, silver queen. Nothing may rattle her; nothing may sway her from the set path.

So it must be relief.

But Jorah knows Daenerys better than anyone else alive. He knows she is strong and brave. But he knows she feels fear and sadness too, like any ordinary person, despite pretending otherwise. Despite casting herself in Valyrian steel at all times. He knows she sometimes pretends even when she thinks she’s alone.

Like now, down here, in the shadowy bowels of a ship bound for her enemy’s city. A ship taking her away from her child’s icy grave.

There was no time to mourn. No time to stop.

She’s grieving. She’s about to cry. But what’s worse, she’s suppressing her grief and holding back those tears, fingers reaching up to steal away any evidence lingering on her pale cheeks quickly.

Daenerys gives herself only a minute. A half minute more like, and then she pushes herself away from the cabin door and strides away, walking straight towards him, with her head high and her fist clenched. He notices a watery sheen in her eyes even from a few yards away.

They are the only children I shall ever have…

When her violet eyes rise from the decking of that narrow passageway, Daenerys sees him. Even in the failing light down here below deck, with only snatches of sunlight cast by port side windows, his silhouette is too familiar to her not to recognize immediately.

His eyes are waiting for hers to lift, to see, and when their gazes meet, it’s with heartbreak on both sides.

She can’t hide her grief from him. He can’t help but share it.

Jorah remembers too well the sight of Viserion, as a newborn hatchling, perched high on her epaulet-covered shoulder, sniffing the air and stretching his tiny wings. The dragons were the only things that brought a smile to her face while they wandered the endless Red Waste.

Not the only thing, Jorah. You made me smile too.

He can still hear the strange, wondrous melodies of baby dragons singing, under starry desert skies and in the lush gardens of Qarth, before those damned, blue-lipped warlocks tried to steal them away.

He’d give almost anything to hear that singing once more. A song to drown out that terrible scream—the dying scream of a dragon—as Viserion’s lifeless body plunged deep into an icy northern lake, the monster’s frosted spear protruding from his golden scales.

Viserion’s dying scream echoes across the sea, even as the miles from Eastwatch grow ever more distant.

Jorah’s memories and his shared sympathy, all written so clearly in his haggard, weary features—he hasn’t slept in days and neither has she—are her undoing.

Daenerys can’t stop her tears. Not in front of Jorah.

She’s forced them back for too many hours now and they spill over her weakened defenses. She swallows hard and a strangled sob is catching in her throat, burning in her chest, making words impossible. Jorah feels his own heart clench at her obvious misery, tears stinging against the corners of his own eyes.

He will always feel her pain too keenly. He is bound to her in a way no other man can claim. And she is bound to him. In what way, remains uncertain. They hadn’t discussed what he said on the Dragonstone beach. Not yet.

I meant what I said…

Daenerys rushes forward, seeking out an embrace that is always willing. That of the man who has known her longest and loved her dearest. Jorah gathers her up in his arms, ringing her slim waist as she buries her silver-blonde head deep in the folds of his coat, its wool and leather scented by salt and snow.

Both of her arms are wrapped tightly around her bear’s neck and she muffles her ragged cries at his shoulder. The force of her embrace pushes them back against the bulkhead where he holds his dragon girl steady, his hushed voice so quiet that the ship itself struggles to listen to the words of comfort he gently whispers in her ear.

“Shhhh, Khaleesi. I know…”

The creaking bones of the old ship listen. But the rest is for her alone to hear.

Chapter Text

Daenerys isn’t in her cabin.

The hour has grown late, and those below deck should all be sleeping, as their journey to White Harbor is fraught with many dangers and they will need their strength for the wars to come—with a mad queen left behind in King’s Landing and the undead hordes they will soon face on the frozen moors outside Winterfell.

But Daenerys isn’t sleeping.

Neither is Jon Snow, who has gone to seek her out. He knocks on her cabin door twice, softly, quietly, attempting to be discreet, even while knowing that some on board would consider his actions long overdue. Ser Davos, in particular, would welcome a match between the young monarchs, if only to eliminate the chance that there will be renewed conflict, if and when their common enemies are defeated.

Ser Davos serves the gods of practicality and good sense. And there's an inevitability to this sort of thing.

But Jon’s knocks go unanswered, as there’s no one on the other side of the door to answer the summons.

Jon Snow doesn’t know this. Jon Snow knows nothing.

His natural scowl goes a little grimmer as he’s met with silence. And the distant sound of water lapping the hull as their ship sails swiftly to White Harbor.

He wonders if she’s asleep. He doubts it, as Daenerys has shown little patience for rest, especially now, especially here—in a foreign land with too few friends to put her at ease, to make her feel safe. Isn’t that why he seeks her out now? To grant her the company that she so sorely lacks. To scratch an itch that he’s been feeling for weeks now.

And one he’s convinced himself that he saw reflected, with vigor, in her comely features at the council meeting that very morning, as they all stood around the carved map at Dragonstone and debated the delicate strategy that comes with returning north and explaining to Sansa and the others why their king has bent his knee to the dragon queen.

While a salt mist, grey and gloomy, settled over the ancient, sea-washed castle, Jon and Ser Jorah gave their queen conflicting advice on how she should arrive in the North.

Ser Jorah wanted Daenerys to fly to Winterfell and his words were no empty things. Viserion had been taken down by a single, frost-tipped spear. There was no denying the innocence shattered by that blow.

That a dragon cannot die…

“All it takes is one angry man with a crossbow. He’ll see your silver hair on the King’s Road and know that one well-placed bolt will make him a hero…”

Ser Jorah’s argument was a strong, predictable one, as he valued Daenerys’s protection and safety above all other concerns. This was his way.

But Jon insisted that they sail together, speaking up on the heels of the older man. He was convinced that the alliance should be given preference and put on full display. If they were going to manage the impossible, her safety must be secondary to the task set before them.

She listened to both of them, mulling the decision.

“I’ve not come to conquer the North. I’m coming to save the North,” she said finally, in a careful manner, devoid of any defiance or pride. She meant it truly, still chastened, perhaps, by the horror she had seen above the Wall.

Her words were for Ser Jorah, and they shared a long glance, weighted, arguing the point further in their customary silence. She looked away, finally, but only after receiving a small, nearly imperceptible nod from her bear knight.

She then regarded Jon steadily, and declared that they’d sail together.

Together. Jon thought he heard a subtle inflection in that word. He convinced himself that she meant for him to hear it.

The meeting concluded soon after, as Mormont demurred and Jon triumphed. Jon was satisfied in his victory. Too satisfied, and he had to swallow back the petty pride that threatened to shine out from his brooding features, craving the queen’s favor like a child at her skirts.

King in the North, indeed—my gods. More like a southern lady at a garden party. When did you become so soft, Lord Snow? Young Lyanna Mormont’s fierce voice was ringing in his head, but he ignored it.

Daenerys said no more. But Jon watched as her wide, violet eyes flickered back to Ser Jorah. Her eyes returned to Ser Jorah, holding his gaze for a moment, before falling to the carved table beneath her pale hands.

It’s this detail that comes back to Jon Snow now, with frustrating clarity, as he stands in the corridor outside the queen’s cabin, hovering, too much like a treasure-seeker denied entry to the final chamber. Because he has failed to untangle one last, unexpected riddle.

Jon wonders if she hears the knock and is choosing to ignore it. Choosing to ignore him. He wonders if he’s made a mistake. Jon’s certainly no stranger to mistakes.

I’ve made plenty, he admitted to Sam Tarly at Castle Black, years ago now. And the number has only increased since then.

Still, another explanation nags at him.

Together. She said it plainly. But now he wonders, however briefly, if that word might not have been for his ears, after all.

Jon gives up eventually. His sense of self-preservation is iron-forged, cultivated during a childhood of being denied a mother’s love. And he decides she must be asleep, leaving it at that. He won’t seek out her private company again until they arrive at Winterfell, where Sam will find him first and tell him all.

His father, her brother.

Both cursed with the name of Rhaegar Targaryen.

If Jon Snow lives to be an old man, he will recall this night and thank the gods that Daenerys didn’t answer his knock. For the mistake he intended might have been the gravest of them all. For both of them.

But Jon needs not worry, as the mistake has already been avoided, before he took a step from his own quarters. With the fiery impulse of a dragon, Daenerys has taken her fate into her own hands.

She isn’t in her cabin that night because she’s currently lying half-naked in Ser Jorah’s bunk, her legs spreading beneath her most trusted advisor’s amorous touch, her knuckles kneading against her most valued general’s strong back muscles, pulling his body closer, her pulse rapid and breath shallow as she begs, “Jorah, please…” from her dearest…

The bear and the dragon won’t sleep much on the way to White Harbor. The hours wear on, all sweat and skin beneath fur and candlelight.

Together.

As Jon strides back to his cabin, he passes Tyrion near the wooden stair. The dwarf regards him frankly, much as he had in the Winterfell courtyard so many years ago.

Let me give you some advice, bastard… Oh, Tyrion’s still full of advice. Some things never change.

“It’s a little late for a stroll below decks, isn’t it?” the dwarf mentions, a slight accusation shading his sly tone.

Or is that jealousy that Jon hears in the man’s voice?

Well, if it’s jealousy, Tyrion’s turned it on the wrong man. Of this, Jon becomes more convinced with every minute that passes. He told Ygritte the truth well enough—he does know some things. He knows that Daenerys Targaryen shares a long, tangled history with Ser Jorah Mormont.

He knows she turned to Ser Jorah last.

“It’s a little late for many things,” Jon mutters on his way by, not waiting for an answer, having little interest in Tyrion Lannister’s useless reply.

Chapter Text

Daenerys doesn’t knock on Jorah’s cabin door. She doesn’t need to.

She merely leans against it, her fingertips gently tapping against the thick, oak planks, hushed against the stained wood, quiet enough that her own ears barely catch the light cascade of sound. But she’s heard little since she left her cabin in an impulsive rush, her heart beat elevated and hammering wildly in anticipation of what she intends.

The man on the other side of the door hears her approach. Her footsteps are no less familiar to him than the timbre of her voice or the contours of her face. If he was blind and deaf, he’d know her by a single brush of her fingers against the palm of his hand.

Inside his cabin, Jorah blinks at the sound of her footsteps, wondering briefly if they’re some phantom-thing, a siren’s call over the black seawater. His porthole window is wide open, despite the chill in the winter’s night. He finds he needs the chill lately, to conquer a heat that’s burning a hole straight through him.

That heat has been simmering since his confession on the beach at Dragonstone, since he held her after Viserion’s death. He held her until the tears ran dry and when she looked up at him afterwards, he saw more tenderness reflected in her grief-stained features than he was expecting.

And perhaps something else…?

Jorah opens the door wide and finds Daenerys waiting behind it, not so patiently and biting down on her bottom lip, as if caught in the act. Her hands fall away from the oak planks to clasp themselves together in a false show of royal poise, her violet eyes too alive with girlish, midnight mischief to convince anyone. Least of all herself.

She knows he’ll disapprove of the slight grin that steals across her features, but she risks it anyway, hoping to elicit the same from the man gazing down on her so severely.

Her grin betrays more truth than any words might. The held gaze, which they’ve spent far too much time indulging in lately, betrays even more.

She’s not hiding her intentions. She wants him to know why she’s here, seeking him out at this time of night. She has little interest in wasting any more time. She wants him. She wants all of him, and she’s willing to risk much to have him.

Why else had she agreed to Jon’s foolhardy plan to sail to White Harbor? Why else did she insist on all of them sailing together? She needed time away from prying eyes. She needed the rhythmic melody of an extended sea voyage to continue singing sweet nothings in her ear, telling her of a truth rediscovered in these same, sparse corridors only recently.

A truth that screams she loves Jorah Mormont. That she has loved him for a long time. Well, that part was always true.

Love…love, how can you say that to me?

But now she finally recognizes that she wants him too.

He knows. He sees the change in her, a tease that he hasn’t seen since that long ago day they spoke of rashness in Meereen. Of course, he knows. Jorah can read her better than anyone else in the world.

“Khaleesi…,” he says, rather grimly for her tastes. And he’s neglecting to answer her grin, much to her displeasure.

But there’s only a beat of hesitation before he takes her arm and pulls her inside his cabin, almost roughly. The roughness is only because of the speed with which he manages it, taking a step beyond her to cast uneasy glances up and down that narrow corridor before closing his door securely once more.

He’s running a hand through his hair, a little greyer now than when they first met, his fingers trailing down to the back of his neck where he rubs at the skin there anxiously. He wants her to take better care. He wants her to abandon these new feelings, kindled on the beach by his impulsive confession, stoked when he held her close after Viserion died.

He knows his own hand in this and has begun to regret it and retreat from it. He wants to take back the words he spoke on Dragonstone. He wants to keep her safe, even if it comes at the cost of his own heart, and hers now too.

Oh, but he wants her…

Gods, Daenerys hopes it’s still true. Much has happened since Dragonstone and much more will happen once they arrive in Winterfell. Nothing’s certain, their lives hang in the balance. Each night could easily be their last.

The thought terrifies Daenerys, but somehow thrills her too.

She watches Jorah fidget nervously, the tenderness in her breast blooming. He doesn’t know what to say, or how to begin. But she doesn’t care if he says anything at all. She doesn’t want his words now. She just wants him.

Why now and not before? She cannot say. The confession on the beach, the feel of his strong arms around her when she needed him most? Perhaps both? Or neither? Her heart speaks a language that she’s only just learning to read with any fluency.

She only knows that when her violet eyes seek out his blue ones, meeting in secret as they listen to the ramblings of these lords of the west, a fire burns her up from the inside, melting her down like steel held to flame. If she took his hand right now and guided it down between her legs, he’d find her damp, slick and tight, something she can no longer control in his presence.

Even if she wanted to control it. Which she doesn’t.

She’s tired of control. She’s tired of denying herself the one thing that might stop this hollow ache that she realizes has plagued her since Qarth. That ripped wide open in the Great Pyramid at Meereen, when she snatched her hand from his. That might’ve been sewn up when she reached for him in the dusty hills above Vaes Dothrak.

But wasn’t. And isn’t. Not yet.

At the meeting on Dragonstone this morning, she was convinced she’d give herself away. So she kept her words short and her manner neutral. And yet, her eyes were too often drawn to Jorah, wondering what all her esteemed and gathered advisors would say if they knew she was fantasizing about her gruff general lifting her up, laying her out on that table and taking her right then and there, in front of them all.

Now they are alone in his cabin. All alone. And he still isn’t touching her. He’s holding himself back, leaving too much space between them, as he struggles to form the words, “You…shouldn’t be here.”

“You worry too much, Ser,” she replies, sewing up the distance between them in a single step, her hands going to the strings of his tunic, tugging them loose in a way that can’t be misinterpreted. His ears turn a delicious shade of red as she leans forward and pulls one knot loose with her teeth.

He resists, stubborn fool that he is. But she expects this. She knew this would be a fight. She’s not put off. She can be stubborn too.

“Your Grace, I…,” he forces her hands back, taking them both in his own, lowering them, releasing them only once they’ve returned to a safe distance. And then he pulls back, moving away from her. Leaving those familiar words hanging in the air between them, unfinished once again.

But he finished them on the beach, despite his better judgment. And she hasn’t forgotten.

I meant what I said.

She’ll have him finish what he started. Even if it kills him.

“I wasn’t always ‘Your Grace’, nor even ‘Khaleesi’ to you,” she reminds him. She keeps a steady gaze trained on his retreating back, noting the muscular heft in his broad shoulders, her fingers curling instinctively at her sides. She asks, “You remember my name, don’t you?”

“Aye,” he replies, refusing to look at her. He’s moved to stand before that porthole window by the outer hull, bracing his hand against the bronze ring plate, breathing in the chilled air to steady himself.

Don’t ever presume to touch me or speak my name again…

Aye, he remembers.

So does she. She regrets nearly everything that happened from that cursed day in Meereen until now, she would take it all back a thousand times if she could. He must know that?

“I wish you’d use it again…,” she sighs on the simple request, resisting the urge to issue a queen’s command. Commands come to her too easily. But Jorah knew her and loved her long before she learned how to use them.

She takes another step towards him, almost begging. She’ll play the beggar queen once more, but only for him, and only if he doesn’t give her what she wants of his own free will, “And I wish you’d look at me.”

“You should return to your own cabin, Daenerys,” he exhales, blue eyes not leaving the dark sea. He grants her request but defies her desires in the same breath. He’s being strong. Stronger than ten men in his position. But if he truly wants her to return to her own cabin, he would never have opened his door in the first place.

This, she knows. If he thinks she doesn’t know him as well as he knows her, he hasn’t been paying attention.

She approaches him slowly, deliberately, coming to stand just behind him, in his shadow if they were standing in full sunlight. She’s slight where he’s broad, and short where he’s tall. But he can feel her presence, as if she’s caged him in on all sides. And yet, she hasn’t touched him. So close. But there’s a whisper of space remaining between them. She leaves it there, intentionally. She uses it to her advantage, stretching up on the tips of her toes and letting only her breath cross the divide, humming the words against the stubble at his jawline.

“I’m not going anywhere until I get what I want,” she’s firm and hard.

As firm and hard as he is. She confirms it for herself, as her hand gently snakes around his hips and slips down the front of his breeches, running the length of him and back again, fingers exploring his thick girth. She feels him shudder at her touch, his hand gripping the decorative wood and bronze around that porthole tighter, knuckles going white. His eyes slip close, his only defense, as his mouth is emptied of any words that might contradict her.

Good. She has other plans for his mouth.

She releases him, but only to trail her hand around his ribs and waist, ducking beneath his braced arm to position herself between him and the ship’s hull. She smirks, standing so that she blocks the chilly, winter air that might make him think twice. And then she’s crossing the unnatural divide again, her hand still playing at games she shouldn’t be playing. The other sliding up and over the curve of his shoulder to anchor herself against him, her whole body pressing, climbing for just a little relief.

His free hand seeks out her arm, almost by instinct, and he doesn’t pull away, gripping her elbow, keeping her in place. But his eyes remain closed.

She decides she’s grateful for that cold air against her hair and the back of her neck. Just a whisper of ice coming off the sea to cool her down. It’s a blessing. She’s dangerously close and she hasn’t even kissed him. But she needs him to be consumed by this too. She needs him to catch fire. If they burn, she wants them to burn together. At least this first time.

“Daenerys…,” he cautions, blindly. His voice breaks on her name, less than steady in tone. But she knows his resistance won’t last much longer.

Beneath his beard, her northern bear is blushing scarlet red, with heat flooding his veins. His breath has quickened. She leans up, on tip toes once more, and kisses both sides of his face languidly, one side and then the other, letting her lips linger over his ginger whiskers, the tip of her tongue teasing, daring to taste the flushed skin beneath. She ghosts his lips, noses touching, as she moves from the left side to the right.

Still, the bear does not move. Stubborn to the last. He remains as still as prey in the tangled underbrush, waiting for the hungry predator to pass.

He’ll be waiting forever then. She’ll not be leaving this cabin until dawn, if that’s what it takes. She’s made up her mind.

But she’s impatient as any dragon. She considers how to break him out of this state. She knows she’s hurt him in the past. She knows he doesn’t believe this is happening. But she needs him to accept the truth. She needs him to forgive her. She needs…him.

But how to show him? How to make him see reality when he won’t open his eyes?

Thinking on his eyes, and the way she’d met his gaze so intently over the table this morning, debating Jon Snow’s plan in deafening silence…Daenerys tilts her head slightly on a sudden idea.

It’s not kind but she knows what she’s doing, knowing men, and this one in particular, too well.

She comes down from her sensual kisses, standing flat on the cabin floor, before asking, in an oh-so-innocent tone, “Were you jealous of Jon this morning? I saw how you looked at him after I agreed we’d sail to White Harbor…”

There’s a slight accusation in her words. A calling out of sorts. She’d noticed his reaction—didn’t everyone around that table? She’d watched him shift on his feet, his jaw clenching as he cast daggers at Jon Snow. He wasn’t subtle about it. He couldn’t hide it. And honestly, she's curious. Was it jealousy?

She knows he can’t read the words scrolling across her heart but still—it seems unfathomable that he might think she could have eyes for anyone else when he’s in the room.

At her words, Jorah’s eyes flash open instantly, finding hers, holding them sharply. The familiar shade of blue is dark and stormy by candlelight, flickering with lust. She’s glad to see it written so clearly in his features. The grip on her elbow tightens slightly, as his fingers are pressing against her soft flesh.

“I wasn’t jealous,” he denies it flatly, his voice holding no quaver or hesitation now.

Oh, she’s roused him. Finally. The corner of her mouth rises just a little, although she suppresses the next smirk that’s threatening to steal over her features. Instead, she licks her lips and reaches up with her free hand to remove the silver clasp from her hair, pulling out the many braids slowly with her fingers, drawing him in, lest he try to look away again.

“It looked an awful lot like jealousy to me, Ser Jorah,” she replies tartly, using his formal title with the same tone Jon had used, while raising one eyebrow as a challenge.

“I was angry,” he admits to only this, his thumb beginning to make a slow circle against her skin, caressing, even as he makes his point clear. “I am angry. You shouldn’t be here. You should be miles ahead of us, flying towards Winterfell under the safety of night.”

“If I was flying, I wouldn’t be on this ship,” she counters. She leaves the last of the braids, loose and coming undone, tugging at the front of his shirt gently, wondering. Why are we still clothed? The heavy fabric of her Northern-style dress is stifling her, too much wool and fur, and she releases his shirt only to reach for the ties on the bodice, pulling the first free. She notices his eyes are following the movement of her hands with captivated interest. She adds plainly, “I wouldn’t be in this cabin. With you.”

He sighs. In defeat? Gods, she hopes so.

“Sometimes you make it incredibly difficult to protect you, Your Grace,” Jorah admits, allowing her to take his hand from its perch on her arm and drag it down to her waist, to help her with the ties. But his fingers are still moving too slowly for her liking.

“Perhaps I should go find Jon Snow and see if he feels the same?” she teases and pulls away just enough.

But Jorah’s grip is suddenly iron-forged, slipping around her waist and holding her fast. His minor show of strength excites her, making her heart flip over itself, as she knows what Jorah Mormont’s capable of.

Or does she?

His other hand comes off the ring clasp of the port window at last, and begins to trace up the delicate lines of her face, thumb running over her plump lips, fingers sliding back into the strands of her long hair, shaking loose the last of the braids, as his large paw hooks around her ear and cradles the nape of her neck. He’s going to kiss her. With that hungry look in his eyes, he’s going to devour her.

She thought she’d be the one to kiss him first, but she finds herself waiting, hypnotized by the way he suddenly takes control. He lowers his mouth towards hers, warning her just before he claims her lips, “Speak that damn boy’s name again, lass, and I’ll throw him overboard.”

She would grin widely but she’s too shocked by the kiss. That. Kiss…

Jorah Mormont’s kiss. My Gods.

She’s not sure what she expected. The Dothraki had no use for kissing so Drogo’s mouth was always hard and unyielding, even after she taught him better. Daario’s were eager things, sloppy at times, too much tongue, too much breath mingled together. Like a pup licking at her face. But Jorah…

She gasps a little into his mouth, having forgotten to breathe for too long. He takes his time, his mouth slanting over hers, giving and then pulling back, dragging them around a delicate dance that seems on the precipice of breaking free at any moment. It’s when he goes a little deeper that she forgets to breathe.

There’s danger in his kiss. Something that says he knows what he’s doing. The hand in her hair moves down the curve of her throat, his thumb sinking into the space at her collarbone before falling down to her breast, cupping at her generous curves. The other holds her fast against him. Her own arms are rising to twine around his neck, as she finds she needs to hold on.

Daenerys is glad for the support of his arm. The flames inside her are fanning through her body like a brushfire, and the night breezes at her back no longer make any difference. The cool air goes stagnant and humid as soon as it touches her feverish skin. Her legs feel weak and her pulse is racing. She needs friction, and begs, with her mouth, with her tongue, which slides across the pearls of his teeth before retreating, nipping at his bottom lip as she comes away.

He breaks off only a moment, so she can jump up into his arms. He lifts her easily, higher, stepping away from the window as she wraps her legs around his hips. Both his arms cradle her seat, his lips coming back for more, his talented tongue stealing all sense from her buzzing, humming head. She has her hands hooked at his jawline now and she drinks up her bear’s many kisses, like a country girl drunk on her first glass of wine, wondering where in the world he learned to kiss like this?

I’ve been all around the world, my princess…

Whoever, wherever, whenever. With rash selfishness, she suddenly blesses his long, unfortunate exile and whatever pleasure houses he visited or women he fucked, if this is the result. Or perhaps it’s a natural talent that he was born with? She wouldn’t doubt it. Jorah Mormont has surprised her too many times to count.

She had prepared herself for a brooding northern lord, with cold, steel kisses and blunt, quick release. She knows that he won’t be like her Dothraki warlord or that Tyroshi man-child she left behind in Essos. But she doesn’t care. She doesn’t care how he takes her; she just wants it done. Now. She’s thought on Jorah Mormont too long. After he returned to her side, after that confession on the beach before the men left for Eastwatch—he’s been haunting her dreams every night.

But this. This is no dream.

Jorah’s kisses. She’s never been kissed like this in her life. She’s convinced she’ll never be kissed like this again, feeling as if she’s been tipped back on the deep waters of an open sea and it’s all silver-blue stars and infinite skies unfurling before her, swirling in the heavens at a dizzying pace. She tastes the entire universe in that kiss, its deep pockets, its secret vistas. She doesn’t want it to stop, forcing herself to breathe at those brief intervals when they break apart.

And yet…her body wants more than his kisses. Demands it. She feels her knees grip harder against his hips, seeking out a rhythm that isn’t hers to claim. Not yet. Not until she gets his damn clothes off.

And hers as well.

Her fingers have been busy, finishing with the laces on his tunic. Without breaking their kiss, she pulls the long shirttail free from his breeches, letting her hands run up under the lightweight fabric and along his torso, his strong muscles and that mess of golden fur that covers his broad chest, pushing it higher…

Jorah breaks the kiss for a moment, shaking his head and warning her sternly, “No, Khaleesi, you’ll not want to see my scars…”

“I’ll see all of you tonight, Jorah,” she promises, warning back, “Or you’ll see none of me.”

He can’t argue with her, too far gone to stop now. His need matches her own. They’ve made it to the narrow bunk and he lays her down upon it. She sinks against the thin, lumpy mattress as if it were a king’s lavish bedchamber. She’d make love to him on a cold, stone floor and feel nothing but plush cushions and fiery warmth tonight.

He straightens up, looming above her like the bear he is, to strip off the undershirt over his head, revealing taut muscles beneath.

His scars! Her eyes flicker with pain and regret and sadness, all for his sake. Her heart breaks to see how much of his body succumbed to the greyscale before Sam Tarly was able to stop its spread. The evidence of so much pain is starkly written into his skin. Pain that he’d endured for her sake. To get back to her.

She gets to her knees and eagerly reaches up to drag him down beside her, their thighs touching as he joins her on that bunk. With curious fingers, she touches his bare flesh. The scars cover nearly his entire left side. Almost like…scales.

She presses her palm flat against his chest, following the trail of scars until she’s touched them all. Faded to a dull grey-black and smooth with new skin growth, making patterns. If he’s worried his scars would repulse her, she’ll need to scold him. She’s blood of the dragon. A dragon looks at scales and sees only the magic and mark of their ancestors.

She lowers her mouth to press a long, tender kiss against the center of his chest, her tongue tasting the salt of his skin. Her kisses continue, growing less tender and more passionate, across the breadth of his upper torso, her teeth daring a quick nip against the sensitive spot where his shoulder meets his neck. In the meantime, she feels him working to release her from the confines of that dress she still finds herself caged in.

“Your seamstress deserves a slow death,” he mutters, glowering at the many fastenings, fumbling over hooks and eyes that are lost in his large fingers.

“Just rip it off,” she answers, not caring how he does it, her many kisses now trailing over the thick cords in his neck, up to behind his ear, where she sucks against the lobe, her arms ringing around his shoulders to edge closer.

“Your maidservants will notice the tears in the morning,” he cautions and she wonders how he can possibly think of practicalities at a time like this.

She slips into his lap, knees open, her pelvis spread dangerously close to the hardness in his pants. Her sex is pulsing, as her whispers turn heady, sultry and matter-of-fact, “I can’t wait much longer, my lord.”

Daenerys dips her tongue into the bear’s mouth once more, seeking out those dizzying, starburst kisses, and they’re moving together, his forearm crushing against her waist as they rock forward and back, in tune with the rapid breaths escaping that kiss.

The spark catches fire. He hurries with the dress while her hands move to the laces of his breeches, setting his cock free. He finally manages with the last of the buttons on that dress, helping her tear off the outer gown and throwing the blasted thing across the room with a low growl. She laughs at her knight’s growl, finally eliciting that crooked grin that she’s been longing to see since she walked through his cabin door.

The silk shift she wears follows the dress, both tossed in a heap on the floor, and Daenerys lays back, entirely naked on that bunk, all silver-blonde hair and smooth, flushed skin. Jorah slides out of those breeches quickly, joining her.

She falls back on his sheets, dragging him down with her, as she needs the press of their bodies. She craves the pressure, the friction, and she writhes slowly beneath his weight, guiding him to slip inside her. It’s a slow, deliberate entrance that causes her to moan with pleasure on the smooth descent.

He feels so good. They fit, as she’s never fit with any other man. At least, she thinks that must be true. She can’t recall other men at the moment. What they look like, what they sound like. She can’t recall anything. Her mind is a white blank page, upon which is written only two words: a scrolling script that repeats the name of Jorah Mormont over and over again.

While he’s inside her, she wants his mouth. She needs his kisses and he’s happy to oblige. But he pulls back slightly as they change positions, and she finds herself pooling into molten lava, arching up to catch those active flames. Her hands crawl up his back, her knuckles kneading against his muscles as she brings him in to her again.

The fire spreads down to her toes, which curl against the sheets, seeking release. Her hands continue to stretch over his broad back, digging in as she breaks her lips from his, unable to continue that kiss any longer.

“Jorah, please…,” she pants. She knows he’s holding back, but he’s holding back for her and that only stokes the fire within her further. It builds and builds as they find a steady rhythm, faster, harder. Her legs have drifted up to gain a hold around his waist and he gently hooks his arm around the underside of her thigh, to anchor her there, allowing him to go a little deeper.

She feels like she’s laid out beneath a canopy of spinning stars again, but this time they’re all crashing towards her…or maybe she’s rising to meet them? She has the wings of a dragon, unfurled, aflame. It’s all blinding light and burning fire behind her eyelids. A thousand stars bursting into pieces.

“Daenerys…,” he can manage her name and no more. He buries himself against her, spilling out, finding release and climax at the same time she does, both caught up in a whirlwind of rhythm and movement that they seek out naturally, and find together, as if they’ve done this dozens of times before.

My love, we’ll make up for lost time soon enough…

Afterwards, they fall back on the narrow bunk, both breathing heavily, basking in the newfound knowledge of each other. Their chests rise and fall, slowing, as Daenerys rests in the arms of her lover lazily, her expression glowing like sunlight. Jorah plants a single, gentle kiss against the crown of her hair.

The chilled sea breeze licks over their ruddy, tangled bodies, as Daenerys raises her head from his chest, their lips finding each other once more.

Chapter Text

Frost and snow crunch under the soles of Missandei’s fur-lined boots as she walks through the wintery camp, passing Northmen, Unsullied and Dothraki by turns, all tending the horses, mending the wagons, rubbing their hands together by hot campfires in the snow. The ranks have swelled in the last few weeks, as they pick up new fighters at each small village and loyal holdfast they pass on the long, cold road to Winterfell.

Jon Snow makes many speeches, gruffly spoken, convincing his countrymen to fight against an army of dead men that most don’t believe in. They listen, for the sake of the father they believe bore him. The imposing specter of Ned Stark still haunts these lands.

Some of them join because of Jon’s speeches. More of them join because of the wide-eyed marvel of dragons flying overhead as he speaks.

It’s been four weeks and a day since the combined forces of the King in the North and Daenerys Stormborn left Dragonstone, and three of those weeks have been spent on icy, snow-covered roads through frozen moors and frosted forests.

The North is vast and beautiful, even in winter. Fields of white, streams of silver, tinsel in the trees. But honestly, the novelty of snow wore off for Missandei only a few miles past White Harbor. She prefers tropical breezes and a climate that doesn’t encase butterflies in ice.

Now, she frowns at the shivering weather, casting her face down, further into the wool folds of her wrapped scarf, hiding away from snow flurries and icy breezes that blast down through the mess of wagons, horses and tents hastily pitched only an hour or so before. They’ve stopped to water the horses, before making the crossing of the last river before Winterfell.

They’ll arrive at the Stark family castle tomorrow morning, if the weather holds.

If the weather holds…they say, as if these constant spits of ice and snow and wild winds are mild. Missandei shivers in her scarf.

Drogon is soaring in the frost thermals above, gliding high in the thin, grey wisps of clouds. Rhaegal is perched down by the river, stretching his green wings for stray beams of faint sunlight.

She wonders if the dragons miss Essos too.

“If you’d fetch yer mistress, Missandei? We’ve much to discuss before we ride through Winterfell’s gates tomorrow,” Ser Davos had encouraged her, his tone kind and measured. Standing beside the Onion Knight, Jon Snow nodded tersely, perhaps a little miffed that Daenerys is late to their agreed upon meeting this morning.

Decisions must be made on how the procession into the castle should be arranged—if Daenerys should lead, or ride in concert with Jon. How the armies should be presented to Lady Stark and how introductions should be made.

She’s not that late, Missandei is tempted to argue but doesn’t waste her breath.

Since landing in Westeros, it seems that all of them—Tyrion Lannister, Lord Varys, Ser Davos, Jon Snow—they all expect Daenerys to come at their bidding and work to their timetable, veering from her own battles to fight wars not of her making. And yet, no one offers gratitude, expecting her compliance. The further north they travel, the more the air itself seems to sparkle with suspicion, all leveled against the silver-haired queen and her fearsome dragons.

But Missandei keeps her feelings to herself. And Daenerys has been distracted of late, enough that perhaps she doesn’t notice.

Missandei agrees to act as messenger for Ser Davos and Jon Snow without argument, taking her time crossing the camp, knowing that the Queen is currently discussing strategy with her favorite general and they will likely need a moment to…finish their discussions.

The same frost gale that trails Missandei through the camp overtakes her steps, rustling furs, fires and the braided manes of Dothraki horses, who side-step the tiny, whirling squalls of snow with white-puffed snorts and neighs of displeasure. The chilly wind pays them no mind, winding the traveled path until it shivers against the side of the Queen’s personal tent, begging for entrance, attempting to slip beyond a threshold of thin canvas.

But Daenerys has tied her tent door fast, denying entry to winter’s chill…and all others for the last hour.

For inside the tent, Jorah’s hand is currently coming up to clamp over Daenerys’s mouth, muffling the sound of his own name, as she finds herself calling it out with a louder moan than she intends.

It’s not her fault.

When she pushed him into that wooden chair and crawled into his lap, she’d had no intention of taking things further than a few heady kisses. But now her skirt is bunched up over her thighs and his breeches are unlaced and the chill of the winter is no match to the heat between them, as she reaches down to help guide him into her, shifting her weight on his lap, while sliding down on a sensation that’s becoming more and more familiar with every mile distant from White Harbor.

Daenerys and Jorah discuss strategy often these days. Making up for lost time, it seems.

She nips at the fleshy part of his palm playfully.

“Gods, Daenerys,” he manages, struggling to keep his own responses under control, finding himself at her mercy again, despite his better judgment, despite the flimsy canvas door that is all that keeps their activities secret from the entire camp.

She’s recovered from the last wave so he removes his hand, bringing it back down to perch at her braced knee, sliding up her thigh, as she rolls her hips over him again, smoothly and with an aching delay, her motions mirroring the build of a cresting wave.

“You like this?” she wonders, seductively, grinning as she sees him struggling to keep his own mouth shut, groaning as he draws her closer, burying his reply in the sheer fabric at her soft breasts. She rests her elbows on his broad shoulders, fingers playing in his hair.

Her white coat is lying in a heap beside his sword belt and scabbard, discarded on the furs thrown over the tent floor. They’re both wearing far too many clothes for her liking, but it’s not to be helped.

These are stolen moments, with little time to spare.

She longs for a secluded tower in a faraway country, fashioned for just the two of them, where they can do this properly. As often as they like, as loudly as they like.

But for now, they remain quiet. As much as it pains her. As much as it currently kills him. His grip on her tightens, his fingers spreading over her back, and she feels a flood of heat filling the core between her legs, her muscles clenching and her body arching of its own accord, on a gasp of pleasure that catches her by surprise.

She breathes through it. Without his control, she must be the steady one, but the only steadiness she can claim is what she’s learned from him.

And Jorah Mormont is currently fucking his queen in a tattered war tent on the cold road to Winterfell. And this isn’t the first time this has happened either.

The inconvenience of falling in love in the midst of the greatest war the world has ever seen is not lost on either of them. But nor is it enough to make them stop.

After a few minutes, their breathing patterns are restored, the fevered need ebbing on a slow, rhythmic release, their many kisses finding each other all over again. Daenerys is tracing his bearded jawline with her fingers, grinning against the attentions of his soft mouth. Jorah is ringing her waist, keeping her balanced and snug in place, as they are in no hurry to uncouple.

They’re in the middle of calmer, afterglow kisses when the shadow of Missandei’s boots appear beneath the fluttering edge of the tent’s vestibule.

“Your Grace?” Missandei clears her throat, waiting just outside. “May I come in?”

Daenerys groans into Jorah’s mouth, her disappointment evident. Stolen minutes are a luxury, always over before she’s ready. But they’re used to this by now, and move quickly, with practice. Her fingers untangle from the front of his shirt and he releases his hold on her waist. She slides off his lap reluctantly, one last, lingering kiss complicating their efforts. They continue the kiss even as she pulls him to his feet, breaking away twice before it sticks.

Daenerys shakes out her wrinkled skirt, smoothing her bodice flat as Jorah ties up the laces of his breeches.

“Am I decent?” Daenerys asks him, seeking his blue eyes, using him as a mirror. He gives a small smirk on the word “decent”, musing on the pretty blush that stains her cheeks. He brings his hand up to risk another caress, the back of his knuckles brushing her flushed skin affectionately.

His smirk lessens as he regards her intricate braids, and what his own hand has done to them.

“The left side needs to be redone,” he mutters, cringing at his own carelessness. “I apologize, Khaleesi…”

“Missandei will fix it,” Daenerys shrugs off the trouble. But she enjoys teasing him nonetheless. She warns, “But we’ll have to teach you how to braid hair, Ser, in case she’s nowhere to be found next time.”

“Hmm…,” he huffs non-committedly, as he reaches down to the furs at their feet, handing her the winter-white coat first, before retrieving his own sword and belt.

“I’m here, Missandei,” Daenerys finally answers her handmaiden, unwilling to let Missandei freeze in the cold any longer. She does up the front buttons of her coat, while moving to the squat table in the center of the enclosed space.

The translator enters on hesitant footsteps, keeping her dark brown eyes downcast a moment longer, just in case. But she finds the queen and her general in modest decorum, Daenerys picking over correspondence with feigned interest, while Ser Jorah is reaffixing his sword belt, both standing with a healthy amount of false distance between them.

The pretense is for Missandei’s benefit, so she might deny knowledge of the affair, should she wish. Daenerys is not hiding anything from her friend but they still haven’t spoken of it explicitly. Not in so many words.

And yet, Missandei seemed to know at once. The first morning at sea, Missandei watched Jorah and Daenerys exchange a simple, seemingly innocent glance across the sailors’ mess hall table and her observant eyes immediately snapped with sudden comprehension of what had transpired in the night.

Ser Jorah and the Queen, Ser Jorah and the Queen…

She’s been covering for them ever since.

Missandei doesn’t delay in relaying her message, “Ser Davos asked me to fetch you. Jon Snow would like to discuss the order of the procession into Winterfell.”

The girl from Naath is already at Daenerys’s side, her talented hands undoing the wrecked braids and then tying them up once more, silver strand over silver strand, making sure her monarch is presentable for the meeting with the King in the North.

“He wants us to ride in together, I’m sure,” Daenerys mumbles, casting a glance Jorah’s way. He nods at her words.

“That’s the only way to present a united front to his sister,” he mentions, gently reminding her, “And that’s what was agreed, yes?”

Oh, I suppose. Daenerys sighs, not looking forward to the end of this journey in the least.

She’s not unhappy with her decision to help Jon. She saw what manner of creature gathers above the Wall. And she doesn’t regret choosing to sail to White Harbor and then ride to Winterfell. Whatever Jorah’s reservations might be, it bought her these last four weeks.

Four, glorious weeks that she wouldn’t trade, perhaps not even for the Iron Throne.

For the future is unknowable, and she’s rather fond of the present. Very fond, she thinks, as her eyes remain locked with her lover.

“Maybe I’ll tell him I’d rather ride Drogon into Winterfell, after all?” Daenerys proposes, eyes sparkling on the audacious idea. Her mood is confident and impulsive, all the more daring for the manner in which she’s spent the last hour.

Gods help us all. Jorah sets his jaw, hoping her words are in jest.

They are only miles away from cementing the alliance with the North. Only hours away from greeting Sansa Stark and the assembled lords of the North, in humility and grace. Now is not the time to make a show of dragonfire.

Daenerys merely grins at his dour look, guessing his thoughts. She blows him an impish kiss before striding from the tent, off to mingle with the lords of Westeros.

Jorah falls in step behind her, as always. But Missandei stops him at the tent’s entrance, just for a moment, reaching forward to adjust his coat and pull the man’s collar up by a quarter inch, to better hide the telltale mark that Daenerys, in her passion, has left behind on his skin.

“Have a care, Ser Jorah…,” Missandei clucks her tongue, but the woman’s eyes dance merrily and her perceptive smile is freely given, if bitten back only for the sake of propriety and this false pretense they’re all playing at.

She doesn’t mind. She’ll play along as long as they need her too.

If not for Jorah Mormont and Daenerys Targaryen, Missandei would still be chains in Astapor, allowed to speak only for the purpose of translating crass lines, allowed to live only at the pleasure of a master who owned her, body and voice.

For this alone, she will love them both until the day she dies. And begrudge them no joy found in each other’s company.

They deserve it, after all those years spent torn apart—by mistakes, regrets and the whims of a cruel world. Missandei remembers too well the silent, terrible tears Daenerys shed after she dismissed Ser Jorah the first time. She recalls the hollow grief that Daenerys brought back with her from Vaes Dothrak.

I’ll never see him again, I’ll never hear his voice…

“Thank you, Missandei,” Jorah replies now, gifting her a warm look of gratitude, while managing the final adjustment himself. The mark is hidden. The danger is avoided.

For the present, at least…

Ser Jorah holds the flap of the tent door aloft, ushering Missandei through first. They exit the Queen’s tent, joining Daenerys in the snows.

Chapter Text

Brandon Stark is dead.

He died in an icy, bone-cluttered cave in the wilds above the Wall, on the same night as Summer and Hodor. The same night as the last Child of the Forest. And the old man who lived in the roots of a weirwood tree, whose soul tore away like a scrap of ragged, black cloth.

Only Meera Reed emerged from that cave alive, and sometimes she wishes she hadn’t.

She feels survivor’s guilt, she feels the ache of frostbite that still bothers her hands on these cold, winter nights, burning her fingers as she dragged Bran’s sled away from that tainted, ruined place, her desperate, desperate cries of “Hold the door!” ringing out across the swirling snows of a frozen wasteland, her voice echoing across time itself.

Hold the door!

At Greywater Watch, Meera tries not to remember what she saw. Or how she failed. She tells her father that she failed miserably, and her voice breaks as she tells him what happened to Jojen and Hodor, Summer and Bran…

The Three-Eyed Raven doesn’t know why she should think that she failed. He often turns his discerning eye to the house of Howland Reed, to watch the man’s daughter brush her hot tears away with stubborn fingers, wondering why she should be so melancholy. He survived, didn’t he?

In the end, that’s all that matters. That the Three-Eyed Raven survives. To watch, to learn, to see.

And now he sits, calmly, wordlessly, waiting in the courtyard at Winterfell, on the morning Jon Snow returns to his father’s house.

No, not his father. Bran, or the young man who still looks like Bran, thinks wisely. He muses on the truth, Ned Stark was Jon’s uncle.

Bran sees much. Bran sees all. The past, present and future pass over him like crashing waves along a shoreline, bringing in weeds and shells and odder wonders back from the sea. He stops to examine some of them with interest. Others, he leaves alone, to be picked over later.

When there’s more time…

His eye’s been drawn east, where he watches the Wall at Eastwatch collapse under the heat of blue flames. He doesn’t turn his eye away until he hears the thunder of horses and rattle of spears fill his ears to a point that he can no longer ignore. The noise and clamor of a great host approaches. They’re nearly at the gate. Jon Snow will expect his brother to greet him, with joy and thanksgiving.

Reluctantly, the Three-Eyed Raven brings his gaze back from Eastwatch.

Not his brother. His cousin…Bran's gaze wanders out beyond the gates of Winterfell to follow the procession in.

He sees Jon riding beside the dragon queen, both tall and proud at the head of their combined armies. He sees them pass teeming crowds that have gathered to watch Jon Snow’s return, and the strange, uncommon spectacle of Unsullied and Dothraki marching in Westeros.

Bran joins them. He’s in the hooves of skittish horses. He’s in the roll and rattle of Tyrion Lannister’s wagon wheels. He’s in the gloomy faces of the suspicious crowd.

“I warned you,” he hears Jon Snow tell Daenerys, as Jon notes the grim, glowering faces of those they pass. “Northerners don’t much trust outsiders.”

Bran watches Daenerys bristle at his cousin’s words. She says nothing in reply. Her hands are itching on the leather reins, tempted to pull her mount back. She’s refusing to cast a brief glance behind her, over her shoulder, but she wants to. Jorah Mormont rides just behind his queen.

A sudden gasp erupts from the crowd, as a howl and screech sound out far above them, both glorious and terrible. And now the tension on Daenerys’s face melts away. She smiles, very softly and much to herself, as her dragons whoosh over her armies and fly low over the battlements of Winterfell.

Dragons!

The boy who once was Brandon Stark, the one that still lives somewhere deep in the Three-Eyed Raven’s head, rejoices at the sight, clapping his hands. Oh, how that boy wanted to fly. From his cradle until the day he woke and was told he’d never walk again. When he was young, he climbed everything, towers, walls and trees, much to his mother’s dismay.

The Three-Eyed Raven remembers it all vividly. He can feel the wind rush past as Bran tumbles from the top of the Broken Tower, clutching at empty air. Just as he can feel the wind rush past the dragons’ wings, as they bank on frosty winds, circling the Stark castle.

Brandon, come down…Catelyn’s voice booms out loudly, echoing from the land beyond graves.

Bran’s focus returns to the ground, and to the snow-covered courtyard he sits in, with a wool blanket thrown over his knees. Sansa and the others stand. There’s tension here, laced with the same suspicion that infects the crowds outside, only heightened at the sight of those dragons. Using Bran’s eyes, the Three-Eyed Raven follows Jon Snow once more, as the young man suddenly breaks away from his party and rides gallantly through the gate, leaving Daenerys to follow.

Jon catches sight of Bran first, and cannot hold himself back.

He dismounts quickly and rushes to the Three-Eyed Raven’s side. With unreserved affection, Jon drops down to press a kiss against Bran’s forehead. And with a brotherly tone which borders on patronizing, he says, “Look at you. You’re a man.”

A pause lingers in the cold air. Bran tries to remember how to smile, but his lips refuse the call.

“Almost,” he grants Jon, attempting to answer in a manner appropriate to a seventeen-year-old boy. But the Three-Eyed Raven doesn’t have the patience for this sort of sentimental nonsense, and his tone turns as cryptic as ever, bringing a flicker of hesitation to Jon’s brooding features.

What have you done with my brother?

Jon can sense the change but doesn’t know what it means. He searches Bran’s face but finds nothing concrete to hold onto. No joy, no surprise, no love.

Jon will learn in time. The Three-Eyed Raven does not feel. He watches. He sees. He remembers.

And his attention now shifts, as Jon recovers, seeking out Sansa’s warmer greetings, and Bran finds someone more interesting to fix his gaze upon.

Daenerys Targaryen, the long lost princess, the presumed heir to the Iron Throne of Westeros, has come to Winterfell.

She climbs down from her mare carefully, with Jorah Mormont appearing at her side to help her from the saddle. There’s no scandal in this. He’s her sworn sword, he’s her stalwart protector. He’s stood at her side on both sides of the sea.

Jorah’s hands leave her waist, but slowly, and not until both of her feet are solidly on the ground. And now they stand across the courtyard, demurely, side by side and only a few feet apart, giving Jon time to greet his family alone.

Bran continues to stare at these two exiles, with rapt interest.

No, not two. He amends the number in his head, his lips moving ever so slightly on deep knowledge that is hidden from all the others. From Jon Snow. From Jorah Mormont.

Hidden even from her, Daenerys Targaryen.

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know that she carries another with her. She doesn’t yet know she’s pregnant with Jorah Mormont’s child.

The babe is still tiny in her womb, but has been growing for many weeks. Bran sees a ship, a tryst, a secret affair.

Jorah, please…

The child’s bloodlines are traced to Old Valyria and the First Men, to the ancient houses of fierce bears and fearsome dragons both. The Three-Eyed Raven absorbs this newfound knowledge with an unreadable expression gracing his unreadable features.

Across the courtyard, Ser Jorah Mormont and Daenerys Targaryen exchange a glance, speaking without words. If Bran looks into the past, he can see this same glance reflected, a thousand times, in Dragonstone, in Meereen, in Qarth and in the Great Grass Sea. Blue eyes meeting violet ones and holding them steady.

“Your Grace, this is my sister, Sansa Stark,” Jon is making introductions, and Daenerys steps forward to greet the Lady of Winterfell.

She placates Sansa and compliments her beauty, with a soft tone that Jorah encouraged. And in response, Sansa tolerates the foreign queen, with a steely regard that would have made her father proud. Ned never trusted the dragons. It’s difficult to trust a family that burns your own to ash.

Why else would he have kept the truth from Jon? A truth Jon deserved to know. A truth he’ll learn before the week is done.

“Winterfell is yours, Your Grace,” Sansa’s voice is frosted, like the grey stones of the castle walls, chilled as the winter air that surrounds them. And the dragon queen bristles again.

I’ve not come to conquer the North. I’m coming to save the North. Bran can hear the repetition of those words loudly, and wonders if she’s saying them to herself, in her head, to keep her less charitable thoughts at bay. After a beat, Daenerys swallows back any further reply, offering her hostess one more pleasing smile, one that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

Jon Snow breathes a small sigh of relief, missing the chill in Sansa’s voice and the falseness of Daenerys’s smile. But the alliance is made. Winterfell and Dragonstone will face the Night King as one force.

But how long will it last?

Jon Snow will be publicly declared Aegon Targaryen before long. There’s no keeping that secret hidden. And Daenerys will feel her child quicken soon enough. Conflict brews between the King in the North and the Silver Queen, even if they don’t realize it yet.

Bran considers a dance of dragons.

Not the one playing out in the winter sky, as Drogon and Rhaegal dip and glide over the ramparts of the North’s greatest stronghold, striking wonder and fear into the hearts of the northern lords gathered here.

The Three-Eyed Raven cannot see the future with perfect clarity. No one can. There’s a masked woman across the sea who tells better fortunes than the gods, but even she warns against claiming knowledge of times unlived.

The smallest act in the present can have the most profound consequence on the future. Change one thread and it changes the entire tapestry.

The Three-Eyed Raven knows this. But he also knows one thread that’s been sewn so securely, it might as well be made of iron. Those standing in this courtyard will not escape its influence, as their fates are written upon it.

For no matter what happens, this alliance ends with bloodstains in the snow.

Chapter Text

Daenerys feels her heart drop to her shoes. Her mouth goes dry and her expression falls. The cheery tease and warmth from only moments before, while they spoke of pardons for the minor crime of stealing old books, vanishes like smoke.

Like the smoke that rose off the charred remains of Randyll and Dickon Tarly at the Blackwater Rush…

She feels a loss of control, like she’s stumbled, falling without arms to catch her. She hasn’t felt this way for a long, long time. Not since that terrible day in Meereen when she stupidly snatched her hand back from the man who now stands beside her, her mouth twisting on cruel, unkind words that drove him away.

But he came back. Jorah always came back. And together, they’ve mended that mistake a hundred times over.

Long ago and long forgotten…its sting has been worn down, replaced by words of love, spoken against bare flesh in the night, and lingering looks of lasting affection, exchanged in secret, while the others aren’t watching.

And sometimes, even when they are.

Sam witnesses the queen and Ser Jorah share a grin together over his first request. When he asks about Heartsbane and a second pardon, he sees their grins fall away, so quickly, as another mistake soon becomes painfully clear. To all three of them.

Not…Randyll Tarly?

But this isn’t a mistake that Daenerys can mend.

“I…Your Grace, may I…?” Samwell Tarly fumbles over the clumsy, shredded words, while struggling to hold back tears—the fat, undignified tears of a child who just lost his father and his brother in the same breath.

No matter that his father had treated him lower than the dogs at Horn Hill; no matter that his brother had failed to defend him at every chance.

His father and brother are gone forever. Any chance of reconciliation with his family, no matter how unlikely, has been cut off at Daenerys’s words, jaggedly. Sam’s brow furrows, his eyes flutter on a searing pain. His feelings on his father were complicated before, but are now torn away in an instant, raw and forever bleeding.

Daenerys knows how that feels. She knows how she blamed those who stole her own father and brother from her too. Mad and unworthy, they might have been. But they were hers.

“Of course,” she gives him leave, in a thin, reedy voice. She wants him to stay, she wants to explain. But how can she not let him go? The man is struggling not to weep in front of them. As Sam brushes by them in a rush, his red eyes are averted and his steps are hurried. Daenerys swallows hard on a bitter taste as they watch him dash away, desperate to leave their presence.

As he disappears beyond the library arches, Daenerys looks up at Jorah, helplessly, just as desperately.

I didn’t know, I didn’t know…

It doesn’t matter, and they both know it. Randyll and Dickon Tarly made a choice and so did she. Tyrion might claim it was unnecessary and cruel, but how could he blame her for executing men who wouldn’t accept her and who denied her such a simple request? Hadn’t Tyrion admitted to her that he’d done the same with his own father?

Bend the knee.

Don’t say whore again.

It was justice, the kind rendered in war. But it does little to mend what’s been done. Or the fact that Sam Tarly is now hurting, with a son’s anger mixing in his grief. Tyrion may not believe it, but she takes little pleasure in causing pain. Not to anyone.

But especially not to the man who saved Jorah’s life.

After dinner with the Starks, she’d asked Jorah to take her to Sam, to thank him personally and shower him with praise for the kind service he’d done her. Instead, with a word, she’s brought tears of pain to that man’s eyes. She has done that. No one else.

Jorah bows his head, lowering his chin nearly to his chest, with his expression stern and conflicted. By instinct, she reaches out for his forearm, steadying herself with that familiar, needed touch serving as a link between them.

Gods, he wouldn’t be here if not for Sam.

And she knows Sam risked much by intervening, all for a man he didn’t know. A man he could have just as easily let die in the dank, putrid cells of the Citadel, as he owed him nothing. And if he had…Daenerys would have received the cold comfort of Jorah’s farewell letter at Dragonstone, instead of the warm embrace of the man himself.

Khaleesi, I have loved you…

She feels sick on the acute reminder that she might lose Jorah. The idea has become foreign once again. Forgotten. Their terrible habit of saying farewell is over. That time is gone. She resists its renewal, stubbornly. Jorah has returned to her, for good this time. She will keep him with her always. He’s promised that he’ll never leave her again.

And she has Sam Tarly to thank for it.

She blinks back a couple of her own tears. Of frustration. Of grief, over what she’s done. It’s weak of her, perhaps, and certainly unqueenly, but there’s only Jorah to see her do it. And he knows her feelings, sometimes before she knows them herself, reading her misery plainly.

I don’t belong here…

This country has been sour towards her, from the first.

Since she landed on these shores, nothing has gone right. Nothing. No dragon banners or shouts of joy greet her in the streets. The crowds from White Harbor to Winterfell were sullen and skeptical, if not outright hostile. Most of her allies are gone, decimated by Tyrion’s failed schemes. Her dragons remain caged, if not in chains, then by politics—with her advisors too afraid that using them will turn the common people against her.

But it feels like they’re against her anyway. Especially here. In Winterfell, where she’s been met with suspicion and fear, its people as cold as the frozen wasteland they live in. Sansa Stark’s nettling words and the northern lords’ unchecked anger at Jon Snow’s oath of allegiance have been ringing in her ears all day.

This is not her war. She’s come to save them and stand with them against the hordes of dead men that are currently rushing through a hole in the Wall at Eastwatch, and yet all she’s received in return are snide remarks and grim, tight-lipped scowls.

Winterfell is yours, Your Grace. Sansa’s wintry tone said otherwise.

Jon has done little to soften his sister’s welcome. He gave Daenerys scant support in the Great Hall earlier, as Lyanna Mormont scolded him for giving up his crown and Sansa jabbed, with thinly veiled displeasure, at Daenerys’s presence in Winterfell, complaining of the effort required to feed the armies that have come to her aid. Jon stuck to his familiar mantra that “we must stick together” but said little else.

But after the dead come? If they beat all the odds and triumph? Despite all his speeches of honor and oaths, Daenerys has begun to wonder if Jon’s loyalty will extend beyond the coming battle. She’s not blind. She watched Jon greet his family in the courtyard, with warmth and affection.

With relief at being home again. This is Jon’s home, Sansa’s home, not hers.

I want to go home…

Jorah knows she feels adrift here, even if they haven’t spoken of it. Not in words. He tugs her close and she comes immediately, always grateful to sew up the distance between them, no matter how small. He presses a kiss against her forehead, risking much, as they are in the halls of Winterfell, in chambers that are neither private nor secure. But she’s glad he does it.

She closes her eyes on her bear’s chaste, steadying kiss.

“We can’t change our past,” he reminds her, gently, knowing how her mind is spinning on what just transpired with Sam. “Randyll Tarly knew the consequences of his decision. You didn’t force the son to follow his father.”

She nods, but doesn’t say a word in her own defense. She’s so tired. She’d forgotten. The road to Winterfell had been long and a pleasing break from all…this. In Jorah’s arms, she was able to forget.

That Westeros does not love her. That Westeros does not want her here. That satisfying some means disappointing others. That there are no easy answers in war. But that men will constantly look at what she’s done and declare it wrong anyway.

Wrong. And mad. Like her father.

Darkness has fallen outside the castle walls, the moon rising on a crisp night. The candle-lit air in the hall is suddenly too stifling. She has an urge to flee the musty confines of the Stark holdfast and taste the freedom of open air, if only for a little while. But she doesn’t want to go alone.

She curls her fingers around Jorah’s wrist, “Come…”

He rode a dragon once before.

And then a few more times after that…Daenerys thinks, allowing herself a little grin as they make the long walk past the castle walls and beyond the tented encampment, up to the snowy, frosted moors where Drogon and Rhaegal have settled, still awake and picking over the bones of their dinner like fussy children.

As they walk together through the hard-packed snow, illuminated by torches and then the silver moon, her gaze wanders to her knight, dressed for the freezing weather in rich, brown furs and boiled leather. His practical garb from the road has been exchanged for those trimmings befitting a lord, all natural vitality and strength.

The Lord of Bear Island, returning home after years in exile.

He’s always been a handsome man, no matter what he wears—quilted wool in Pentos, that gold linen shirt that he seemed so attached to in the desert, the armor that had been fashioned for him before they reached Slaver’s Bay, with a bear sigil at his waist and engraved dragons twisting up either pauldron.

He specifically asked for the armorist to add dragons. For her sake. Her smile warms on the memory.

Of course, her eyes are softer for him now than ever before. She’s in love with him. It nearly amuses her how deep her feelings go, and how they grow, wildly, like summer vines around stonework. She can’t get enough of him. His voice in her ear, his hands on her body, the taste of his kisses in her mouth.

She briefly considers scrapping her impulsive plan and just tricking him into going to bed, in her chambers, despite their mutual agreement that they must be careful here in Winterfell, where the great battle looms. The castle is crowded with Stark bannermen and prying eyes are everywhere.

They probably shouldn’t be seen walking together, at least not alone, but the moors beyond the encampment are secluded and half the countryside is already asleep, as the hour grows late.

And honestly, she doesn’t care.

Because she can’t stand it here. She’s been here less than a day and she can’t stand it. She feels caged by plots, and trapped by whispers. Judged harshly for every word she speaks and every move she makes. Her teeth are on edge, her mind hums on mounting tension.

The only time she feels calm and steady is when she’s with Jorah. If she can’t spend the night with him in Winterfell, she’ll have to find someplace she can.

The dragons sniff the air, snorting a little steam, and stretch their wings, as they see familiar figures approach up the sloping hill.

She knows Rhaegal will let him climb on. Of the three, Rhaegal has always loved Jorah best, even as a newborn hatchling. In the Red Waste, he would often hop from her shoulder to his, trailing down the man’s strong, sun-tanned arm, to perch in the palm of Jorah’s large paw.

And Jorah would smile broadly, despite the heat and the oppressive glare of the sun on sand, at the wondrous sight of a tiny, green dragon curled up in his calloused hand.

All the dragons loved Jorah, as they’d known him since they were born. His voice was the first they heard in the whole world, even before their mother’s, as he sank to his knees in the ash of Khal Drogo’s funeral pyre, overcome by what he saw after the flames burned out.

Blood of my blood…

Even Drogon, jealous and mercenary with his affections, spares a slight head nuzzle towards his old friend, as Daenerys and Jorah take a moment to greet the dragons, stroking the scales beneath their massive chins and warm snouts, worrying over the loss of appetite that has only increased as they’ve traveled further north.

“The dragons don’t like the North,” Jorah mentions, but his eyes are on her as he says the words.

“Perhaps that’s because they haven’t seen enough of it,” Daenerys muses, hoping it’s true. For their sakes, for hers. Her tone is hopeful but firm, as she’s still attempting to convince him that this plan is not a foolhardy one.

“We have to be back by morning,” Jorah forces the promise from her, knowing too well that Daenerys tends towards rashness lately, knowing that she likely doesn’t care if she offends their hosts by disappearing in the night without telling them where she’s gone.

He’s right on that score. Let them wonder.

“We will,” she replies, granting him the promise, begging with her eyes. “Jorah, please. The dragons are fast and you know the way.”

“Aye,” he mentions evenly, a flicker of hesitation playing out on his somber features.

“You’re not afraid, are you?” Daenerys decides to tease him lightly. She gives a cursory glance over the vast emptiness of the Winterfell fields, and the shadows that hide them, before stretching up on tip-toes to gently run her teeth against the soft part of his ear lobe. She whispers, “I can personally vouch that you know how to ride a dragon, my lord.”

He smirks at the sly insinuation, giving her a sideways glance before moving to Rhaegal’s massive shoulder, tracing the rise of the dragon’s green scales on his way by. Jorah’s as good on horseback as any Dothraki. He moves with precision and grace in the sparring yard. He has a keen sense of balance and the lauded strength of his countrymen. And Rhaegal likes him, bending his wing low to better allow Jorah’s climb on his thorny back.

Jorah finds his perch smoothly, as if he’s been riding dragons for years. This pleases Daenerys immensely, and she grins up at him before scaling Drogon, her heart hammering on the rush of a nighttime excursion.

“Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’m likely to be, Khaleesi…”

The dragons alight from the snowy moors with a thrust of wings, sending them straight up in the chilly air of a star-lit night. The sky is clear and the moon is full, reflecting off white snow and lighting up the whole countryside in a bright, but eerie, blue-grey.

Rhaegal and Drogon skirt the Stark castle, banking quietly, seeming to know that their activities tonight are to be kept clandestine. They head northwest, as Jorah leads. She told him that the dragons can sense feelings and impressions from their riders. He need only think of home, and they’ll take them there.

Home.

Bear Island.

When they were stranded in the Red Waste, wandering beneath a hot sun that beat down on them until their skin peeled red and their throats went dry, she used to ask him to tell her stories of his home, of snow dusting the spruce and pines, bears hunting salmon in wild, rushing rivers and high waterfalls that crashed into a cold sea. She would close her eyes and imagine herself there, in those cooling waters, scents of wintergreen and pine needles in the deep woods, sprays of salt and ice off the northern sea.

She’s never had a home. Not really. A red door, a lemon tree. Snatched away too early. So when she thinks of the word, she often thinks of his. She thinks of him.

And if they are all going to die soon, she wants to see it. Just once.

It takes hours but the rugged island finally rises up out of the frothy, frost-kissed sea, a craggy shadow in the night, bathed in the same blue-silver as the rest of the northern hemisphere, white and pale and sharp, its jagged cliffs and thick, evergreen forests visible as they approach across the narrow channel.

The waves below crash against the Island’s snow-crusted beaches, but the Mormont Keep is dark and still, the seaside villages are nearly empty. Lyanna Mormont, the little she-bear, keeps faith with House Stark at Winterfell, and Bear Island is currently left to the creatures of the forest and of the sea, to hold in trust, until their lady and her fighters return.

A lone fox stalks the night beach, looking for mice in the snow. White owls hoot out from the woods, perched in branches adorned in crystalline ice. A pod of whales surface in the black waters surrounding the Island. Daenerys can see the silhouettes of their white bodies outlined as she flies over them, looking like sea monsters under moon glow and Drogon’s shadow.

The waterfall that Jorah’s described to her a thousand times remains unfrozen, even in subzero temperatures, and Daenerys’s breath catches as it comes into view. She’s stunned by the cold, night-clad beauty of this remote and wild place, having worried that Bear Island would fall short of her expectations.

The rest of Westeros certainly has…

They touch down at the height of that waterfall, beside the iced-over streams and tributaries that feed it. The dragons explore the winding coast as Jorah and Daenerys linger in that high place, alone, surrounded by tall, tinseled evergreens, staring out at dark waters.

Daenerys is nearly speechless, as she’s finally found one thing in this wretched country that she likes. Two things, rather…

She kisses Jorah on his Island. They are completely free here, away from everyone and everything, her arms twining his fur-lined collar to pull his tall frame down to meet her. Their lips are cold but the kiss is heated, despite the chilled night air that tries to freeze their lungs. A frosty salt spray hits the black rocks far below them, where the waterfall plunges into the harbor, sending up iced fog that climbs the cliff side.

They are much further north than Winterfell and Daenerys hates the cold as much as Drogon and Rhaegal. But she feels nothing but warmth, a liquid fire in her belly that spreads throughout her body and is kept simmering by the bear who holds her close.

Their midnight kisses finally abate, and then she is leaning back against Jorah’s chest, wrapped in the snug warmth and safety of his steady arms, as they stand together at the Top of the World, like two immortals from an old fairy tale, silently indulging in this rare moment of peace before returning to a swirling storm that gathers in the south.

Daenerys feels it coming for her like the first tendrils of a hurricane. But she ignores it.

“Your home is beautiful, Jorah,” Daenerys says now, wishing she could stay here with him until the sun rises. She’d like to see the Island wake under winter’s pale sunlight, glittering in ice and sparkling waters.

She will someday. And the next time she stands in this spot, it will be with a child in her arms.

The same child that grows within her even as they stand there, both unknowing, unable to fathom the notion of a baby, distracted by the wars to come. And having been told by a witch, long ago, that such a thing would be impossible.

Until the sun rises in the west and sets in the east…

The riddle won’t be untangled until someone makes a trip west of Westeros and finds that the East is closer than any of them might expect. Over there, where the sun is known to sink into the sea at dusk.

“Aye, Daenerys,” Jorah answers her softly, while pressing another kiss against her hair. “She is.”

Chapter Text

Sansa doesn’t like the dragon queen.

She hasn’t liked her since she first heard her name: Daenerys Targaryen.

Spoken by Cersei or Joffrey or Tywin Lannister years ago in the capital, first as a nagging inconvenience and later, as a growing threat. Sansa should’ve been happy at the Targaryen princess’s triumphs back then, as news of conquest and that girl’s dragons always seemed to unnerve her captors.

Even when nothing else would—not whispers of scandal, not a siege, not assassinations nor enemies from within. Sansa knew this firsthand, watching much of those calamities happen in front of her eyes.

The thought of Jaime Lannister roaming these halls needles her fiercely, but she’s made a vow not to set her mind against the idea. If only for Brienne’s sake.

But Sansa’s made no such vow regarding Daenerys. And when the silver-haired woman first rode through the gates of Winterfell, reaching for Jorah Mormont’s steadying arms as the knight helped her down from her horse, Sansa found herself suppressing a scowl.

A fortnight has passed, and she likes her little better now.

Well, it’s not so much that she doesn’t like her. Like has little to do with Sansa’s feelings anymore. On anything, really. Like and love are meaningless, words that exist only in fairy tales. It’s all nonsense, filled with lies.

Trust. That’s the word she should use. She doesn’t trust Daenerys Stormborn. And the Targaryen name remains a bitter one for a Stark to swallow. Jon knows this. Sansa is unnerved that he chooses to ignore it.

“I’ve told you. I’ve bent the knee to her,” Jon refuses to budge. His damn honor. He’s so much like their father sometimes, it hurts. The Sept of Baelor springs to mind, as always, but Sansa suppresses her memories of that fateful day—the raging crowd noise, the halting lilt in her father’s hoarse confession, Ser Ilyn pulling down his black hood, her own screams and pleas for mercy from anyone who would hear her.

Gods, you were such a little fool…

Sansa blinks those thoughts away, and instead faces her brother, rigidly. They’re in her personal quarters. The quarters of the Lady of Winterfell. She can say what she likes to him here, she can question him and argue with him, without having him undermine or ignore her words in front of the other lords.

She’s learned to have these discussions in private, where he might take better heed. Is it fair he only listens to her when they’re alone? No. But does she care? Not if it means he’ll take her words under advisement. Not if it means saving the North.

From whoever would try to take it from them. Lannister or Greyjoy, dead men or a silver-haired dragon queen.

Sansa wonders why he’s being so stubborn on this. He must know the position he’s put them all in. The North had routed out the Boltons and declared itself free. Finally free. Jon left Winterfell as the King in the North. He returned a loyal, unmovable subject of a queen none of them had pledged allegiance to.

Still, he tries the same worn-out argument, that grows thinner by the day, “She’s come to help us, which is more than anyone else has done. She’s brought two dragons to fight alongside us. We can’t do this without her.”

“But why, Jon?” Sansa wonders, honestly.

She’s not questioning him to be difficult. She’s tried to open her mind to this alliance, she truly has. But nagging doubts eat at any good will and the longer they wait for the dead men to arrive, the more Sansa begins to think of what comes after.

Littlefinger’s lessons rooted themselves too deep in her heart to be torn up. She may have had Arya cut his throat, but his silvery voice still echoes in her ear. And she can’t ignore it. She can’t go back to being a little fool. She won’t.

Sansa knows too well that a person’s true motivations are complicated things. And what appears to be is not always the case.

So she asks her brother plainly, trying to understand, “Why would she abandon the pursuit of her whole life to come protect the North…unless you’ve promised her something? Unless you mean something to her?”

She looks at him with a telling, frank gaze. She’s not talking of armies and horses now, barricades and trenches, all those dragon-glass fortified defenses the Northmen and the Unsullied have been erecting day and night, in a race against the monsters of winter.

She’s not talking about politics, alliances of war and state. Her lips are drawn in a narrow line, waiting for him to answer. Her grey-blue eyes betray assumptions and ask the question her mouth would consider too crass.

Are you fucking the Silver Queen?

Jon meets her gaze, perhaps surprised that she’s being so blunt about it. He pauses but soon shakes his head.

“No,” Jon says. “You’ve got it wrong.”

“She’s beautiful. There’s no denying it,” Sansa replies without jealousy, bringing her hands together in front of her. She’s only speaking facts. “I wondered why you stayed at Dragonstone all those weeks…”

Jon doesn’t answer, his eyes on his hands, his hands gripping the back of the nearest chair. Sansa sighs a little, “Lord Tyrion and Ser Davos talk of little else, Jon. You’ve been here a fortnight and they’ve been planning your wedding nearly the entire time. You must’ve noticed.”

“They have it wrong, I tell you,” Jon is more forceful this time, with conflict in his voice. A little regret, a little longing…a little repulsion? She hears it, or she thinks she hears it. But it’s a strange combination and she wonders at it.

Jon’s never been good at hiding his feelings. When he was a little boy, and her mother was cruel, he could barely look away in time to hide the tears shining out of his dark eyes. But he’s hiding something now. Has been, nearly since the hour he arrived home.

She thinks it’s an affair between Jon and Daenerys. It’s the obvious answer and the servants have told Sansa that Daenerys’s bed has been shared by someone else, at least once since she arrived in Winterfell. Her sheets betray her dalliance, even if they failed to catch sight of the man himself, gone long before the morning fires were lit.

But why would he hide an alliance that’s expected, even welcomed by some? And why would he lie to Sansa, even if something holds him back from declaring it to the rest of them? If there’s something going on between him and Daenerys, he should say it outright. Jon’s never been one to skirt around the truth.

Perhaps he’s ashamed. But why? Or perhaps…perhaps there’s nothing between them.

You’re not the one she loves. You’re not the one who shares her bed.

The truth settles on Sansa like an iron weight. She looks at his face, the way he swallows, the way his eyes drop further, to the stone floor, and knows it. But Tyrion and Davos seemed so convinced? Were they just willing and hoping it to be true?

“Then why is she here?” Sansa’s at a loss, all her previous theories blowing away like dust.

“Because she saw them,” he answers flatly. “She saw what’s comin’ for us.”

Sansa shakes her head in disbelief, thinking the explanation’s not enough. She hasn’t seen the Others, that’s true. And she trusts Jon when he says it’s worse than all her darkest fears put together. But…

There’s a part of Sansa that is broken. The fractures appeared with Joffrey, the shatter came with Ramsay. And she knows she should fear an army of dead men. The coming storm might slaughter them all.

There’s dread in that thought.

And yet, somehow, she doesn’t much care. If she dies, she dies. Maybe this is what her father felt towards the end too. Some sort of resignation that she can’t put her finger on.

I suppose I feel I’ve lived through the worst…she considers, still unsure why, as the eve of the greatest war the North will ever face approaches, all she can think of is what will happen afterwards.

She won’t let the North go quietly. Not to a foreign queen who knows nothing of this place or its people. Even if Jon is so set on it.

She tells him so.

“That isn’t fair,” Jon argues. “Jorah Mormont’s been with her longer than any of us. He has her ear in all things. You can’t say she knows nothing of the North.”

“Jorah Mormont?” Sansa bristles, huffing a half-laugh in her disbelief. “You do know Father wanted his head once, don’t you? I suppose we’re meant to forget that. And forget that Daenerys Targaryen’s father murdered our grandfather and uncle. Burned them alive, Jon. Do you remember?”

“Aye,” Jon is scowling, grimly. He can’t help it. It’s his most natural expression. “But she’s not her father.”

“How would you know?” Sansa asks. “She burned the Tarlys alive, didn’t she? She set fire to Lannisters in open fields around Blackwater Rush. She’s threatened to burn King’s Landing to ash a dozen times. And across the sea, they say she crucified masters up and down Slaver’s Bay. Locked a man in his own vault…”

“Aye,” Jon says again, louder this time. He repeats himself, “Aye, but she’s not.”

“How can you be so certain? It runs in the Targaryen line. Their blood is tainted.”

“Gods, don’t say that…”

“Why not? It’s true and you know it. And what’s more—”

“Don’t say it…,” Jon interrupts her, with feeling this time. His voice has gone rough, like it’s breaking on a secret. Sansa tilts her head as he says, “Don’t say it or you condemn me with it.”

“What are you talking about?” Sansa’s confused. His tone is so serious. It’s almost as if…

Jon takes his time, moving around the candle-lit chamber in a sort of brooding daze. His distraction has been noticeable to everyone for weeks. They’ve all dismissed it as the distraction of love, which Sansa has tolerated, even if she hasn’t approved. She’s noticed the sympathetic and knowing glances that Sam Tarly has given him, thinking that Jon confided in his best friend. She was a little hurt he didn’t trust her as well, but assumed he would talk to her about it when he was ready.

But this isn’t what she expected.

“Do you remember when we all left Winterfell?” Jon asks her, finally. “You and Arya to King’s Landing, me to the Watch?”

“Of course, I remember,” she looks at him, almost as if he’s mad. How could she ever forget that day? How could any of them? That was the last day they were all together. The last day she saw her mother and Robb and Rickon. If anything can still make her winter-cold heart ache and feel, it’s the sharp memory of that day.

“Father came over to me before I left with Uncle Benjen,” Jon tells her. “He told me we’d talk about my mother next time we saw each other…”

Sansa nods softly, knowing how that turned out.

“And…?” she prods him, as he’s broken off abruptly. Conflict is playing over his features again, but this time in a way she’s never seen before. He’s tortured by this secret, whatever it is. She reaches out, feeling a pit open wide in her stomach, “Jon?”

“I have to tell you something, Sansa,” he replies, making the decision that has plagued him since the night of his arrival, since he met up with Sam in the crypts, speaking over old bones.

Sansa thought they spoke of the dragon queen. Or the White Walkers. She realizes now that it might have been something else entirely.

Jon sets his jaw firmly, exhaling on the words, “Arya too. Send for her, would you?”

Chapter Text

Jorah has noticed that tension between Daenerys and Tyrion. It’s been growing for some time, ever since that meeting in King’s Landing when the dwarf left the Dragonpit to parlay with his sister. Privately, behind closed doors. Tyrion still hasn’t divulged the details of that meeting—what was said, what was promised—but he’d been so confident that Cersei would join them in the north.

Cersei may be a monster, but she’s no fool…

Perhaps this is still true. Only a fool sends her armies north to certain death, after all.

But now Tyrion’s one too, for trusting his sister’s tin-plated words in the first place. Even worse, he convinced Daenerys to trust her. It’s the latest in a long line of missteps and miscalculations, begun almost as soon as Daenerys stepped foot on Dragonstone.

Jaime Lannister revealed the truth of Cersei’s betrayal before the gathered lords. The Kingslayer made it clear that he would be the only Lannister reinforcements they might expect. He was then welcome into their midst, formally, this morning, over Daenerys’s fierce objections.

After the meeting, the tension between Daenerys and Tyrion simmers, wildly. In the narrow hallways leading away from Winterfell’s Great Hall, Jorah’s afraid it’s about to boil over.

And scald them all in the process.

Daenerys no longer trusts her Hand. This is the crux of the matter. She doesn’t trust him. Perhaps with good reason. Since becoming her Hand, Tyrion’s advice has come at a heavy price, and Daenerys has been the one to pay it.

Should they defeat the dead and march south once more, she will be facing Cersei Lannister with worse odds than when she arrived in Westeros, and this is in no small part due to Tyrion and his clumsy advice.

Olenna Tyrell and the knights of High Garden, Ellaria Sand and Prince Oberon’s vengeful daughters, Yara Greyjoy’s Kraken-flagged fleet—all gone, all scattered, like ships against rocks in a storm. Daenerys has one ally left, in the Starks. But even this alliance seems primed to crack, showing fissures already.

Jorah knows all this and he has his own reservations about Tyrion.

But it’s not the moment to play this out. The larger threat looms, so close they can almost taste winter frost on their tongues.

The dead are nearly here. Now is not the time to fight amongst themselves.

Still, he knows Daenerys takes sharp offense to what transpired with Jaime Lannister, the man who murdered her father by shoving a sword through his back. And Daenerys has never been able to hold her tongue, in any case.

She aims the barb well, her tone strong and steely as she stares down the Imp and declares, “You’re either a traitor or a fool.”

She tells Tyrion she’ll find a new Hand soon enough, if he doesn’t correct his course. Her voice doesn’t waver, she shows a dragon’s determination. With a fiery snap in her eyes and rage in her step, she then leaves the men in the hall, seeking to lick her wounds elsewhere.

For she is wounded. Watching her up there with Sansa and Jon, Jorah saw pain cross her features. He knows her thoughts.

Jaime Lannister seized Ned Stark in the streets of King’s Landing and is welcome here. Theon Greyjoy burned this castle to the ground and is welcome here. I abandon my home and delay my birthright to come to their aid, and I’m met with suspicion and scorn…

The uneven scales dig at her. The insult, whether intentional or not, stings.

But it’s more than that. It’s the uncertainty of it all. For all her strong words, Jorah knows she’s less than confident about dismissing Tyrion outright. She doesn’t know what to do with him. She doesn’t know why he keeps failing her, over and over again. They bonded in Meereen. She wants to believe his loyalty and clever mind, but she can’t ignore the fact that his actions are chipping away at her.

Piece by piece.

As Daenerys strides away, Tyrion grumbles and soon storms off, in the opposite direction from his queen. Varys opens his mouth, as if to say something clever and vaguely wise, but then he shrugs instead, to no one in particular. Begging pardon in his simpering way, he slides past Jorah to follow Tyrion, hands hidden in his robes, deepest thoughts hidden in his inscrutable expression.

As is the Spider’s habit.

Now Jorah is left in the hallway by himself to ponder. To try and fix what’s breaking apart.

She’d given him a flickering glance, when she said she’d find a new Hand. The glance had been as steely as her words. Jorah knows this is on her mind, even if she hasn’t said it yet. He knows she’d take that pin off of Tyrion’s vest and give it to him this very hour, if he asked for it. She might do it anyway, despite the danger in showing such an obvious preference.

Even without the danger of drawing more attention to their…connection, he doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He can’t serve as both her Hand and her heart. His judgment is deeply clouded, in ways that Tyrion, for all his mistakes, can’t claim.

Whatever Tyrion’s faults, he preaches caution where Jorah would be apt to let his darling girl do whatever she wanted.

He hesitates only a moment. They have been careful—perhaps not as careful as they ought, but he avoids her private company in daylight, at least. It’s a self-imposed rule that she hates, but agrees to, begrudgingly. Still…

He can’t leave her alone. Not after what just happened in the hall.

Jorah is an even-tempered man, and he’s accustomed to these cold, northern ways. He assumed Daenerys would be met with resistance here. And he knows the Stark children are too young to realize how their own resistance spreads to the others, giving too much leave to the northern lords to dismiss the woman their king has pledged loyalty to.

They call her “Your Grace,” they bow when it’s required. But they isolate her at the head table and keep her at a distance, almost like a wild, untamed animal.

Like a dragon, alone in the world. Except she’s not alone. Gods be good, he’ll make sure she remembers it until his dying breath.

She doesn’t turn at the opened door, not immediately. She expects a servant, or worse, another summons to more northern derision. She’s standing by the fire, hands brought together at her waist, staring into those jumping flames with slightly slumped shoulders.

The fury she showed before Tyrion is gone too quickly, replaced by weariness, an exhaustion that’s been hovering over her since they arrived in Winterfell.

“Khaleesi?”

His voice seems to bring relief to her strained features, near instantly. She turns, the hard line of her mouth softening. Jorah’s heart leaps in his chest, gladly, to see that smile return to her lips.

It’s been weeks since he’s seen her smile. Admittedly, it’s been only a few days since he felt it, running his thumb over her curved lips after he quietly lifted the furs and joined her in bed, finding her awake and waiting for him.

I knew you’d come.

It’s the last time, Daenerys. It has to be…

That’s what you said last time.

Within seconds, she’s left the hearth and she’s in his embrace, before he can caution otherwise. Her arms go around him, holding on tightly. Her cheek is laid flush against his broad chest, armored though it might be.

Daenerys is not the one who holds them to this cruel distance. If it were up to her, he’d spend every night in her chambers, and would certainly stay until morning. He takes pains not to wake her when he leaves, so she won’t convince him against it.

He worries she’ll someday kiss him before all the lords in the Great Hall and just be done with it.

“I don’t know what I was thinking when I made him my Hand,” she admits, her voice colored by vulnerability. A vulnerability that only he is allowed to see. Sometimes, he wishes she’d let the others see this part of her too, the doubts, the fears—they’re a part of her. Nothing to be ashamed of. They make her flesh and blood, not the iron-scaled dragon queen.

But he knows why she won’t. Why she can’t.

She worries they’ll tear her to pieces, picking at any soft underbelly. The Mad King’s daughter can show no weakness. He can’t disagree, but hopes that if the time comes when she must show it, they’ll be gentle. Jon has shown the capacity to sympathize with her, and Jorah thinks Sansa Stark might too, given the chance.

If Daenerys would only take a moment to talk with her, face to face. He’ll suggest this to her a little later. But not now.

Her eyes close, with contentment, as his arms come up and gather her shoulders, pressing her a little closer. She muses against his chest, “They said he was the cleverest man the world over…is he making these mistakes intentionally?”

Jorah can’t read the other man’s mind. And gods, he wouldn’t want to. But he travelled with Tyrion Lannister for weeks. He spoke poetry with the man and fished him out of the Smoking Sea. It’s a gut feeling, of course. But he doesn’t see Tyrion’s mistakes as outright betrayal. The man’s haggard features betray no master plan, just blunders and belief proved false.

Belief in his sister’s word, belief in his brother’s redemption. Belief in fate giving him a kind turn, for once.

But Jorah’s careful with Daenerys, knowing her temper is flaring, knowing she’s thinking the worst. She’s in no mood to hear excuses for Tyrion Lannister.

“He owns his mistakes,” Jorah mentions, but very evenly.

“He should,” she grumbles, still holding him so tightly. She keeps her eyes closed, taking a deep breath. He can guess her thoughts. Like the dragons, she wishes she were a thousand miles away, someplace warm, someplace safe.

Finally, she opens her eyes, tilting her head up, her chin on his chest, so she can meet his gaze, “I should have waited for you to come back.”

“You didn’t know that I would,” he counters, with a sad smile at what might have been.

“You always come back, Jorah,” she replies, with so much confidence in her voice in nearly breaks his heart.

She’s weaving a fiction in her head and has been for weeks, months even; she’s refusing any other truth. She’s said it enough times that he’s begun to suspect it’s superstition. She must say it, to keep it true. Holding onto it steadfastly, stubbornly, despite knowing that this truth will soon be tested to its breaking point.

They’ll be finalizing the battle plan with the Starks later today. And Jorah has told her what he intends. He’ll be on the front lines when the dead come, part of the first defense. There’s no other place for him and she knows it.

That’s not true. You should be in the air, with me.

She had argued this with him, during the last night they spent together, whispering in the dark, her hands crawling up his chest, body cocooned in his warm embrace.

I would be a burden to Rhaegal. He’s used to flying on his own. And it’s better if both dragons are following your commands. He disagreed with her, flatly, knowing battle tactics that she couldn’t argue against, knowing that the dragons would need to be in sync if they were to be successful. If they were to keep her safe. He implored her to understand. Your instincts in the air are better than mine. And I’m needed elsewhere…

On the front line? She guessed, miserably, almost angrily, ready to pull away from him. Except she couldn’t, she wouldn’t. She needed him near, she told him. But when he said nothing in response, he felt her shake her head. Vehemently. Speaking with the echo of words from another time, another battle, long ago. I won’t allow it. I won’t gamble with your life. Jorah, please…

Shhhhh. Hush, now. We’ll speak more of it later, I promise… He pressed a kiss to her hair and the hand perched on her hip absently drifted to the softness of her waist, slightly softer now than before, but he didn’t consider why. His large palm spread over her still flat stomach, not realizing, never realizing…

They said no more about it.

And they say no more about it now. Not in words, though Daenerys clings to him as if she’ll never let go, leaning on him heavily. She’s exhausted by Tyrion’s failures. Exhausted by her own inability to win the Starks over. Exhausted by the waiting, which stretches them all thin the longer it goes on.

But more than the others, her features have been so tired lately, her moods changing with the wind. That anger in the hall has given way to a weary despair. Only in his arms does she seem at peace, and he thinks this with no hubris. It’s just the truth.

It pains him to see her this way. He wishes he could take this burden from her. He wishes he could shield her from all of it.

All that’s happened, all that’s to come. They don’t know it but Tormund Giantsbane, Beric Dondarrion and Dolorous Edd are no more than a quarter hour away, soon to ride through the gates of Winterfell and sound the alarm. The wait is over.

But for now, he just holds her. And she holds him. And that seems enough.

Chapter Text

The Stark scouts confirm the news brought from Last Hearth. The dead will be here before dawn.

As Varys scurries through the frantic, bustling halls of Winterfell, he squeezes by soldiers and servants, lords and peasants alike—Gendry Rivers, the blacksmith, striding past with a two-headed spear in one hand and an axe in the other, Jon Snow and Edd speaking of Hardhome as they hurry to the battlements, Brienne of Tarth (no, it’s Ser Brienne now, he’s heard), assisted by Jaime Lannister and Podrick Payne, as they gather the left flank, Theon Greyjoy wheeling a placid-looking Brandon Stark to the godswood, Beric Dondarrion lighting up his flaming sword, to serve as a beacon on the dark moors.

Varys is heading to the Stark crypt to wait out the night. As he navigates the noisy, cramped halls and observes the castle readying itself for the coming onslaught, he has mixed feelings.

Part of him is raging at himself, screaming in self-preservation, wondering why he didn’t leave sooner. He could still ride away, as far south as south goes. He considers it. He’ll continue to consider it until the very moment the dead breach the walls of Winterfell.

But another part of him believes that he’s done the right thing this time, by finally committing to one side. To Daenerys Stormborn, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Breaker of Chains and…all that. He doesn’t have the inclination or the time to keep her formal titles straight, that’s Tyrion’s job.

Varys is a master of whisperers, not their queen’s lofty accolades.

And to be terribly honest, she’s just another name in a long list to him. Monarchs come and go, only the realm survives (though, admittedly, maybe not this time?).

He’s tried to see what Tyrion sees. That she’s different from the others. That she deserves blind devotion and unreserved fealty. But Varys has never been very good at blind devotion, or unreserved…anything.

He does find her intriguing though, and who knows? If all this death and doom pass them by, perhaps she will be the best person to lead the realm back to peace. There’s been some encouraging talk lately. Ser Davos and Tyrion are convinced that a more secure alliance between Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow will come to fruition, just as soon as the dead are defeated.

Varys likes the sound of that. After all, Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister’s marriage held the realm together for much longer than anyone would have guessed. A marriage based on something more than whoring and lies might even last a little longer.

Maybe…Varys can’t claim any personal knowledge on the subject.

But, for now, it’s all rumor and speculation anyway. He’s watched them closely and is not entirely unconvinced. Jon Snow does appear to give Daenerys more notice than might be customary, sneaking glances at her when he thinks others aren’t watching. But the looks he gives her are strange, a mix of emotions that is hard to parse. And they’ve spent little time together since arriving in Winterfell, at least privately. Jon confers with his sisters more often than his queen and Daenerys spends her days either alone or in the company of her closest advisors.

This can perhaps be explained by the very threat that they find themselves facing tonight, as there was much work to be done preparing, and little time for anything else.

And yet, Daenerys has given Missandei much leave to spend time with her Unsullied captain in these last weeks, so Varys would expect she’d give herself the same leave, if she were in love, as the others insist she must be.

One of Sansa’s maidservants swears that Daenerys has been sharing her bed with a northern lord, but Varys remains unconvinced, and wonders if the girl is spinning tales. It just doesn’t match what he’s witnessed between them—an aloofness, a woodenness, a lack of…something.

But Varys has been wrong before. And he’s a romantic, in his own way—despite not quite understanding the appeal of romance in the first place. So long as whatever romance leads to peace and prosperity in the realm, he won’t resist it. Besides, the common people would rejoice in such a union, should it come to pass.

Or so says Ser Davos, who certainly has much more experience with the commoners than Varys. The eunuch would freely admit that he thinks of “the realm” in more abstract terms than the Onion Knight.

And no, he sees no contradiction in deciding what’s best for the realm, without first asking the realm.

There’s very little difference between the high lords and the common folk, to Varys’s way of thinking. Left to their own devices, they rarely make good decisions. Whether or not Daenerys makes the right decision regarding Jon Snow remains to be seen.

Until then, Varys waits. He watches and he keeps his doubts to himself, to be trotted out only at the appropriate moment. In an orderly fashion. Without stirring up all that chaos that Littlefinger always enjoyed so much.

Chaos is a ladder. Baelish insisted.

Chaos is a pit that will bury us all. Varys still believes it.

He falls to reminiscing, despite the dark hour, despite the frost breeze that bites at his bald head as soon as he reaches the open archway, leading to the courtyard.

Ah, the capital in summer. What he wouldn’t give to be back there again, instead of up here, in this frozen place, waiting for death, about to hide in a hole in the ground.

Thinking back, it wasn’t so bad. Trading witticisms with Baelish, keeping Cersei’s secret from her husband and the country at large, paying little birds with crumbs of sweet bread, enduring Robert Baratheon’s tenure on the throne…all that hunting in the forest, belching at the feast table and fucking whores in his chambers at all hours.

And yet, Robert held the kingdoms together.

It was a strange sort of peace, but it lasted. Much longer than Varys ever would have imagined. After Rhaegar’s defeat at the Trident and the sack of King’s Landing, he facilitated the escape of those two remaining Targaryen children from Dragonstone, bundling them up in rags and sending them off across the sea, leaving the option open to go and collect them, should Robert inevitably fail.

But Robert didn’t fail. He held the peace. Varys had to give the fat blowhard credit for that. He was consistent, in his boorish way.

Predictable and steady.

Daenerys is not steady, nor predictable. It’s a disappointing thing, but not entirely unexpected. She carries all those Targaryen impulses that Varys remembers so well with her father, even if she’s been careful not to give in to those impulses. Not completely. She almost did. After Tyrion lost her the Tyrells and that hollow victory at Casterly Rock, she went her own way, culminating in the massacre at Blackwater Rush and the regrettable execution of the Tarlys.

But then, those impulses seemed to recede so quickly, breaking into nothingness almost at once, like a wave upon the sand.

Her renewed calm coincided with Jorah Mormont’s return to Dragonstone. This did not pass Varys’s notice. This was a recurring theme, as Varys witnessed it again, very recently. Daenerys’s hot anger towards Tyrion cooled, but only after Ser Jorah spoke with her.

Varys has begun to wonder if Daenerys might not set Tyrion aside and name Ser Jorah her Hand. He thinks it might even be wise. For she might listen to Ser Jorah, in a way that she has stopped listening to Tyrion.

He might even be able to convince her to take Jon Snow as her husband…he considers, wondering if this might soothe Tyrion’s otherwise wounded ego, when he’s inevitably dismissed in favor of the other man. At least he'll still be able to claim credit for sparking that alliance in the first place?

Or…

Well, perhaps not.

Varys has exited the interior of castle, coming out on the stone walkway above the courtyard. He hears the sounds of steel and horses, Lyanna Mormont’s young voice barking short orders at her Bear Island fighters to finish reinforcing the gates at once. Varys descends the outside staircase, and is about to turn towards the crypts, when he catches sight of them across the yard.

Daenerys Targaryen and Ser Jorah Mormont.

Standing together beside the knight’s saddled steed, speaking together quietly, standing close.

So close.

As close as lovers, Varys allows, his steps slowing.

Daenerys Targaryen shares her bed with a northern lord…

His eyes suddenly open wide to something they should have noticed weeks ago. Something he should have noticed. Ser Jorah’s hand is perched on the queen’s arm, gently. Daenerys is shaking her head slowly and her features are pale and dread-worn.

They’re saying farewell.

Varys blinks, his scurrying steps coming to an abrupt halt. The hem of his robes sweep against frigid, snow-covered stones, his hands unclasp and those sleeves come down to his waist, for the first time in…perhaps ever. A dawning look passes the eunuch’s features, too many obvious questions suddenly having too many obvious answers.

You fool. How did you miss this?

Since White Harbor, his little birds have been off on other errands. He’s taken on the observations of the Queen for himself, trusting his own abilities above all others.

My dear Lord Varys, how many times did I tell you? Follow the trail of desire…Littlefinger’s ghost comes back to whisper in his ear, taunting him obnoxiously. And a man’s—nay, a queen’s—desire, whether suitable or not, should always be given more notice than the rest. You should know this by now, my friend…

Littlefinger would have seen this before he did. Guessed it straight out. Varys feels utterly betrayed, by himself.

And how brazen they are!

Is it because death comes for them this night? Varys feels his mouth go slack as he watches Daenerys stretch up on her toes and press a soft kiss to her knight’s lips—right there, in the courtyard, in full view of her Unsullied and Dothraki soldiers, who are mulling about, preparing, paying their monarch and her general no mind.

Did the soldiers know before the Master of Whisperers? Surely, not, Varys thinks, to assuage his pride. Surely, they’re all just distracted. As he has been.

Yes, that’s it. The distraction and promise of death, which comes for them all. They can’t hide from it, they can’t run from it. They must meet it in open fields. Or cowering in a crypt, as the case may be.

Varys watches them part. He sees Ser Jorah take her hand and press a kiss there too, for good measure, and Daenerys’s other hand trails down from the side of his cheek, down his chest, resting at his heart for a beat before she turns swiftly, leaving him before she can change her mind. Tears are springing to her eyes, but she stubbornly dashes them away with gloved hands. Ser Jorah seems at a loss, watching her go with tortured features, before rousing to the battle sounds around them.

There’s little time left. Ser Jorah mounts his horse, catching sight of Varys at the bottom of that wooden stair as he does.

The knight holds the spymaster’s gaze steady for a moment, knowing what he saw, and there’s no shame there. In fact, the man seems relieved to be found out. He will likely die tonight, with so many of the others. Is that what makes him so fearless?

No, Varys concedes.

Ser Jorah’s fearlessness goes back further than this night. Why else would he throw away a royal pardon and a chance to come home for the uncertainty of helping a young woman with nothing—no armies, no wealth, no titles to her name. Why else would he risk everything to return to her side? Twice, they say. And why else would he insist on claiming a place on the front lines tonight, when there were other, more expendable soldiers to take his place.

Because he loves her. Varys knows this. Everyone from Winterfell to Dorne to Meereen knows that Ser Jorah Mormont loves his queen.

But now he knows that Daenerys loves him back.

And that is a complication he didn’t see coming. Varys sucks frosty air through his teeth, suppressing a grimace—at the cold, at the dead, at life in general. Never predictable, never steady.

Always so damnably chaotic.

Daenerys, having caught sight of him as well, seems as little disturbed by his observations as the man who just shared her kiss.

Indeed, as she brushes past him, off to find her dragons and take to the skies to defend them all, she says only, “Get underground, Lord Varys. The dead are here.”

Chapter Text

They won’t sing songs about the Long Night.

Songs are for old men, drunk and swapping tales of valor in a tavern. Songs are for young maids, humming at a looking glass while dressing for a country dance with their sweethearts. Songs are for sailors coming home from a long voyage at sea and mothers rocking babies to sleep with gentle lullabies.

The Long Night offers no songs and no sweet melodies. Only whispers of madness and mayhem.

Only haunted screams...

Chapter Text

They make too many mistakes that night.

It’s not to be helped. Fate has dealt them a hand that is impossible to win. They never had the numbers and the storm comes in too fast and too strong, snuffing out half the fires conjured by the Red Woman’s magic.

Before the storm, there’s dead silence on the moors. They face darkness, pitch-black and hollowed out, like a deep hole in the ground.

It lingers too long and stretches too thin, settling in their ears as a low, maddening hum. The horses are spooked by the silence, stepping sideways and snorting chilled air. They’re spooked more as fingers of frost suddenly crawl over the barren fields and meadowlands, ice crackling as those icy fissures speed beneath the horse’s hooves, appearing fast enough for the spread to be seen by the naked eye.

In steely Dothraki, Ser Jorah commands the cavalry to hold the line, no matter what comes out of those shadows. Jon Snow tells his men to keep to their purpose and draw on their stubborn northern courage now. Down in the crypts, Sansa prays to whoever will listen and Tyrion closes his eyes, wishing he was an ocean away from all of this. In the skies, Daenerys chokes back tears of frustration, as she saw him, the Night King, for a mere heartbeat…until he’s lost to her, cloaking himself in the silver-black fringe of that unnatural storm.

The night is dark and full of terrors.

And the earth shudders as a teeming, ravenous mass charges the defenders, bones and ragged flesh, pouring out of the pitch-black, oozing out of that hole in the northern moors, unstoppable, inexhaustible, preceded only by the howl of the raging storm. The snow bites with frosted fangs and blinds their already compromised sight.

A beacon in the darkness, Beric Dondarrion’s flaming sword swings into rotten, mangled flesh.

And then it’s all screams and teeth and steel and madness.

The Dothraki hold the line but the dead soon overwhelm them anyway. The horses are useless against dead things that can be trampled and get right back up again. The Unsullied can’t hold the breach, the Northmen are overrun on the castle walls, Daenerys and her dragons lose their bearings in that blizzard, chasing after a shadow that breathes blue flame, dodging frost thermals and the phantom sound of undead wings.

They knew they’d be overwhelmed. They knew they couldn’t stand forever.

That’s why they set the trap in the godswood. That’s why they pray the Night King takes the bait, thinking to draw him out from his set purpose.

But the gravest mistake they make is failing to understand why the Night King came to Winterfell in the first place.

They don’t consider it, too focused on survival. Why here? Why now?

They think he wishes to kill them all, and there’s certain truth in it. Another fallen is another soldier for his army. They think he wishes to destroy the Three-Eyed Raven, and memory and life, because the Night King is sworn to the God of Death and the Three-Eyed Raven has told them it must be so.

And this is true. The Three-Eyed Raven does not lie.

But neither does he tell the whole truth, finding no crime in omission, foreseeing that men and women who are about to die would not be pleased to hear they serve as little pawns in a much larger, stranger game.

A game between gods. Or creatures who think they’re gods, in any case.

The Night King doesn’t come to Winterfell to fight men and women. He doesn’t come to raze the castle and bloody the land, although he is most willing to do both.

He comes at his master’s bidding, to slay the gods who gather here. The God of Death has been gathering strength behind the Wall for a thousand years, since his last defeat. The time is right, the weather is on his side. He makes his move on the snowy moors, sensing weakness in his opponents.

All in one place, all ripe for slaughter.

An old one, a red one, and one who wears many faces…

Arya Stark doesn’t know. Arya will never know how the Many-Faced God used her for years, guiding her steps to Braavos and back again, keeping her alive when the Waif might have finished her, hitching a ride west when she left the House of Black and White.

Her list—a young girl’s desperate way to survive when all else but revenge had deserted her—it was too much like a prayer.

And the Many-Faced God took Arya’s prayers gladly and answered them, making her an unknowing convert in the process, an acolyte to a god that she doesn’t know. Not really.

A god who has been attempting to cheat death since this game began.

The Many-Faced God desires a new face in his hall. One with icy skin and frost-blue eyes. He has travelled a long way to get it.

And, of all the gods at Winterfell that night, the Many-Faced God is their best chance. The Three-Eyed Raven is too old and slow, for all his knowledge, the Red Woman is too weak, for all her fire. Only Arya has the speed and strength to do it. She is sly, cunning and stealthy. The god who gives her feet wings is proud of her and her talents. He chose wisely and will crown her his lauded heroine, if she kills the Night King before the dawn.

She will be everyone’s heroine. Oh, the songs they might sing about Arya Stark, A Girl Who Saved Them All…

She’s so close. Even the Red God urges her on, willing to give the victory to another, so long as Death is defeated. The Lord of Light is afraid of Death, afraid of rotting in the ground, afraid of slipping into nothingness. He will scream against Death until the bitter end—just as Shireen Baratheon had screamed as the flames rose up to lick at her bound wrists.

Good. Shireen is appeased, watching from somewhere both very near and far away. I hope he burns you in your flames, I hope he makes you scream.

R’hllor can’t hear the murdered princess. He’s too focused on the present. He speaks through Melisandre’s sultry, exotic voice, reminding the Stark girl at just the right moment, “What do we say to the God of Death?”

Sandor Clegane, battered and bruised, reaches out to stop Arya, unwilling to see her die, but he’s too late. And Arya’s too fast, trained by the Faceless Men and the Hound’s own, gruff lessons from years ago.

“Arya!” he manages, but she doesn’t turn back.

Arya runs as fast as she can, compelled forward by sheer adrenaline and a sister’s unwavering love. She knows Bran still lives in the Three-Eyed Raven’s head and she’ll keep him safe forever, if she can. As she failed to do with Father, Mother, Robb, Rickon…

This is Arya’s other list. The one no one knows about. The one she never speaks out loud.

Flashes and fragments of the battle flicker past Arya’s eyes and ears as she runs.

Jon is facing down the undead dragon. Lyanna Mormont howls as she stabs a giant in the eye, but they both topple to the ground together and the she-bear doesn’t rise. Brienne of Tarth is bent over the Kingslayer, his bloodied body cradled in her arms, whispering words over him as a swarm of dead crawl over mountains of charred corpses, another wave rushing upon them. Samwell Tarly is sitting up in the cinder-stained snow, with a jagged piece of dragonglass laid across his lap, as if he’s taking a rest.

But there’s no rest that night, unless you’re dead. Sam’s eyes are dark and vacant.

Arya keeps to her path, rushing, running to the godswood where the Night King has snapped Theon’s bow against his shin, breaking it in two pieces. He drops the ruined weapon in the snow as he walks over the dead boy’s body, to where the Three-Eyed Raven sits, his eyes turning milky-white as a single drumbeat sounds in the distance…

A blast of air whispers by a White Walker’s icy cheek, displacing a strand of hair.

Arya leaps towards that monster with all the rage and vengeance and anger and grief she’s kept close, in every painful cut and scrape the Waif gave her in Braavos, in every lie she had to tell about her real name, in every scream she heard while trying to sleep in the Tickler’s muddy cage at Harrenhal.

It’s the same rage that has fed her veins and propelled her forward since they killed her father. Since the hour Death came for him and stole him away from her, never to return.

Never again to tell her to play nice with Sansa, never to give her dolls she was too old for, never to turn a blind eye to her dancing lessons, never to throw his loving arms around her and tell her they’d be all right, just as long as they stuck together.

We’ll be all right, Arya…

Winter is coming, but the pack survives. The pack keeps each other warm.

But death is cold. Death knows no rage. Death needs no vengeance.

And Death doesn’t call out before a killing blow.

She can’t help it. The impulse overwhelms her, as it’s the victory cry of the Many-Faced God. He’s too proud and drunk on victory to stay silent, young and foolish as any god in his prime. The Three-Eyed Raven remembers those days, fondly.

Arya doesn’t hear her own voice until it’s too late. But it wouldn’t have mattered, even if she did. The Many-Faced God wants the Night King to know who kills him. He wants to see surprise in those blue eyes as he cuts his face away.

But at Arya’s holler, the Night King is alerted to her presence and turns from the Three-Eyed Raven quickly. His technique is blunt but his speed is unmatched. He grasps her neck in one hand and her wrist in the other, stopping the blade from finding its mark, holding her fast.

It’s a tragic end that the Three-Eyed Raven might have seen coming and warned her about.

If he weren’t dead already…

Just like Sam, blood streaming from his mouth and nose. Bran’s broken body is slumped over his chair, his eyes still milky-white, even in death.

Arya sees her brother’s blood and she cries. In rage, for her family. In pain, from her throbbing bones and her aching head. In frustration, that she’s failed. And she knows she’s failed. Here, finally, is the bitter taste of defeat that she’s been running from since they took her father away from her.

She couldn’t save her father. She couldn’t save Bran. She can’t save herself. If he still lives, she hopes Jon will avenge them all. Or even Sansa, if her sister can manage it.

As long as one of them still lives, the pack survives. Her father promised. This thought should give her peace but Arya is not resigned. There’s no peace here.

Not today. She wishes she could mouth the words, but the Night King’s grasp is too tight around her neck, his long, cold fingernails digging into her skin and drawing blood.

Death doesn’t care if she’s resigned or not. Death doesn’t care for Arya Stark at all.

In one swift motion, the Night King takes Arya’s dagger from her hand and slits her throat.

Chapter Text

Ser Davos walks under the gates of Winterfell at dawn, breathing heavily, limping a little, favoring one leg over the other. He’s got a gash on his good hand. He’s bound his fingers with a scrap of dirty cloth, and the cold makes blood run slow, but he’ll need to tend to it shortly.

Davos doesn’t have that many fingers to spare.

But at least he’s in one piece, unlike so many of the others. How that happened, he’ll never know. He was in the thick of it for hours, with the rest of them. Davos has never been a fighter and he performed no miraculous feats in that regard during the night. He was always clumsy with his sword, even when he was a boy, and age has only made him slower.

A crusty, old smuggler’s luck? Or the gods’ mercy, maybe. Although, which gods are left to show mercy?

Under dawn’s first tendrils of light, all deep indigos and scent of gold, the fields are eerily emptied of the same mountains of bodies that littered them during the night.

The swaths and rivers of blood remain. But all the men and women are gone…

The dead ones, anyway.

Ser Davos doesn’t know why the Night King doesn’t finish them off. There can’t be more than a few hundred of them left. Out of thousands.

A Dothraki horse, skittish and lucky to be alive, runs past Ser Davos, exiting by the courtyard gates. And through those gates, past the smoke of the smoldering fires and the swirl of fluffed snow, Davos watches the dead leave Winterfell.

The White Walkers ride around the mass, corralling them, as the dead shuffle southward, their rabid, unyielding pace of the night before gone. Vanished, just like the storm. Their march is slow and strangely silent, as they walk towards the dawn, their numbers swelled with new soldiers who don’t look back.

The few stragglers, the living, are of no consequence. There are too few left to matter to the Night King. He has only one kill left to make, and Davos swallows back a grimace as he watches it happen.

The Red Woman.

He'd thought to kill her himself once upon a time, for what she did to Shireen. He’d pressed that burnt stag figurine against his palm hard enough that it left a mark for hours afterward.

She was good. She was kind. And you killed her!

The Lady Melisandre won’t be killing anyone, ever again. Out there in the fields, she crawls on her belly in the snow, trying to escape. The Lord of Light has abandoned her, having no further use for his puppet prophetess. The Night King drags her up from the snow by her long, scarlet hair.

If there are words exchanged between them, Davos can’t hear them. He’s too far away. And it seems that a terrible silence has settled on the land, brought by the pale dawn. Their ears ring with the horrible, raging sounds of the prior night but the morning is silent.

No birds, barely a breeze. There’s so much silence in death.

As she’s hauled from the ground, the Red Woman’s hands go to her necklace, feebly attempting to stop the Night King from ripping it off, but her hands are weak and covered in frostbite. The flames that lived inside her have fled, leaving behind only a pretty husk and a cold, cold heart.

The Night King tears the necklace from her throat and the priestess’s scarlet hair suddenly goes bone-white, from root to tip. Her fingers, clutching at her assailant, curl on themselves, arthritic and gnarled. Her back bends, her knees go unsteady. Her beauty, an illusion, a trick of light, fades away, spilling out like water thrown from a bowl.

In a span of a minute, the sultry, red temptress that turned Stannis Baratheon’s eye is gone. Only a feeble old crone remains.

Even from a distance, Davos sees the Night King smile. If you can call that cursed twist of his cold lips a smile?

Whatever it is, it saves Melisandre’s life. What’s left of it, anyway. The god she serves has fled and the Night King has no further interest in her, casting the old woman aside roughly, where she rolls and then huddles in the snow, rocking back and forth, clutching her frayed robes against her cold bones.

The Night King doesn’t look back. He rejoins his army, leaving behind the remnant of Winterfell—tattered, torn, ruined beyond mending.

They have no dead to bury or burn. Except for two.

The Three-Eyed Raven, slumped in his bloody chair in the godswood. And Arya Stark, lying on her back, flakes of snow and cinders gathering on her face, eyes wide open but blind to the land of the living.

The Stark children did not rise up when the others did, they didn’t join the march of the dead, which continues to ramble along south, disappearing over the horizon, as dawn crawls up a little further. Still too silent, still too pale.

Did the Night King leave them as a warning? Did he leave them as a cruel farewell note? To Jon Snow, whose plan had failed so miserably? To the remaining few—oh, how very few—so they might never forget that Death defeated them that night?

The survivors stir from their stupor, some emerging from the crypt, others climbing down from the battlements, away from the castle walls, or out of holes in the ground. Thousands are missing. Thousands are dead.

As dawn starts to bleed, Ser Davos watches Sandor Clegane carry Arya’s limp body into her father’s house, with Sansa, tear-streaked, following close behind. Before they cross the threshold, Sansa catches the Hound’s sleeve, bidding him stop, as she takes a moment to close Arya’s eyes. Sandor waits for Sansa to finish, ever willing to stand guard above both Stark sisters—one living, one dead.

The Hound’s eyes are pooled with the same terrible melancholy that fills Sansa’s. Their eyes meet above Arya’s body for a long moment, before Sansa turns her gaze down again, stroking both sides of her sister’s chilly face, her thumbs wiping away the streaks of blood.

“Arya?” Davos hears a young man’s voice speak up, and the smuggler closes his eyes briefly at the pain that fills it. Gendry has come up behind him, looking upon the same scene. He knows who Clegane carries in his arms. Why ask?

What good can it do?

“Aye,” Davos mutters. But Gendry is pushing past him, throwing his hammer to the ground, his soot-smeared face scrunching up under sudden, inescapable grief.

Over the next hour, Davos will become numb to these scenes of grief, these torn banners of defeat. Tyrion’s slumped shoulders, as he hears the news of his brother. Sweet Missandei, her face going ashen and pale, as they tell her Grey Worm fell holding the breach. Gilly, shaking her mousy-brown head with a somber kind of resilience, deeply ingrained, learned early in the House of Craster, saying only,

“I told him he should’ve stayed in the crypt with us. I knew he’d get himself killed. I knew it.” Gilly sniffs once and brushes the back of her wrist against her bottom eyelid. But the tears are gone before Davos sees one fall. She’ll blame the water in her eyes on the frost in the air. She shifts Little Sam in her grasp, holding her boy tight, soon distracting herself by practical concerns, telling Davos, “I’ll check the kitchens and see if there’s anything left…”

They count their numbers, the few that remain. They call out for the missing, knowing that those calls are most likely in vain. Jon Snow is missing…

But not for long.

They find him in the godswood, kneeling beside his brother’s body, holding Bran’s lifeless hand between his own. Unlike Gilly, Jon doesn’t hold his tears back. He can’t, falling one after another into the snow. Davos tries to think of something to say to Jon, but has nothing to offer.

No comfort. Little hope.

Drogon flies overhead from the east, soaring high, taking great caution before touching down again. The dragon learned a grave lesson last night, as he was swarmed by wights when Daenerys brought him too near the earth. The dead climbed so fast and would have buried him beneath their weight, if he didn’t shake them off, shaking off his mother in the process.

Rhaegal has returned to the castle walls, perching up on ruined battlements, twisting and licking at open wounds on his scaly back. The cuts are deep, dug out with Viserion's vicious claws and sharp talons, the same ragged beast that is now a speck in the distance, in flight over the dead. Rhaegal screeches in hot pain every once in a while, his tongue catching on painful fissures.

They see no rider on either of the dragons. They assume Daenerys fell during the battle, and one of the Karstarks confirms it, having seen the silver-haired dragon queen tumble, helplessly, from Drogon’s back into the teeming morass below.

“Was she killed in the fall?” Ser Davos asks the man, expecting it.

“No, I don’t think so,” the northerner mutters, in his clipped accent. “There was a fire between us and the smoke and the storm made it hard to see. But I saw her crawl back as the wights began to swarm. And last I saw, Ser Jorah was with her…”

“You saw him?”

“A man picked her up from where she fell,” the Karstark boy confirms. “And he slaughtered the wight who rushed her first.”

“But you’re sure it was Ser Jorah?”

“Who else would’ve it been, m’lord?”

Aye.

Ser Davos knows what the man means. There’s little certainty in life, but Ser Jorah’s stalwart protection of his queen is one of them. Last night, hell crept out of the North and came for them all. It was chaos in the fields and within the castle walls. Ser Davos didn’t know friend from foe through half of it.

But if anyone might have found his Queen in all that confusion, it would have been Ser Jorah. Still, the question remains. Even if he found her, was he able to keep her safe?

They find out soon enough.

Ser Davos gathers a few others, Podrick Payne among them—surprised as he is to see him, Ser Davos is glad the squire made it out alive. That haunting funeral dirge that Pod sang around the fire the evening prior is still echoing through Ser Davos’s head, even if it seems like it happened a lifetime ago.

He has Pod and the other boys comb the moors for survivors, through smoldering fire and bloody snow, and the gruesome remains of the burned dead.

They find her on the crest of a snowy, violet-lit moor, amongst charred bones and frosted rumble. She’s alive and unhurt, save the rivulets of tears that are streaming down both sides of her face.

She’s not alone.

Daenerys Targaryen is bent over Ser Jorah’s unconscious form, kneeling beside him. Her tears are silent, terrible things, freezing against her cheeks. She’s taken off her gloves and her hands are stained in her knight’s blood. She’s caressing his cold face with one hand, she’s pressing the other against the deepest wound on his chest, she’s whispering at his unhearing ear, words that are for Ser Jorah alone.

Dawn brings a breeze with it, and free strands of her silver hair stir softly.

Davos grimaces at the scene, another tragedy to add to the rest. There’s too much blood on her hands. There’s too much blood in the snow. Ser Jorah’s armor is cracked and pierced in too many places. His wounds appear deep and many. So many.

When Daenerys fell, they’d been stuck on the opposite side of the trench. They were overrun in the castle, but out here, the wights numbered in the tens of thousands, swarming anything that lived. Without cover, they must have been surrounded on all sides, attempting to fend them off, alone, back to back, for an hour or more.

But Ser Jorah must have kept to his oaths. And his family words. For Daenerys has barely a scratch on her, the blood on her coat and hands is not her own. It’s his. All his. Ser Jorah has taken more blows that night than any of them. And as the boys come up the hill, they see his eyes are closed, his body still, the rise of his chest imperceptible…if present at all.

He’s dead…he must be.

Daenerys doesn’t look up at their footsteps, crunching against the icy snow. All of her attention is on the man she tends, the man she watches over. She has that look of a woman, mad with grief, hovering over a newly dug grave.

Davos’s features are grim, and etched with melancholy. Terrible grief surrounds them all. It will linger and sting like an open wound, long after their physical ailments have healed.

He tells them to pull Daenerys away from Ser Jorah, thinking she holds onto a dead man, thinking they need to burn him. Thinking it’s only a matter of time before his blue eyes spark open, this time in a shade not his own.

Daenerys won’t come away, even when they beg her. So they do it, almost reluctantly.

“No, no…,” she murmurs, as she feels them tug at her. But those murmurs don’t last, her sobs turning desperate and fierce, her words crystal clear and breaking between new tears, as she finally turns on them, wildly, “He’s not dead! He can’t be dead!”

But still they pull her away. Dawn breaks on her sobbing scream, shattering the last of that strange silence. They’re gentle but force her away, pulling her off the cold ground, separating her from the man she holds so tightly. Her hands are dragged away from him.

Her anguished cry echoes across the empty moors, all wildness and winter.

Her eyes beg and plead, her grief grows stronger. Much more than Davos expected, even though he knows these two were close. Ser Jorah has been by her side longer than any of them. Everyone knows that. But this overwhelming grief, this hollow look in her eyes?

She acts as if she’s being torn in two.

She cries, not with a queen’s sadness for a fallen soldier, but with a wife’s grief over her husband. And Davos and the others wonder at the sheer force of her grief, the way she fights to return to Jorah Mormont’s side. How could they not?

They won’t wonder much longer.

But for now, Davos merely embraces the Targaryen girl, trying to calm her and to keep her from darting back to the dead man. He must be dead. No man could withstand the injuries so evidently written across that ruined armor and the amount of blood spilled on the ground.

Daenerys doesn’t give up, struggling against Davos, turning fiercer and trying to break from his arms, even while begging him, “Save him! Please, save him! I can’t lose him, do you understand? No, he’s not dead!”

Her heart is breaking in front of him, as if she’s lost…everything. And Davos just holds her, worried she’ll collapse on his next words:

He’s already gone, Yer Grace…

But before he can speak, Podrick has knelt down beside Ser Jorah. The squire is fussing over the knight, taking his wrist and putting an ear against the man’s chest. He doesn’t smile—there’ll be no more smiles at Winterfell for some time. But the young man’s eyes light up, enough that Davos loosens his grip and Daenerys stops fighting him, both waiting as Pod lifts his head.

“She’s right, Ser Davos,” Podrick marvels at the impossibility, but seems willing to believe it. His natural optimism has survived a night where little else could.

He says, in his simple, understated way, “Ser Jorah’s not dead yet…”

Chapter Text

There are many wounded. But none so grievous as Jorah Mormont.

Gilly sees this for herself, as they carry Ser Jorah’s unconscious body into the castle and lay him down upon a bed in one of the downstairs chambers.

Lord Royce has occupied this room during the many weeks leading up to the battle. But he won’t be needing it this night, or any other, as he fell with the remaining Knights of the Vale, when they were forced from their horses and found themselves pinned against the outer walls, with no way to retreat from the dead.

Winterfell had been filled to bursting the evening before—with knights and soldiers, Dothraki, Unsullied and Stark bannermen. Now it’s ghostly quiet, with more open rooms than they know what to do with. A large swath of the east wing is in complete ruins, having crumbled under Viserion’s weight. There’s an open gash in the stone and snow flurries fall freely within those frosted halls.

But even here, where the old walls held fast, the place is touched by the events of the prior night. The dead walked these halls last night and the stench of blood and death lingers everywhere.

Gilly can’t stand it, wanting to claw the scent of the crypt from her clothes and hair. She pulls Little Sam closer, smelling lye soap and wool. This comforts her, as her little boy doesn’t smell like death.

He’s alive. She’s alive.

But not Sam…She pushes that faithless thought away, again.

One of the boys lights a fire in the hearth and stokes the cold embers to life, while Ser Davos and Daenerys are tending the injured man, removing his armor carefully, uncovering the full extent of his wounds. Ser Davos wears an unshakeable frown across his craggy features, one that only deepens as they remove the armor and pull away the blood-stained layers beneath. Daenerys is moving near manically, with endless tears blinding her vision.

Still, her hands move over Ser Jorah quickly, her lips moving on silent prayers, her eyes rising once or twice to look for someone, anyone to help them save him. Her striking, violet eyes meet Gilly’s once but Gilly wonders if she even sees her.

Daenerys seems to be looking right through her, her expression haunted by whatever happened out there in the fields.

Ser Jorah’s face is ashen and pale. Even from across the room, Gilly knows that those wounds are deep and his heartbeat is threadbare. They bind and tend what they can but he’s lost so much blood already and he has yet to regain consciousness.

Ser Davos is muttering and shaking his head and the others are doing what they can, but none of them are healers and Gilly doesn’t think he’ll last long.

The Mormonts are naturally stubborn. Sam’s told her that enough times. He knows…knew. She sets her jaw and doesn’t think on it, watching the others try to save a dying man, sparing little thoughts on the ones who are already dead. Because what’s it matter?

Sam’s not coming back.

Ser Jorah will hold on. But a day? Maybe two?

At least they can burn him afterwards. At least he’ll die in relative peace, in a warm bed. Even if he won’t know where he is or who holds his hand as he breathes his last.

It’ll be Daenerys Targaryen holding his hand, her tears splashing against his skin until the bitter, bitter end.

Gilly knows it. Everyone in this castle will know it by evening, if they don’t already. Varys whispered some secrets to Tyrion down in the crypt, and it’s been spreading like wildfire, despite the haze of heavy grief that’s settled on this place.

Daenerys Targaryen and Ser Jorah Mormont are lovers.

Were lovers…

Gilly decides she hates past tense. All those books she’s learned to read revel in it. Rhaegar Targaryen died at the Trident after annulling his marriage to Elia Martell…

The recitation is always so matter-of-fact. It says nothing of pain. Nothing of loss. Nothing of grief. Did someone cry for Rhaegar Targaryen when he died? Or Elia Martell? Or are they just names in a book. Like Sam’s will be. Like Arya and Bran Stark. Like Ser Jorah, unless he opens his eyes…

Gilly doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to think about it. She ignores grief. She buries it deep. She has no time for it.

You stupid, stupid man…It’s easier for her to scold Sam in her head, than to think about the fact that she won’t see him again. Ever. How is that possible? How can someone be here one minute and gone the next?

Just like that.

Gilly used to wonder the same with her sister’s sons. There they were, wriggling, squalling and red-faced in her hands, and then Craster would come into the birthing tent and snatch them out of her grasp. And their little cries would grow fainter and fainter as he took them into the woods, their sharp little voices echoing on the cusp of evergreen groves before fading away to nothingness…

Until she was nearly convinced that she imagined the baby’s existence in the first place. She would have, anyway. If not for her sister’s strangled sobs, all that pain without any relief, telling her it wasn’t her imagination at all.

The rest of the day passes in a strange tedium. Some are mourning the dead. Others are attempting to save the few that remain. Nothing is certain, no one knows what will happen.

They all watched the dead march on from Winterfell. But where? And to what end?

Get him south, Gillyflower. As south as south goes. Maester Aemon had urged her, before he died. But now it’s too late and she wonders if that was just wishful thinking too.

South, north, east, west. None of them are safe. None of them will escape this plague.

Later, Ser Davos sets her on making poultices and she’s happy for the distraction. Down in the Winterfell kitchens, she sets Little Sam on the counter beside her and starts mixing dried woodland herbs in a cauldron of hot water. While waiting for the water to boil, she goes to her hands and knees, scrubbing off the grime and blood that has stained the floor as the dead shuffled through last night.

Her son waits patiently, swinging his legs and watching her work—good, sweet-natured boy that he is. He’s so much like his father.

His true father. The father she chose for her boy. Gilly will never allow her son to know another.

“Mama, do you need this?”

When she straightens up again and returns to the boiling pot, Little Sam reaches over with a sprig of dried hemlock, trying to be helpful.

“Yes, Sam, I do,” she says and kisses his forehead on her way by.

She hears her own voice break on the name. Her son’s name. His name.

You said we would be together always. You promised…if he was here, she’d confront him directly, with a set scowl on her face. And then pummel his chest for breaking that promise.

Yes, yes, I know I promised. But you’re not making sense, Gilly. She hears Sam’s voice in her head, rational and cheery as always, grinning widely. If I was here, there’d be no reason to be angry with me, y’see?

Impulsively, she picks Little Sam off the counter and balances him on her hip, even though it makes her work harder. But she needs him in her arms then, just to know he’s there. He’s real, he’s still alive.

And then, one tear.

Just one tear slips from underneath Gilly’s eyelashes before she can stop it. It spills into the boiling water without so much as a hiss, disappearing into the rolling waters.

Little Sam’s hand comes up to dry the wet patch on his mother’s cheek. His expression is wary and wondering. He knows she’s sad but he can’t be certain why. Gilly told him Sam is gone but he’s still too little to understand the finality of death.

Will he be back tomorrow, Mama?

“It’s okay,” Gilly tells him, covering his little fingers with her own, bringing the baby’s hand down from her face, kissing it, while keeping her voice steady. “Everything will be okay.”

Gilly feels eyes upon her, and catches a sheen of silver-blonde out of the corner of her eye.

She turns slowly, to find Daenerys Targaryen hovering in the archway entrance, watching them. Gilly doesn’t know how long she’s been standing there, but it can’t be long. Her expression is pained and her eyes are red-rimmed. Here is a woman who has shed as many tears as Gilly has held back.

Who could she be looking for down here? Gilly’s moment of grief evaporates in an onset of sudden curiosity.

And sympathy.

Daenerys looks as if she might collapse where she stands, honestly. She’s still dressed for battle, with ruined braids and blood staining her clothes. Exhaustion carves her up, but there’s that lingering wildness in her violet eyes, the same that Ser Davos and the others found her with, haunting her expression and stubbornly keeping her upright.

“Your Grace,” Gilly murmurs, belatedly adding a little curtsy and bob of her head, like she’s seen the others do. She’s unsure if this is the correct form of address. With what happened, is Daenerys still their queen? Is Jon Snow still the King in the North?

Are any of them anything anymore? Or are they all just survivors, plain and simple, lumped together by the fact that they’re still here, in this ghostly, ruined holdfast, while the others are marching south, with vacant eyes and holes in their skin?

Daenerys is looking at Gilly with an as yet unspoken plea. It’s Gilly she’s come to see, which the wildling girl doesn’t understand. She’s never spoken to Daenerys Stormborn, not directly. She doesn’t remember having the silver-haired queen spare a single glance in her direction.

“Your Grace?” she tries again, when the woman fails to answer.

Daenerys’s eyes have flickered to Little Sam, watching the baby ring his arms around his mother’s neck and lay his head against Gilly’s shoulder, always shy in the presence of someone he doesn’t know.

That wild, haunted look in the Queen’s eyes softens slightly into…well, it’s something that Gilly can’t quite describe.

A longing? A hope?

But her words rouse Daenerys, and the woman’s gaze snaps away from the little boy and meets Gilly’s once more. She swallows back ever-threatening tears, and speaks up quickly, “Gilly, I need your help.”

“My help?” Gilly repeats, dumbly, wondering how Daenerys knows her name.

Daenerys is resolved, even as her eyes are spilling with those same tears again. The woman can’t stop them and doesn’t try. She’s in physical pain, and doesn’t care who sees it.

“Yes, and I…” Daenerys begins, her tone meandering, coming undone, and Gilly thinks she might be trying to say she’s sorry about Sam. But she doesn’t have the words and she can’t waste any more time.

Only one thought currently guides the dragon queen and she has no time for any others. Ser Jorah has no time.

Daenerys takes a step closer, her eyes pleading for speed in Gilly’s answers.

She begs, “I need you to tell me the name of the Archmaester who examined Jor—Ser Jorah…,” she amends his name, tripping over the formal title, “…when he was at the Citadel, and I need you to tell me how to find him…”

Chapter Text

Sandor stands guard against nothing at all.

What’s left to guard against? The dead are marching south. The dying cannot be cured by a sword. The things they fight now—grief, fear, numbness of spirit and the godsdamned cold—are nothing he can wrestle to the ground.

Just like in King’s Landing, there’s nothing he can do to save her from pain, there’s nothing he can say to make any of this better. He’s no knight. He’s never pretended to be anything other than a mangy, worthless dog. But the fact that he stands by Sansa Stark’s side once again, and can do absolutely nothing to assuage that grave expression on her pained face, digs at him like an open sore.

Of which he has several. Ser Davos told him to visit Gilly and have her look at those scrapes and deeper wounds that he received in the night. But Sandor’s stubborn and has grown used to a hard truth.

That, for whatever fucked up reason, he’s not going to die anytime soon. But wouldn’t that just be the way—to survive as much as he has, just to die of a festering wound at fucking Winterfell, where it all began in the first place?

Maybe he will go see the wildling girl, after all. But only after Sansa’s done in the sept…

Catelyn Stark’s sept remains in one piece. It’s quiet and abandoned, except for the two of them. And Arya and Bran, of course, their lifeless bodies laid out on a raised dais set equal distance between the pewter statues of the Seven.

Father, Mother, Maiden, Crone, Smith, Warrior, Stranger…

They will burn Arya’s body tonight. Bran’s too. Despite the fact that the Night King left them behind, those remaining will take no chances that the Stark children will rise again, with frosted blue eyes and murder in their hearts. They will burn them at sunset, in the same godswood where they died.

But Sansa asks that her siblings be brought to her mother’s sept first. She can’t bear the thought that they will be burned without being mourned first. Despite all that’s happened, she clings to the old traditions like a lifeline. Someone should.

Sandor’s glad she does. If she still holds to these useless things, maybe she hasn’t given up yet? He’s not sure what he’ll do if he discovers that Sansa Stark—the little bird who sang such pretty hopes and dreams once upon a time—no longer believes in anything.

For certainly, he doesn’t. And hasn’t, not since he was a boy and his brother pushed his head in a bed of coals for the crime of playing with a damn toy. It’s all been downhill since then.

Maybe he died after that fight with Brienne in the Riverlands and this is just hell? A frozen shithole covered in fire and crawling with dead men, where everyone gets to die except him.

That sounds about right.

Stop your fucking whining, Clegane. She’s lost more than you ever will…he scolds himself harshly, sparing all his attention on the young woman who diligently attends her fallen loved ones nearby.

Sansa places seven candles around her sister’s body and lights their wicks, one by one, taking her time. The long, white, wax stems shine out with the light they cast, brightening the sept by a few shades, as the winter sunlight is pale and faint through stained glass windows, and evening approaches.

Once finished with Arya, she does the same with Bran.

Sansa says nothing. She doesn’t pray. She tells Sandor that the gods have abandoned this place. And yet…

She asked him to bring Arya here. She asked the others to bring Bran. She lights candles to the Seven here.

She’s lying to herself when she says she doesn’t believe in the gods or prayers. Just as Sandor lies to himself when he says he doesn’t have a heart.

He knows he has one, because it’s breaking. It’s been breaking since dawn, when he entered the godswood and saw Arya laid out on the snow like that, all her smug smiles gone. Her dancing lessons finished. Forever.

Gods, she could be such a little bitch sometimes. All that chattering away on the road to the Twins. Recklessly slipping off the horse to confront those Lannister soldiers, jumping into the row at that tavern with too much relish, trying to escape him time after time, when he was just trying to keep her alive.

And the way she refused to put him out of his misery after Brienne of Fucking Tarth nearly killed him.

But that little girl was so fucking brave. If he’d been born with only a tenth of her courage…

Or Sansa’s, for that matter. How had she survived? No truly, he wanted to know. Not just last night, but all of it. Ramsay, Joffrey, Littlefinger, Cersei. She was worse for the wear, there was no doubt. Gone was that innocence and fresh blush of youth, the young woman who clutched her doll before her with such blunt fear and raw trust and told him, “You won’t hurt me.”

No, he’d never hurt her. But others would. And did. And made her cold because of it.

She could look at him now, too easily, having seen far worse. She’d met his gaze over Arya’s body out in the ruined courtyard, searching his eyes for the same grief reflected in her own. She found it without any trouble.

And now she met his gaze again, picking up words from years ago, seamlessly, as if they both stood on that same King’s Landing bridge, looking up at the spike that was crowned with her father’s rotting head, “It never ends, does it?”

“What never ends?”

“The pain,” she replies coolly, almost like she’s resigned to it. She shed tears outside, on the shock of it, but they’re missing from her eyes now. He wishes she’d cry again. He worries she won’t. He worries that by day’s end, she’ll replace another piece of her heart with cold stone.

He gives a small huff of something that might be laughter, if it wasn’t twisted inside-out, “No, Sansa, it doesn’t.”

It's a strange thing and there’s certainly nothing to be grateful for on this day, but when he says her name, he sees her eyes spark with something. An unthinkable comfort that he can nevertheless read plainly, even if she doesn’t say it aloud.

I’m glad you’re here.

He wonders how that could possibly be? She was so afraid of him for so long. More than Joffrey at the beginning, although she knew better by the end. But he wasn’t blameless in it. Sandor knows he was crude and cruel. From the first day to the last, he didn’t try to smooth out his rough edges before her.

He vividly remembers all those awful things he said to her the night the Blackwater burned, drunk and out of his mind with fear, trying to frighten her into coming with him.

We’re all killers here.

“I loved her,” Sansa’s voice goes very small. She shakes her head slowly, and Sandor sees a glimmer in her eyes after all. She’s thinking back on many years past. She insists, to him, to herself, “Even when we were children and she teased me endlessly. And we fought and bickered constantly. I still loved her…”

“I know,” Sandor says, gruffly. These aren’t pretty lies.

While he was out running down the butcher’s boy, he knows those two girls banded together, like the steel of their father’s greatsword, with such spirit between them, attempting to save that direwolf’s innocent life on the long road down to King’s Landing.

Lady didn’t bite anyone. Lady is good!

Lady wasn’t there! You leave her alone!

The Stark girls were good and fierce from the beginning, while he was weak and a coward. Isn’t that why he loved them both? Arya, like the annoying, little sister that he couldn’t rid himself of, try as he might. And Sansa as the…

He doesn’t know what his feelings for Sansa are. He never has. Perhaps he never will. He just knows that her pain is his pain. Those tears in her eyes are knives in his heart, even if he’s glad to know she can still shed them.

It’s been this way for a long, long time. And gods he’d like to take that pain from her now.

But this isn’t a split lip that he can dab with a cloth. Or a torn dress in the throne room that he can cover with his white cloak.

“She loved you too,” he gives her all he has. Truth.

Plain, rough, useless truth. As rough and useless as himself. Why the gods keep sparing his miserable life, he’ll never know.

Sansa’s watching him, examining his face to see if he’s lying. But then her gaze is lingering, and…softening? She sought him out this morning, after emerging from the crypt. Her brother, Jon, couldn’t help her, overwhelmed by his own grief and failures. And Brienne—the woman’s still in shock. She hasn't said a word since the night before. They don’t know how she survived that final surge, or what she saw while she held Jaime Lannister’s body to her breast.

So Sansa turned to him. She continues turning to him.

And it twists him up to know that this is what it’s come to. That Sansa has no one left but him.

It was the same in King’s Fucking Landing, and he didn’t like it any better then. She deserves more than a dog, she deserves more than…

Her grey-blue eyes are seeking answers that he doesn’t have. He has the oddest impulse to pull her into his arms and just hold her for a while. It’s an impulse he sees reflected plainly in those pretty eyes, but tells himself he’s imagining it.

She opens her mouth to say something further, but they’re interrupted by Tyrion, who has come to pay his respects to the Stark children.

Tyrion looks defeated, wearing a hangdog expression more severe than Sandor has ever seen.

Even in his own reflection. Which is saying something, as the Hound has never been the cheery sort, even before all of this.

“How is Ser Jorah?” Sansa asks immediately, dragging her eyes from Sandor’s almost reluctantly.

Her question is a many times repeated one, spoken by many as the day wears on. The entire castle waits on pins and needles for that man’s passing. It’s a terrible sort of vigil that has settled on them, as if Mormont’s death will be the last nail in a coffin that buries them all alive.

Or the last thread of hope that keeps them holding on?

“He’s alive,” Tyrion confirms, but his voice says there’s little hope. His tone is despairing, and holds notes of bitterness. Sandor guesses that the dwarf would rather it was his brother, Jaime, fighting for his life upstairs.

But Tyrion relates what he knows, “Ser Davos says he needs medicine that we don’t have here, and I imagine he’ll need a few miracles on top of that…”

“And your Queen?” Sansa wonders. She uses the “your” in old habit, but the usual sharpness in her tone is blunted by the hollow grief that settles on all of them, like feathery ashes.

“Daenerys has taken the dragons south…,” Tyrion recites the news rather blankly, betraying that the woman did not share her plans with him. With her own Hand.

Sandor knows little of politics and what are politics now, anyway? But he can see this bothers the Imp.

Tyrion admits it straight out, unashamed and broken by the events that have taken place, and continue to take place. He states bitterly, “I have no idea where she’s gone.”

Chapter Text

Daenerys flies south and west, for love. The Night King marches south and east, for death.

But a third flies straight between them.

Brandon Stark, the last surviving son of Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn Stark, and heir to Winterfell.

Brandon Stark, a common raven. With black wings, two eyes and a head full of memories that don’t belong to him.

The Three-Eyed Raven is dead and gone. Vanquished by his oldest enemy, out of hubris or mischance or fate. No one will ever know for sure. For only the Three-Eyed Raven would be able to tell for sure. And he’s dead.

But not Bran.

He’d been waiting all night for the precise moment, and as the Night King approached the Three-Eyed Raven in the godswood, raising his icy sword high for the killing blow, Bran knew the time had come. He wasn’t going to get another chance.

He had the span of a wing’s beat to escape his prison and he timed it perfectly, waiting, waiting, waiting…if he took control too early, the Three-Eyed Raven would know. He’d just take it back, tightening the chains that held Bran prisoner, deep in his own head.

But he needed only a moment, and the Night King and his prey were distracted enough that he seized that chance, warging away while the Three-Eyed Raven sat silent and resigned, like the gnarled, old roots of a weirwood tree, awaiting his grim fate.

Perhaps the Three-Eyed Raven saw something Bran hadn’t, that made him accept his demise so easily. Bran doesn’t know, Bran couldn’t say.

He’s a boy. Not a god. Not anymore.

Bran never wanted to be the Three-Eyed Raven. He never agreed to it. Not in so many words, though he saw his mistake as soon as it happened, and regretted it. He just wanted to walk again, that was all. He followed those visions North on the promise that someone, somewhere might give him back his chance to walk. And put right everything that had gone so sideways.

With Mother and Father, Robb, Rickon…

That old tree spirit tricked him, lulling him into the sense that something magical awaited him, just like in Old Nan’s stories, and that he would be part of something greater than himself. Who could say no to that?

But the Three-Eyed Raven just needed his body, escaping his own prison, one that had grown too old and too caged in the earth, by vines, roots and bones, to allow him to flee the coming winter, and the storm that came with it.

The Three-Eyed Raven ran south of the Wall, like a coward. He let Summer and Hodor die. Jojen, before them. And he would have sent Meera away without so much as a farewell, if she hadn’t forced one from his unfeeling, loveless lips…

Bran was pounding on the doors of his heart that day, but she couldn’t hear him.

None of them could. After they returned to Castle Black, Bran found that he couldn’t raise his hand if the Three-Eyed Raven didn’t will it. He couldn’t turn his head to one side, unless the Three-Eyed Raven wished it. He couldn’t say a word. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t beg Meera to understand that it wasn’t him sending her away, and that he did thank her, every single day, and that he was frightened to be without her, and that he was sorry about Jojen, and Hodor, and Summer…

He was sorry about everything.

And later, he screamed at Jon and Sansa and Arya, trying to tell them that their brother was locked away in his own head. But they didn’t hear a thing. How could they? The Three-Eyed Raven spoke with his voice, and looked through his eyes.

Eventually, Bran gave up and settled in, watching, waiting, biding his time.

At least he had time to think. Endless time. And time to pick through all those memories and visions that the Three-Eyed Raven collected, like a raven adorning its nest with shiny treasures. Bran shook his head at the things the Three-Eyed Raven said to Jon and the others. He was using them, and they couldn’t see it.

The Three-Eyed Raven had encountered a vision of Tyrion Lannister declaring Bran the King of all the Seven Kingdoms and he was reaching out to grasp it with both hands. But he ignored other visions, for the sake of that one. Why? Bran will never know. And he doesn’t much care, having had his fill of the Three-Eyed Raven’s strange motivations and many contradictions.

You can’t be Lord of Winterfell but you can be King of the Seven Kingdoms? How does that work? Bran had demanded, but received no reply.

The Three-Eyed Raven gave Bran no more notice than a buzzing gnat, waving him away without so much as a word.

But when the battle turned and the Night King entered the godswood, Bran knew the Three-Eyed Raven wouldn’t make it through the night. Unlike the parasite that used his voice and blinked his eyes, he had conferred with other visions and he’d seen one that ended with the Three-Eyed Raven dead on the ground.

He had little interest in joining that fate.

It was a desperate thing, to warg like that. To be a young raven, perched in the trees above, and feel the roots that held him to his body snap off and spring up, as soon as the blade below found flesh, leaving him with no choice and no way back.

But now he has wings. Now he can fly.

He knows he’s trapped in this raven forever. He knows there’s no going back. He knows his own body is lifeless and ruined, soon to be burned by Sansa and the others.

It's all right. He wouldn’t want to return anyway. Too much has happened. There was never any other escape for him. And it was fitting anyway. Even when he was a little boy, he could never keep his feet on the ground.

Brandon, come down!

No, Mother. Not this time.

He has a job to do. He has a world to save. And a murdered sister to avenge.

Oh, his talons pricked with rage and he almost flew down and scratched out that blue demon’s eyes when he sliced Arya’s throat wide open. The Night King could have thrown her aside. The defeat of the Many-Faced God would have been enough.

But he killed her. For the sport of it.

Bran forced himself to stay in the trees, noiselessly, hiding away behind frost-laced leaves, all scarlet-colored, all shivering in the winter’s night. He waited, with patience learned in long confinement. He stayed silent, until the Night King left the godswood to claim his new soldiers and lead them all south, his journey not yet done, one last servant of the gods to topple from her lofty perch.

Cersei Lannister played the game of thrones and won. She would regret it soon.

She was appointed in the light of the Seven, blessed by Baelor, though she’d blown up his house to do it. The mark of the Seven is upon her, even if they scorn her as their own. She is the gods’ monarch, the high symbol of order and life in all of Westeros.

The Night King is chaos and death personified.

He will drag her from her throne and throw her from the Red Keep.

Bran has seen this in the roaming eye of the Three-Eyed Raven, and he’s quite certain there’s nothing he can do to stop it. A part of him doesn’t care to stop it, as he has no more love lost on Cersei Lannister than anyone else.

She still has his father’s blood on her hands. And Bran’s still a young boy who misses his family very much.

He’s certainly not the Three-Eyed Raven, passionless, all-seeing. But he’s seen enough. He’s seen what happens—seas frosted over, snow drifts as high as the Wall, ice on iron, as the Night King takes a seat on the Iron Throne and sends out his armies in droves, over the frozen countryside, finishing what he started in Winterfell.

By winter’s end, there won’t be a soul alive from the Fist of the First Men to the Dornish shores.

And Bran won’t just sit by and watch it happen.

He won’t do it. Not without a fight. He’s lost enough. They’ve all lost enough.

Soaring cold thermals, he watches Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons as they disappear into a starlit horizon. He wishes her speed and prays for her safe return. The wars to come will not be won without her.

Nor the man she’s trying to save.

The Night King has no gift for visions or he would have made sure that Ser Jorah wasn’t breathing when he left Winterfell. He would’ve killed all the ravens too, just to make sure that Bran couldn’t escape.

But the Night King failed in this, and so there’s hope yet.

Brandon Stark alights from Winterfell on black wings and flies due south.

Chapter Text

Archmaester Ebrose finds himself riding on the back of a dragon in his nightshirt.

That’s certainly not how he expects his evening to play out. He’d poured himself a draught of something warm and topped with nutmeg and cloves, pulled back the quilts on his bed and opened the pages of a moldy old treatise on herbs native to the Riverlands. And that’s when the entire west wing of the monastic quarters in the Citadel shakes beneath the weight of something…heavy.

Something alive.

Dust and mortar fall from the cathedral ceilings and the slumbering maesters are awakened from their beds, rudely and in a rush. They think it’s an earthquake, despite Oldtown never feeling the slightest tremor.

Archmaester Ebrose scowls darkly at the commotion and goes to his window with a curled lip and a befuddled look gracing his wrinkled features, only to come face to face with the toothy snarl and throaty click and hiss of a massive, black dragon.

He shrieks.

Oh yes, the Archmaester of Medicine, a lauded member and fixture on the Conclave for decades, shrieks like a little girl who has just seen a mouse crossing her bedroom floor. And then, he immediately jumps back from his window ledge and trips over the rolled edge of his Dornish rug, for good measure.

At least she allows him the dignity of throwing a robe over his nightshirt. Even if she orders him to do it at the same time that he readies for a long, cold night’s journey, filling his bag with the necessary medicine, herbs and instruments.

“Hurry,” she says through clenched teeth, having dismounted from her beast to oversee his rushed packing.

Daenerys Targaryen’s stature is diminutive. Even more so than the eyewitness reports they’ve received over the years. She’s such a little thing, she barely reaches his shoulder. And yet, with those wild violet eyes and fierce Targaryen demeanor, he’s not sure who intimidates him more.

Her or her dragons.

“From your description of his injuries…,” he mentions, keeping his voice steady and clinical, as he fumbles through his cabinets, searching for glass bottles, lidded canisters, hollow needles and a syringe. He mumbles with the snark of a man who has been pulled most unwilling from his evening constitutional, “…the man’s most certainly dead already.”

This is the wrong thing to say and he regrets it nearly immediately.

The woman hasn’t slept in some time, that’s obvious. Ebrose is fairly certain she’s exaggerating the reports of what happened at Winterfell (for how could it be so?) and perhaps everything might look a little better if she just got some sleep.

But her silver-blonde hair is a stark reminder. This woman is descended from Visenya and Rhaenys Targaryen. Archmaester Ebrose swallows thickly as he watches her shift her weight in response, her fists clenching at her sides. He’s studied the history of the Seven Kingdoms for his entire life. He knows exactly what those two women did to the men and women who dared defy them.

“Do you see those dragons out there?” Daenerys is dangerously calm, as she cuts a long, lingering glance towards his bedroom window.

Yes, he sees them, despite the faint light of the hour. They’re impossible to miss, or hear, as they keep circling the Citadel, screeching with fervor, roused by their mother’s anxious state.

He nods, his mouth gone dry and unable to speak a single word, too worried that she’s going to feed him to her pets.

She has something far more damaging in mind, speaking in low, terrible tones, “If you don’t come with me now, and save Jorah Mormont’s life, I will have my dragons burn down your grand library until there’s nothing left but ash and cinder.”

The Citadel’s library houses the wealth of knowledge in the Western hemisphere. To lose it would be devastating. In one rash act, they would lose a chunk of civilization that is irreplaceable.

Daenerys is obviously mad. With grief. With impatience.

But he doesn’t doubt she’ll do it. Her expression, her posture, her words are no idle threat. And the thought of thousands of years of knowledge going up in flames is too much for an old man who has built his life around accumulating and cataloging that knowledge to stomach.

So he hurries, quickening his pace and demurely following her out of the maesters’ quarters. The black dragon descends in the fallow gardens below, called down by the sight of his mother, and the desperate call of her soul.

Ebrose winces a little as the ground shakes beneath his feet. He holds his bag close to his chest and regards the creature with wide-eyed timidity. But at her sharp instruction, he hesitates only a moment more before climbing on the beast. A creature that, truth be told, he didn’t quite believe in until this very evening.

In fact, it’s she who hesitates, though perhaps not of her own volition.

Ebrose is a sharp observer and he’s the undisputed Archmaester of Medicine and Healing, in Oldtown and elsewhere. There are healers in Braavos and Volantis who often write to him for advice. Once, he even received a note from beyond the Jade Sea.

He witnesses that young woman falter slightly as she goes to climb the beast after him. It’s a half-beat and nothing that she doesn’t recover from, if only out of sheer will and stubbornness. But he notices her face pale and her rigid posture waver, enough that she has to reach out for her dragon’s scales to keep her balance.

Oh, he's seen that particular look on a woman’s face before. Many times.

It could be exhaustion…he concedes, but the idea is planted.

And blooms with only a little tending, after they stop to give the dragons rest on the way back to Winterfell—two hours to rest their wings, she’ll allow no more than that. She’s a terrible traveling companion, silent and grave and intent on getting them back to the north as fast as those dragons can fly. She pushes them all hard, allowing no protest.

Not from him. Not from the dragons.

Still, as they sit together on frosted ground, he feels sympathy for the dragon queen as he watches her close her eyes briefly, steadying herself with a couple deep breaths…only to dash off and retch into the undergrowth of the iced grove they’ve landed in. Her expression is miserable and drawn as she wipes her mouth. She returns to where he’s sitting, huddled in his robe before a small fire that the green dragon was good enough to light before collapsing in the snow drifts for some light dozing.

“Eat this,” he commands her, reaching into his bag and pulling out a flat piece of unleavened bread. It’s bland and bitter tasting, but it will help. And she hasn’t eaten in nearly as long as she hasn’t slept, which is no good for anyone.

Least of all, a woman carrying a child.

She admits to nothing, though she must see the suspicion that crinkles up his observant features. She takes the bread only after he insists, breaking off a corner piece, while muttering, “Thank you,” in afterthought.

Daenerys chews the bread slowly. Her fevered strength and manic energy are showing signs of ebbing, but she’ll hold onto them a while longer yet.

She gives Ebrose little more notice, her fretting gaze drawn, as ever, northward.

She wasn’t lying about Winterfell.

Archmaester Ebrose is greeted by a sight that the history books won’t be able to reproduce. Not in so many words, not with enough accuracy. They’ll mention the bloodstains and soot on the snow, but they won’t say how it painted the moors in widows’ black. They’ll describe the ash in the air and how it hovered, even a day later, but they’ll forget to say how it burned, like the coldest ice, when it fell on exposed skin.

They’ll mention the quiet hush in the cold castle and the haunted prayers that are heard up and down its chilled corridors. The ragged weeping, the aimless wandering. But they won’t understand it.

How desperate, how much pain…

In his own report, Ebrose will make sure to record details, for his own sake, so he doesn’t forget. The image of the white-haired crone in a scarlet-red cloak who sits on a wooden stool outside the Great Hall—how her gnarled hands are entangled in prayers and her mumbled words are foreign things. Or the grim young man with a blacksmith’s strong hands and dried tears on his cheeks, who busies himself in collecting the discarded weapons in the snowy courtyard, throwing the bent metal in a pile to be melted down again.

Ebrose will mark the faces that he sees and try to explain the way the horrors they’ve seen show too clearly in their hollowed-out features.

With haunted expressions that make his blood run cold.

Or perhaps that’s just plain winter, and all these frost drafts that keep sweeping through the ruined parts of the holdfast, with little to stop them but stubborn fires in a handful of hearths.

Ebrose pulls his robes closer around him. They’ve been complaining of cooler weather in Oldtown ever since the white ravens were sent from the Citadel, heralding the change of season. But this is something else entirely. He’s glad when they reach the injured man’s quarters, as they’ve made sure to warm the chambers in this part of the castle to acceptable temperatures.

And Ser Jorah lives yet. How is that possible?

The climate…

Ah yes, Ebrose remembers this former patient immediately.

He pulls the man’s shirt collar down a few inches to confirm it. The telltale scars of greyscale are written into his skin, covering most of his chest and torso, as the infection had been wide-spreading and should have been fatal.

But the scars are fading well and more than Ebrose would’ve guessed, all thing’s considered. Samwell Tarly had risked expulsion from the Citadel, and worse, in treating this man. Ebrose is still needled about the fact that his young assistant went against his direct instructions on that case, risking far too much.

The archmaester’s mouth flinches at the thought of Samwell, as they tell him that Sam marches with the dead now. This is a terrible shame. Despite his insubordination, the man was an incredibly gifted healer. Curious, intelligent, with a good heart and a warm bedside manner. Ebrose saw such promise in him, even with his reckless nature.

And he’s forced to acknowledge Samwell’s talent again here, before his own eyes, written on the very skin of the man who now fights for his life.

Ebrose takes up Ser Jorah’s wrist, then reaches forward to press two fingers against the carotid artery in his neck. He makes a “hmm”-ing sound in the back of his throat. The man’s pulse is very faint but present. He lifts the dressings on the gashes and puncture wounds that are speckled across Mormont’s body, inwardly shuddering at the sheer number. Ser Jorah’s taken more blades than any living man has a right to.

Yet, he lives, despite the injuries.

This man is nearly indestructible, isn’t he? Bear Islanders have always had a reputation for heightened endurance, that’s true. It shows up in various texts, from different sources. But Ebrose is beginning to think he should do a more formal study on Mormont physiology, wondering if there’s something more to that old saying…Bear Islanders fight with the strength of ten mainlanders.

But are any of them left?

Well, there’s at least one. Ebrose considers the patient critically, under a gaze that scrunches up his old nose and knits his bushy eyebrows together. Ser Jorah’s survived this long, anyway. Ebrose has never been much of an optimist, but he’s seen enough to know that the human capacity for life is strong.

Very strong. And finding hold, even in the most unlikely of times and places. There’s a second Mormont in this room. He’d stake his rod and ring on it.

“He’s the father?” Ebrose guesses without much inflection, his confident tone knowing it to be true, his eyes flickering up from the injured man to meet Daenerys’s gaze, frankly.

He says it outright, without precursor, hoping to stir a reaction from her. Because he’s testy and was forced to spend the last however many hours without sleep or warmth, thanks to her. And because he’s curious and because he wants her to know that he knows.

He can’t imagine that it’s public knowledge, as this is hardly a relationship that’s without scandal. Were they together before Ser Jorah came to the Citadel? Ebrose remembers a crumbled scrap of parchment that one of the acolytes brought to him after they cleaned out Mormont’s room.

I have loved you since the moment I met you…

If she didn’t love him then, she certainly loves him now. Her eyes betray the depth of her feelings. For him. For the part of him that she carries with her.

Ebrose has a feeling that Daenerys has only recently realized the news. Does Ser Jorah even know?

He doubts it.

As much as he wants to wound her, for dragging him to Winterfell in the middle of the night, Ebrose takes care to ask the question discreetly, while they are alone in the sickroom. Or nearly alone. There’s another with them, a woman with dark skin and darker eyes, Essosi by birth and far from home. She’s a handmaid to the Targaryen queen.

No, not just a handmaid. She must be a close confidante and friend too. He can tell by the way she hovers near her mistress, coming to her side as soon as they touched down at Winterfell and begging Daenerys to rest. Daenerys had waved her friend off stubbornly, “Not yet, Missandei…,” leading Ebrose to Jorah’s side without delay.

But even Missandei doesn’t know. Not until he asks that question. Her surprise is palpable, flooding her melancholy expression, as her discerning gaze darts back and forth between the archmaester and Daenerys.

Wondering, asking…

Daenerys has been watching the movements of the archmaester’s hands with rapt interest, holding her breath as he makes his examination. At his unexpected words, she blinks once and her mouth is set in a firm line.

But she doesn’t deny it.

Her eyes remain locked with his for a long, tense moment. The myriad of emotions passing her features is impossible to describe. But finally, she gives a slow, nearly helpless nod.

That simple act of acknowledging the truth seems to drain her, in a way that nothing else has. Not the battle with the dead, not the mad dash to Oldtown and back again. The fight of however many hours leaves her in a breaking rush, and she’s sinking onto the mattress beside Ser Jorah wearily, her hand falling against the side of his battered face with undeniable affection.

And unbearable fears.

“Please save him,” she asks, without lifting her eyes from Ser Jorah’s face. She’s asking, not as a queen, but as a woman who is afraid to lose the man she loves. As a mother who wants her child to know its father. Who needs him by her side, if she’s going to survive a world that has chewed them all up and spit them out again.

Her eyes are filled with tears when she looks up at Ebrose. She’s begging, “I’ll give you anything, I’ll promise you anything…”

Ebrose is not a man prone to sentimentality, but the tone of her voice is crushing and hopeless and he finds himself regretting the unkind thoughts that have been dancing in his head since she forced him onto her dragon. With sudden charity of spirit, he rests a hand on her shoulder, pressing a light squeeze that says he’ll do what he can. She may have kidnapped him in the middle of the night, but she did it for the purest of reasons. Love.

He can’t fault her for that, even if he’s been denied sleep because of it.

“There’s only one promise that I’ll accept, my dear…,” he replies, in a softer, kinder manner that skirts on paternal. Ebrose has used it many times over the years, on less-than-pliable students and unruly patients. “I need you to promise to get some sleep. If not for yourself, then for your child…”

She doesn’t say no, which he decides to interpret as acquiescence. She’s too tired to argue, in any case.

“Take her—” he turns to the handmaid but there’s no need. Missandei has already taken Daenerys’s arm. She doesn’t force her away from Ser Jorah but whispers something to her friend, which makes the woman nod through teary eyes.

It works, whatever it is. And soon, Missandei is helping Daenerys up from the mattress and leading her to a bath and bed waiting in nearby quarters.

To rest, to sleep.

Archmaester Ebrose watches the women go, before turning his attention back to the patient.

He sighs, rather heavily. He won’t be sleeping for some time, but that’s not to be helped. Taking a deep breath, he reaches for his bag to begin his work in earnest.

Chapter Text

“A baby?” Missandei broaches the subject very gently, in hushed tones, waiting until long after she’s helped Daenerys into a bath and then out of it, washing her free of all that battlefield dirt and grime.

And all that blood too. The stains won’t come out of that white coat. Missandei will burn it and find Daenerys something else to wear, if only to get rid of the reminder.

Of whose blood stains her clothes.

She waits until after she’s fetched fresh linens and pulled a clean shift over Daenerys’s head. After she’s fixed the fire, blown out most of the candles and forced her friend into bed, where Daenerys now lays, curled on her side, one hand balled up in her quilts, the other gripping the edge of her pillow too tightly. She’s not asleep yet, but resting, at least.

Daenerys is so tired that she can barely lift her hands above her head when Missandei brings her that nightgown. She can’t keep her eyes open. Her body is bone-weary but she’s been up for too many hours in a row, and her buzzing head and restless limbs rebel against the allowed rest, thinking there’s more yet to do.

But there’s nothing left to do. Daenerys has done all she can. She must now leave Ser Jorah’s fate in the hands of others. She has no choice. She must now close her eyes and sleep, hoping he’s still alive when she wakes once more.

Missandei knows Daenerys is terrified of falling asleep, for fear of what happens when she wakes. She knows how Daenerys’s mind races and tends to unravel on her worst fears and greatest failures, working against her, spinning beyond her control.

Only death pays for life, only death pays for life, only death…

This happened in Meereen, when the Sons of the Harpy started sewing their seeds of discord amongst the common people and again, at Dragonstone, when raven after raven returned to the mist-covered island, bringing only news of defeat, from every corner of Westeros.

And when the men went above the Wall, when Missandei found Daenerys pacing and wringing her hands before the hearth, waiting, worrying. Daenerys couldn’t sit still that time, finally muttering, “I can’t just sit here…”

But this is far worse, as her fears are all for the one person who can usually allay them best of all.

Jorah’s not here to hold her as she cries and frets. Nor to tell Missandei that Grey Worm fought more valiantly than all the rest, as was his custom, as was his way, falling only after pulling hundreds of his brothers across the breach, to what might have been safety…if they weren’t fighting demons from hell.

Missandei will stay with Daenerys while she falls asleep. And longer, as Daenerys has asked her not to leave, wanting her to stay close by. Missandei does not argue. Neither one of them wants to be alone tonight.

And besides, Missandei wouldn’t know where else to go, or who else to seek out. Daenerys and Ser Jorah are all she has left here, in a cold, ruined castle, in a cold, dark country that has played them all so bitterly false.

And cold. So, so cold…

While Daenerys went to fetch the archmaester at the Citadel, Missandei stayed with Ser Jorah, for Daenerys’s sake, but for her own as well, if only to fend off an ice-cold feeling of loneliness which had begun to creep over her mind and body and soul, as soon as she stepped out of the Stark crypt into the frosted morning.

She remained at his bedside, watching the knight’s chest rise and fall, sometimes steadily, sometimes so slightly that she was worried his heart had stopped beating. In those dire moments, she found herself casting glances to the doorway, seeking out the only other person who would understand just how grave it would be if the worst should happen, if Daenerys returned to find Ser Jorah no longer…

But he wasn’t there. Grey Worm wasn’t guarding the door. Grey Worm is gone.

And the absolute worst part? Missandei can’t weep over his body or say her farewells or even mourn him properly, because they’ve taken him away. Her Grey Worm. Torgo Nudho of the Summer Isles. Blue-eyed now, no more golden flecks in chocolate brown.

If she closes her eyes, she can see still see him with perfect clarity. His image is burned on the inside of her eyelids. She can see him standing only a few feet away, or even sitting, uncommon as it may have been, like that day in the Pyramid of Meereen, when Tyrion made them drink and tell jokes. She can hear his chuckling laughter, she can watch those eyes dance merrily at her silly joke.

Just as they did every time he saw her, sharing a stolen glance across a riverbed, or holding her gaze steady as he kissed her in the courtyard before she’d left him for the crypt. Never to see him again. Her mouth stings on the taste of that final kiss, the softness, the tender pass of his tongue against hers. The sensation is already fading.

Never to be hers again.

There’s bitterness mixed in her grief. She wishes that they would have killed him and let him die in peace. But the White Walkers made him into a slave. Again. He was marching south right now, against his own will. Would they never escape it? Even in death?

It isn’t fair. She’s not sure why life has to be so cruel. Her heart aches for Grey Worm, frets for Ser Jorah and breaks for Daenerys, as she knows uncertainty is worse in some ways than death.

They should have all stayed in Essos. They should have just stayed in Meereen. Missandei curses the ships that brought them to these frozen shores.

But she tells Daenerys nothing of these thoughts, as they’ll do her no good.

Instead, she sits on the bed beside Daenerys, at the woman’s back, brushing out the last tangles of her silver-blonde hair with the soft, smooth pass of a comb. Once, twice, dozens of times. Her movements are languid and rhythmic and infinitely gentle, as only Missandei can manage. She hopes to ease Daenerys into sleep, as she desperately needs the rest.

Especially if what the archmaester says is true.

Is it true? The idea that Daenerys is pregnant—the very notion seems impossible. They’ve seen so much death in the span of so few hours. New life seems like fantasy in the face of such reckless destruction.

And if it’s true? Well, there’s a mocking sorrow in the idea, as if the gods are playing a trick. The timing couldn’t be worse, as any joy that might be found in this is tempered severely by the fact that the child’s father might be dead before the morning.

Missandei’s heart clenches at the idea. She can only imagine how Daenerys feels.

“Are you sure?” she muses, slowing her strokes even further.

There’s an awfully long pause and Missandei hopes that it means Daenerys has fallen asleep. She slows the movement of the comb another degree, and says no more.

But a blunt answer follows soon enough.

“Yes,” Daenerys mumbles against the corner of her pillow, damp with a few errant tears that have slipped from beneath her shut eyelids.

“Does Ser Jorah know?” Missandei asks, running that comb through the strands with such care. But the tangles are gone now. She sets it aside and runs her hand along the same route, giving succor with a soothing touch that follows Daenerys’s scalp, down along her shoulder. Missandei keeps her voice low, purposefully lulling the hushed syllables along her tongue.

“No, I only just—” Daenerys can’t finish the thought. She must have found out very recently, as the knowledge seems raw. Missandei wouldn’t press her for the world, but there are thoughts haunting Daenerys that need to be spoken and shared. Missandei suspects that she won’t be able to sleep until she lets them spill out on top of each other.

Missandei is most willing to listen, but remains silent, patiently waiting for Daenerys to continue.

The dragon girl digs her elbow against the mattress and turns over onto her other side, facing Missandei now. She beckons Missandei down to join her, so they lie face to face. They share the bed like sisters, speaking across satin-trimmed pillows in whispers and hushed tones. Daenerys reaches for Missandei’s hand then, just as she did at Daznak’s Pit the day the Sons of the Harpy tried to slaughter them all.

This time, there’s no dragon to fly Daenerys away from the danger. So she keeps Missandei’s hand close, needing the warmth and touch of another person.

“It’s not possible,” Daenerys shakes her head stubbornly, betraying her own shock at the revelation. She insists, arguing against something that her body has told her must be true, “The witch told me that I’d never have any other children. Jorah was there. He knows what that woman said, he knows the curses she laid upon me….”

“She was wrong,” Missandei says back, giving her friend a little shrug and a shadow of a smile. She can’t manage smiles for herself right now, but she can manage one for Daenerys.

The world is as bleak and terrible as it might ever be, but Daenerys is going to have a baby. A child who will live and grow and love and be loved, gods willing. That deserves a smile, doesn’t it? Even if it’s a small one. She reminds her, “If anyone could break a curse like that, it would be Ser Jorah.”

At his name, Daenerys’s eyes flood with water again. So many tears, Missandei wonders if she’ll ever dry out. She uses her free hand to brush them away from the other woman’s perpetually damp cheeks, lingering with sisterly caresses that tell her she’s not alone, that she can cry as long as she needs to.

“I’m so afraid, Missandei,” Daenerys admits, closing her eyes once more beneath Missandei’s calming touch, gripping the hand she already holds fiercely even tighter, perhaps worried that in letting go, she’ll soon lose Missandei too. Her words tumble on themselves, “I feel like I can’t breathe. I feel like I’m being crushed underfoot by the stampede of a thousand horses. I lost Khal Drogo and my son on the same day. I can’t do it again. Not this time. Not with Jorah…”

“I know,” Missandei shifts a little closer, as the tone Daenerys uses is hopeless and heartbreaking. The two women’s foreheads are nearly touching, brown against white. They linger there, speaking in shared silence.

Daenerys had told her about Rhaego. How she never saw him, how she never heard him cry. And how she stumbled out from a ragged tent afterwards, her body sore and arms empty, to find her Dothraki husband sitting up against red boulders in a sparse desert, covered in a shepherd’s blanket, staring out at nothing at all. His spirit was gone, his gaze vacant.

Just like her son, a baby that never lived.

She lost everything that day. Or almost everything. Only Jorah remained to her, and she told Missandei that it was his hand reaching out to take her wrist, beckoning her back from the darkest of contemplations—that she should fling herself off the cliffside and be done with the pain that twisted in her empty, rotting womb—that kept her from doing it.

Jorah.

The man whose own child is now growing inside her, proving the witch’s words false. Oh, this should be the happiest news, but Missandei knows that it only increases Daenerys’s fears tenfold. Missandei knows that his death will be the darkness that swallows her up for good. And if that child were to tragically follow its father…

“I love him. I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life…,” Daenerys whispers, finally telling her everything that she’s held back. Missandei knows most of it but Daenerys is compelled to say the words aloud, almost as a confession. “It took me so long to realize but…I think I’ve loved him since the moment we met. And when I think about the time I wasted, I just…I’ve been a fool for so long and I never thought—but he was always there. He was always beside me.”

“He is beside you,” Missandei won’t let her slip into past tense. Not before it’s time. “Ser Jorah would never leave you unless forced. He’ll keep fighting.”

“You didn’t see how many times they struck him,” Daenerys presses her lips together on the grim memory, still too fresh, raw and bleeding. Her voice breaks on it, rambling, “You didn’t see how many blows he took for me. He used himself as a shield. For me…”

“He would do it a thousand times over,” Missandei assures her, stroking her hair back behind her ear like a mother to her fretting child. She says softly, “Shhh, now. Just try to sleep.”

Daenerys tries, suppressing a renewed sob with a deep breath and the constancy and warmth of Missandei’s hands. The one she holds so tightly, the one that gently strokes her hair.

Once, twice…

Daenerys’s violet eyes blink open only once more, new tears for a new sorrow that she only just remembers, having been too fixated on saving Jorah to spare a moment on anyone else. But she remembers now. Missandei can see it written plainly, the dawning sorrow, for it reflects the pain in her own eyes. Pain that no healer can mend. Daenerys opens her mouth to say something, for she loved Grey Worm too.

And now he’s gone.

“No, not now,” Missandei tells her, admirably keeping her own tears back. “Sleep first. We’ll mourn him tomorrow. Together.”

“But…”

“Grey Worm would say the same. He’d insist on it,” Missandei says, remaining strong in this, knowing that she has strength to share. And there’s no one she’d rather share it with than Daenerys. She tells her plainly, “I’m glad you’re safe, Daenerys. I’m glad you lived. I’m glad I did too, even if it hurts right now. For where there’s life, there’s hope.”

And you carry life inside you, Your Grace. There’s so much hope in that…

Months from now, Missandei will hold that tiny, perfect, squalling hope in her own hands. Even before Daenerys, as it’s Missandei who will deliver Daenerys’s child, wide grin breaking across her tense features as the baby finally slides out from its mother. And it’s Jorah who will be holding Daenerys, lips at her temple, assuring her in the softest and most tender tones, somewhere behind their child’s vigorous cries, “It’s over, lass. It’s all over…”

Hope will prevail, even in the darkest days of winter.

And it begins this night, as Daenerys holds her friend’s hand tightly, as a lifeline, although the grip is already loosening by a degree. Missandei’s caresses are doing their work. Her presence is calming the dread fears and restless wildness that has plagued Daenerys since the night the dead came to Winterfell.

The dragon girl is soothed into a much-needed sleep, slowly but surely. Her breath evens out, her mind too tired to allow any dreams. Just sleep.

Missandei soon closes her eyes too, more than willing to close her thoughts to this day. And the one before it. She exhales lightly, sending up a wishful prayer to whoever might be listening—that the pain stops, that Ser Jorah lives, and that they wake to a world that has regained its footing.

Chapter Text

A vast collection of candles, lanterns and oil lamps flicker from the mantle, window sills, chairs and end tables of the sickroom, cluttered up together for the sake of casting brighter light, to better aid the archmaester’s careful, methodical work.

He’s hunched over Jorah Mormont, as he has been for hours, examining, tending and sewing…and muttering grimly under his breath every once in a while.

Jon hears him grumble something about the faint light and needing more of it. Sansa stands right beside Jon, with her arms crossed over her chest. She regards the older man’s grumbles with a frown, thinking that Archmaester Ebrose is speaking to her.

“We scoured the castle for these candles, as you asked,” she reminds him, with some indignation. Jon feels her stiffen and can easily guess her thoughts—Winterfell is certainly not shirking its duties to any guest remaining under its roof. They are doing all they can to make sure the survivors are well tended. She insists, in truth, “We’ve given you all that we have.”

“I know you have, Lady Stark,” Archmaester Ebrose assures her, in a tone meant to smooth over what she mistakenly took as offense. He’s too busy to raise his gaze from the injured man but leaves off his muttering to explain, “I’m cursing your northern winters, not you. The cold is bad enough but the lack of natural light proves difficult in these circumstances. And a strong draft snuffs out these candles at the most inopportune times…”

“I’m afraid we can’t do anything about the weather, Archmaester,” Jon replies, rather darkly. The reply would be considered clever if he wasn’t so obviously brooding over it.

Jon is brooding over everything.

The King in the North feels numb, having failed so miserably when it mattered most of all. He knew their chances would be slim. He thought he’d braced himself for the worst. He told Sam that there was no way they’d win—but he realizes now that he never believed it himself. Not until it happened, not until Sam…

And Bran and Arya….

He felt destined to overcome those odds, despite it all. His head spoke of harsh realities but his heart had told him that they would triumph, just as they had triumphed against Ramsay Bolton. With dire losses, of course, but all given up in the name of bittersweet victory.

Why else would he have been brought back from death?

He'd died at Castle Black. His eyes were closed to this world forever, his chest poked full of holes, his blood spilled out on the snow. His spirit had fled the land of the living, finding no rest, finding nothing at all.

Until the Red Woman’s whispers brought him back.

But why? He wonders now, thoughts of destiny and fate and meant to be suddenly tasting like dry ashes in his mouth. To fail? To lead them all to slaughter? To watch Sam march away from his family. To see Bran and Arya dead in the snow…

There’s heavy guilt in his thoughts too.

He clenches his jaw when he looks down at Ser Jorah and swallows hard, noting the man’s extensive injuries. Jon has cuts and bruises, like all of them, but nothing so grave as this. Nothing that won’t heal quickly. Nothing that he won’t survive easily.

Nothing that says he would have given his life up for someone else. Ser Jorah’s injuries speak the obvious truth, and the lack of injuries on Daenerys confirms it. Jorah Mormont protected the woman he loved to the last, in a way that Jon could never manage.

He loves her. And she loves him. Jon is numb to this revelation as well, his mind too cluttered with regret to allow anything else. And even if it did…his wounded pride is far less sharp now than it was the night he knocked on Daenerys’s cabin door, on the ship bound for White Harbor.

That voyage seems like years ago now, instead of just over two months. The last two days might have been a decade. He can scarce understand the passage of time anymore. In the aftermath of the battle, Sansa has taken the lead in so many ways, while he—the King in the North, he thinks on the worthless title and grimaces—has been wandering the castle in a fog, unable to do more than mark the ruins and repeat the events of their defeat on a constant loop.

“You need to keep busy,” Gilly warned him, after he’d gone to seek her out, to offer his condolences on Sam.

He’d hoped to give her comfort but found that he was mostly useless at that as well, taking more than he gave.

At least he was able to take Little Sam from her arms for a minute, giving the wildling girl a chance to clean up the kitchen with both hands. He sensed she was worried to set her boy down, fearing she’d lose him too.

Won’t she? Won’t they all die before this is over, Jon Snow? The more pessimistic thoughts in his head always tend to be spoken in Ygritte’s wry voice and he can’t argue with her. He never could.

He’s lost the right to argue with anyone.

When Archmaester Ebrose summoned Jon and Sansa to Ser Jorah’s room, Jon came at once, without question, compelled by Gilly’s advice to keep busy and a duty that binds him to serve. He’ll go wherever summoned. He’ll do whatever’s necessary to make amends, to fix what has gone so horribly sideways.

Jon’s hand is suddenly brushed by white fur, as Ghost has snuck into the room without notice, living up to his shadowy name, his padded feet near silent on the grey stone of the chamber. The direwolf settles on his haunches beside Jon, pressing against his master’s leg slightly, seemingly come to pay his own respects to the man he rode into battle with.

The direwolf’s coat is still splotched with red. But he escaped the clutches of the dead with fewer injuries than Daenerys’s dragons. Jon feels more guilt on this score, but that doesn’t stop him from reaching down to itch at the fur between Ghost’s ears. And he can’t say it doesn’t make him feel a little better.

He probably should feel guilty for that too.

Archmaester Ebrose pulls a knotted string tight and then cuts it, finishing the stitch, before looking up at the two young people who stand before him.

And the white direwolf beside them.

Jon watches the archmaester start just a little at the sight of the wild beast, having not heard him enter, too intent on his work. He hears Ebrose grumble, “Direwolves and dragons, what’s next? Mermaids and hobgoblins…” before shaking off the uncommon sight and swiftly moving on to the reasons he called them to this room in the first place.

The first reason is simple. Jon and Sansa, as the last of the Starks, are the undisputed Lord and Lady of this castle—battered, bruised and ruined though it may be, and there is decorum to be followed when working under another person’s roof.

The second, however, is…less straightforward.

“He needs blood,” the archmaester states the fact bluntly, as he moves around the room, rustling through the bag he brought from the Citadel. He pulls out instruments that Jon has never seen before. He digs deep in the folds of that bag, while rambling, “We’ve done some research on transfusions in the Citadel and some successes have been noted by Archmaester Grimes and Maester Falhurst, although not without great risk to the patient, which is to be expected. A wholly disgraced member of our order has sent us reports of a full ‘reanimation’ of a man whose heart stopped beating completely and…well, never mind that. His methods will not be used here…”

Archmaester Ebrose pulls a slim volume from the depths of his medical bag and opens it, flicking through the pages with his thumb and index finger, while continuing, “It’s a treatment of last resort but the dire fact is, Ser Jorah’s pulse is weakening and there’s no other option. He’ll die tonight if I don’t try this. But I need blood. Preferably from a Stark.”

“A Stark?” Sansa narrows her eyes and tips her head just slightly, confused, having no experience in any of this. “Why?”

“Because we’ve found that sharing blood is a tricky business and that one person’s blood may react very poorly with another’s,” Ebrose answers. He snaps his book shut after finding whatever it is he was looking for. He moves back to Ser Jorah’s side, sparing another brief glance at Jon and Sansa. He explains, “Family blood seems to work best, according to Grimes. And the northern houses have intermingled for years. There’s Stark in this man’s family tree and Mormont in yours. The chance of a match is higher than we’ll likely be able to find elsewhere. But I need someone in this castle who’s willing…”

“Daenerys would be most willing,” Sansa muses, though not with any harsh judgment coloring her tone this time. It’s just a fact, one that all of them know now.

Sansa seems to have taken the news in stride. And, if anything, it seems to have softened her towards Daenerys. Jon’s not sure why. They haven’t discussed it. His wounded pride prevented him from sharing his suspicions of the affair before the dead came, and his numbing guilt has prevented him from seeking Sansa out since the battle.

He can barely face her now, and is grateful that they are in the presence of another. For he wonders if she blames him for Arya and Bran.

She should. He certainly blames himself.

“No,” Ebrose shakes his head firmly and many times over. “It can’t be Daenerys. I don’t care how much she argues, and by the Gods, don’t tell her or I’ll have to bar this door. She’s not in any state to risk…her own health. And Targaryen blood is its own fascinating creature, of which we know very little. Except that it doesn’t mix well with others. It would likely kill Ser Jorah upon the first injection…”

Ebrose is looking at Jon with some expectation. He assumes Jon will step up. The archmaester has been in this castle for no more than twelve hours but some things are obvious to everyone. And Jon’s brand of nobility and honor and self-sacrifice are worn on him like heavy badges he’d rather return.

Targaryen blood…

He hesitates, stupidly. His mouth is emptied of any rational excuse. His mind fumbles over the reason, extending the silence.

He’s terrible at lies. Always has been.

You certainly had no trouble lying to me, you pretty crow. Ygritte’s voice again, tinged with red anger, as red as her hair.

At Ebrose’s words, Sansa has cut a quick and slightly nervous glance at her brother. No, her cousin. They are cousins now. It’s difficult for both of them to remember. They’ve had little time to grow used to the strange idea.

But she knows he’s about to speak the truth. It’s playing at the edge of his lips.

“No, not Jon,” Sansa interjects, before he has a chance to say anything at all. Her arms uncross, losing all defiance, hands now clasping in front of her instead. Her words are immoveable, like sea ice up beyond Hardhome. She speaks steadily, with no room for debate, “He’s lost enough of his own. All the men have. I’ll do it…”

“Sansa—” Jon begins but she won’t let him say anything further, ignoring him as if they were children once more. But this time, it’s not indifference and spite that guides her.

It’s love. For her last remaining brother.

Cousin, the word sticks in Jon’s throat like a stale piece of bread.

“I’m Ned Stark’s daughter,” she looks between the men, strong with the reminder. “Surely that’s good enough?”

There’s a moment of silence, as Ebrose is glancing between the two Starks, sensing the tension but unaware of any rational reason for it. The archmaester’s glance lingers on Jon a moment longer, still expecting him to jump in and volunteer, and save his sister the indignity and risk of such a thing. Jon shrinks beneath that expectation.

And he remains silent.

“It is, my lady,” Ebrose mentions finally, deciding to take them at their word. “But are you sure?”

“Of course…,” Sansa states, her eyes flickering down to Jorah Mormont.

Her words say that there’s no other answer but Jon knows that she wouldn’t have been so willing even a fortnight ago. Sansa made it clear that she has no love lost on the dragon queen, nor her favorite knight.

But things have changed. They’ve lost too many to pick and choose who lives or dies.

Sansa states it plainly, “He doesn’t deserve to die. None of them did. Let me help save one.”

It goes against everything within Jon not to step in and take this on himself. Everyone will expect it and will look strangely upon him when they find out he let Sansa do what he could not. Now there is shame that will be added to the guilt and regret.

But what could he say? Sansa’s right. She’s the only one. And Daenerys will not survive without Ser Jorah. Even a fool can see that. They will lose two, if one falls.

“All right,” Ebrose agrees, not one to waste time. He nods to a chair beside the bed. “Move those candles and roll up your sleeve, Lady Stark.”

Chapter Text

Tyrion finds Winterfell’s wine cellars in a shambles.

The dead didn’t ransack this part of the castle and everything appears to be untouched by dragon fire or winter frost, but it’s still a shambles and a damn shame, as the Starks never kept enough wine in their halls to begin with and the meager stores down here are dwindling.

Tyrion comes up from the cold, cave-like cellar with a single bottle of some vintage he’s never heard of stuffed under his arm and disappointment deeply etched into the scar lines on his marred face. But he’ll drink it all, straight from the bottle, if only to deaden whatever nonsense is currently passing for feelings in his tattered heart.

His brother is dead. Jaime is dead.

If pressed, Tyrion will play ignorance on the meaning of that word. For he hasn’t been able to accept it yet, despite the number of days that have passed since it happened. In accepting his brother’s death, he would have to accept that there’s no person left alive who loves him.

Not one. Not in the entire world.

What was it that Sam said Maester Aemon was so fond of saying—that a Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing?

Well, what about a Lannister?

Oh, Tyrion, but you’re not the last Lannister. Not yet, little brother. Tyrion cringes on the foolhardy thought, spoken in Cersei’s sultry voice, with all that hubris and arrogance that would be her downfall.

His sister will die shortly, if not already.

He still hates Cersei as much as he loved Jaime. But his skin goes cold on the knowledge that his sister is going to die. He wants to send a raven to King’s Landing, to warn her, to save her. To tell her to flee the capital and to take as many as she can with her. To go south, to go across the sea, to hide from the doom that comes for them all.

But the ravens are all gone, scared away by the storm, scattered to the four winds, flying south and away from the snows. And there’s no escaping this doom anyway. Tyrion is too clever to be able to hope for any sort of reprieve now, having gone over the remaining options in his head a dozen times, swiftly declaring them all vanity and futility.

They’ve lost. For good this time.

The survivors at Winterfell may be living, but it’s in name only. They’re all ghosts now, bitterly cursed by the fact that they will have to wait a little longer to join the dead. And spend that time wondering why they were spared in the first place.

Tyrion doesn’t mourn his brother. He doesn’t know how. And besides, he envies him. He wishes he might have joined him. He’s in no mood for hope and bounces off any whisper of it, with dark cynicism. Even news that might change everything…

Jorah Mormont will live.

That’s what they’re saying. Tyrion was in the Great Hall when Archmaester Ebrose sent summons by a young steward that the knight had awakened at last. The spindly chair that Daenerys had been perched on—her hollow gaze betraying her thoughts were elsewhere, her ears only half-listening as Jon gave a final tally of their grave losses to those few still standing—clattered to the floor as she rushed out of the room.

It's become clear that she would crawl on hands and knees over a bed of nails to get to that man’s side.

Tyrion wishes he could be glad for her…and for Ser Jorah himself—as he certainly doesn’t want the glowering bear to die, but he wonders what difference it might make. What good will come of Ser Jorah’s recovery? So that he will be strong enough to taste death when it comes for them a second time? What if he fails to protect his lady the next time and is forced to watch her fall in front of him?

Maybe love will save them. Tyrion shrugs as he reaches the privacy of his own quarters, pushing the door open wearily, with his shoulder braced against the planks, and wondering if he should skip the wine and just collapse in the unmade bed. But would he be able to sleep? Unlikely.

The others find such hope in the news. They cling to it like children clinging to the skirts of their mother. But Tyrion is less convinced. And far more depressed.

Love. He uncorks the bottle of wine on that droll thought, grinning to himself, without humor.

He sighs.

There’s ashy bitterness mixed in his feelings and he knows it’s mostly his own pride. It has nothing to do with Ser Jorah and Daenerys. Not really. And yet it’s the thought of them together that brings him this bout of bitterness.

How could you be so blind?

He snapped at Varys in the crypt, when Varys told him what he’d witnessed in the courtyard above. Tyrion shook his head, thinking his companion had lost his wits in fear of what came for them in the dark night. He was adamant, “It’s not possible.”

“I tell you it is,” the eunuch declared without hesitation, raising his thin eyebrows just slightly, before shivering on the noise that filtered down from the castle above. The sound of horses on the moors, the sound of screams in the castle. Nearby, Gilly held her son close to her breast, cupping her hand over his ear, her eyes wide and watchful in the dim candlelight of the sealed crypt.

“She doesn’t love him,” Tyrion hissed it angrily, as if he knew. But he was arguing with himself already, a flood of little moments—glances, touches, words—that suddenly took on new color, as if thrust into full sunlight. He said stubbornly, “And he would never jeopardize her chance of…”

But he drifted into silence before finishing that line.

Tyrion wasn’t a stupid man. He’d recognized Ser Jorah’s attachment within minutes of being in the miserable bear’s company. Who wouldn’t? And Tyrion was the first to give voice to the scandalous idea, in the Great Pyramid at Meereen, telling Daenerys what her steady knight could not say for himself.

And he witnessed Daenerys’s eyes pool with tears on the revelation, so long suspected, so long suppressed, her heart locked in stone but breaking nonetheless, as she begrudgingly followed Tyrion’s advice and told her soldiers to escort Ser Jorah from the city.

She spent the rest of that day in her private chambers. With her door locked.

Tyrion’s poor decision-making began there, in Meereen. Not in Westeros. He knows that now.

Daenerys would never send Jorah away again. Now that he’s awake, she’ll not likely leave his bedside.

They’d barely pulled her away for the meeting in the Hall, as she’s been a fixture in his sickroom, day and night, only leaving his side when the Archmaester demands it.

She hides nothing of her love for that man. All her hopes and prayers are for him. Given what he’s seen in the last few days, the idea that Tyrion ever intended to pair her off with Jon Snow is tragically laughable. She’s barely given Jon a word since the battle. Tyrion thinks back on that conversation he had with Varys and Ser Davos on the battlements before the dead came…

A just woman, an honorable man. A union of fire and ice, a comingling of North and South.

All still true. He must concede. But his wry grin is still humorless.

He’s big enough—metaphorically, he snorts into the bottle—to admit it. They were all so wrong. So incredibly wrong.

Deep down, he knows he shouldn’t be so hard on himself. The alliance with Jon Snow had been for the purpose of preserving the kingdoms but what kingdoms will be left to preserve after the Night King is done with this wretched country anyway?

Daenerys can love who she wants, with whatever time she has left. Why not?

As the sour wine pours down his throat, Tyrion settles on amusement and seeking the bottom of that bottle. Ser Jorah Mormont and Daenerys Stormborn, Father of Glowers, Mother of Dragons. He chuckles darkly, a little drunk already.

“Here’s to ‘The Bear and the Maiden Fair’,” he makes a toast to the four walls, bowing towards an empty cushioned chair. He regrets not sending for Pod earlier. He wishes Bronn were here, with or without that damn crossbow. Or Jaime…

Ser Jaime is dead.

Brienne had confirmed it, somberly, with features gone alabaster white. She tells him when it happened, how it happened, the way she cradled him in her arms and rocked him back and forth, willing him to open his eyes once more.

Oh, but then he did open his eyes.

Ice blue and cold.

Brienne’s voice had been hushed when she told him and she couldn’t stop a tremor in her left hand, something that had started on the bloody moors and would continue to plague her every once in a while, until she was a very old woman. She told him bleakly, “When his eyes opened, I dropped him in my grasp, as they weren’t your brother’s eyes at all. I scrambled back as…that thing got to its feet…”

“How did you escape?” Tyrion had pressed her, albeit gently.

“They were finished with us by then. There was a horn blown in the godswood and they all quit their swarming, suddenly walking away, sliding off their piles of carnage and paying us no attention whatsoever. I collapsed by the wall, I was so tired. And your brother…”

She was near tears, and ended her story with a mumbled, “He looked back at me once, and then he was gone.”

Gone.

The despairing word hit their ears heavily. Tyrion shook his head and frowned, silently, liking the word little better than dead.

Brienne had excused herself within moments, leaving his presence quickly, as there was little more to say. And she likely wanted to shed her tears over his brother somewhere private and out of sight. She was a knight now, after all. Steeped in honor and stoicism and all that. And there were plenty in these halls who would still think the Kingslayer was a poor choice for Selwyn Tarth’s honor-bound daughter to waste tears on.

Not with so many others to mourn.

Why did Jaime look back?

The strange, somewhat random thought enters Tyrion’s head while he’s downing the last of that wine, the seemingly minor detail in Brienne’s account unconsciously nagging at his clever mind. But he doesn’t trust in his own cleverness anymore. He’s humbled to the point of not giving it a second thought. And he’s distracted by the rough insignia of the winemaker on the bottom of the bottle. Is that a frog or a lizard?

Grapes from the Neck? Do they grow vines in the swamps?

He won’t remember any of this by the time he’s sober. Brienne won’t think to mention it again, as she’ll be hard-pressed to talk about that night anytime soon.

But months from now, Tyrion will have given up wine for good. Somewhat involuntarily—why in Seven Hells didn’t Sansa stock that cellar with more frog wine?—but that’s beside the point. Sobriety, humility, time. These will awaken Tyrion’s clever mind once more.

Or maybe it’s just dumb luck. He deserves some luck, after all those years without any. Either way, he will ask again,

Why did Jaime look back?

And the answer will be nothing that any of them expect.

Chapter Text

The cold winds outside Winterfell howl like a banshee woman. In the evenings, after the sun goes down, the wails grow fiercer, with nothing but chilly starlight to guide them over barren moors that have gone bone white, lonely and desolate.

It’s a bitter, mournful sound. Almost reminiscent of the desert winds that often stirred up the crusty sand in the Red Waste during eerie nights that seemed endless, when they were lost and defeated and wandering to certain death.

Jorah notices that Daenerys cringes on the sound, inching just a little closer to him on the large bed, grazing his thigh with her own. She seeks his natural warmth, as always, having been fashioned for far milder climates.

She’s sitting up beside him on the mattress, on rumpled quilts, mindful of his injuries but curled as close to him as she dares, with her knees pulled up and a bowl of hot broth in her hands. Jorah is sitting up as well, his back braced against down-filled pillows and the stiff headboard.

Sitting up for any length of time is something he’s only been able to manage in the last week or so. One arm is still in a sling, but the other is free to roam, if still with effort. His hand finds its most familiar perch, coming to rest on her knee.

He likes to have her so close. He likes to feel her beneath his hand, as it’s the only thing that convinces him he’s not dreaming.

When he first woke up here, in this winter-lit room and this ruined castle, his whole body was aching like his breastbone had been smashed and shattered with an iron warhammer. His limbs were unable to follow even the most basic directions, his eyes struggling to stay open, his wounds threatening infection and his head buzzing with fever.

When he woke—he knew he wasn’t dead.

But he nearly wished it were so. His lips were cracked from lack of water, as a groan escaped his dry throat. No, he wasn’t dead. The dead don’t feel pain. The dead don’t feel anything at all. And how he wished he’d lost that sense of…

He barely had time to form the thought, when she appeared.

The door banged loudly against its hinges and then her slight hand was taking up his own, his bruised knuckles pressed against her soft, trembling lips, her voice laced with salty tears, quiet but insistent.

“Jorah, I’m here. I’m right here…”

He couldn’t very well die after that, could he? No matter how much it hurt. No matter that it took two weeks for him to be able to sit upright again, and another week after that to even consider walking the short distance from the bed to the door and back again.

He was so damn weak. And with the amount of blood he lost and the blows he took, it was no wonder. He shouldn’t be alive, everyone agreed. But his wounds were healing, nonetheless. Archmaester Ebrose said it was a miracle of will, but Jorah gave no credit to himself. Only to the Archmaester’s skills and the generosity of Sansa Stark, whose blood had replenished some of what he’d lost.

And to Daenerys, always Daenerys, who stayed by his side, day and night. Without her, there was no doubt in his mind. Without her, he would have given up as soon as he opened his eyes.

She was the arm he leaned on, and the gentle voice he listened to in the long nights, begging him to fight against whatever pull the other side might have on him. Reminding him that it had no claim on him at all. That he belonged to her and not to death. Only her.

She was the crutch he used when he started walking again and she was the hand that fed him when he couldn’t manage it himself.

She continues even now, when he likely could manage it, as he’s no longer the helpless invalid of three weeks ago. But he still exhausts easily and Daenerys is terribly willing to act as his nursemaid, at any hour, disposed to any task.

Jorah is distressed that she would humble herself in this way for him. She was born a princess at Dragonstone, the daughter and granddaughter of kings and claims the throne of the Seven Kingdoms by title and right. She shouldn’t be caring for him in this way when there are others, stewards and servants, who could do it. But he’s in no position to force her away.

His heart would never allow him to tell her to leave, in any case.

“Is it too hot?” Daenerys murmurs, as she blows on the spoon holding broth before carefully bringing it near Jorah’s lips. She holds the spoon steady, urging him to finish it. He says he’s not hungry but she frowns on that, narrowing her eyes and insisting he finish the entire bowl.

“No, it’s fine,” he answers, giving in and swallowing the warm, bitter liquid, licking his lips for the slightest traces of salt as his mouth comes away from the spoon.

His eyes are trained on Daenerys, watching her dip that spoon into the wooden bowl and lift it to her own lips to blow once more. She’s dressed in a plain, loose-fitting gown, with a woolen robe thrown over her shoulders to ward off winter’s chill, and has her hair simply braided. The trimmings of the Queen of the Westeros have been set aside over the past few weeks, as there’s no one left to impress in these halls.

The games of court are finished. Jorah can’t say he’ll miss them.

But even dressed simply, he thinks she’s the most beautiful sight in the whole wide world. His eyes seek her out at every hour, taking in the way her delicate fingers curl around that spoon and the way her mouth softens as she urges him to take just a little more. He does, if only to bring a small smile to those pretty lips.

He knows what happened the night the dead came to Winterfell. He knows that they’re all damned and that he’s returned to a world that has little chance of survival. He assumes they’ll either freeze to death in winter’s storms, or starve to death when the food runs out, or join the dead properly when the Night King comes back to finish the job. But this…

Sitting here in bed with Daenerys. Just the two of them. Close enough to whisper. Close enough to hear every breath she takes and count every eyelash as she glances down at that bowl of broth. With no danger of prying eyes and no worry should they be discovered.

The time for hiding their affection is past, Daenerys says. What Varys witnessed in the courtyard before the battle was only bolstered by her own manic actions in getting him help. She has no regrets that their affair is now common knowledge. She forbids him from having any either.

He can’t argue with her. He’s not sure he’ll ever be able to argue with her again.

In recovery, a strange, contented bliss has taken ahold of his soul and won’t let go. He hasn’t felt this way since he was very young, when the cares of the world hadn’t yet piled upon him, regret upon regret, attempting to crush him under their weight. He’s lucky to be alive and every moment that passes is a stolen one. Especially those stolen with the woman he loves the most. His body still aches from morning to midnight, his limbs still shout against him whenever he attempts to use them, but he is, without a doubt, the happiest man in all of Winterfell.

He knows this to be true. And he can’t help himself.

It blinds him to the sting of their defeat and the terrors they might soon face. But it blinds him to other things too. Things that Daenerys hasn’t told him yet and hides beneath her layered garments, too afraid that the knowledge might distress him or distract him from the business of getting well.

“Another,” she commands, cooling the broth before bringing that spoon up again, lifting it once to demand entry to his mouth.

He grimaces slightly, not at her. Never at her. But at the Archmaester’s draught, that thin gruel on the spoon.

“Come on, it’s not that bad,” she insists.

“You haven’t tasted it,” he replies, curtly.

“I’ve never known you to be a picky eater, Ser,” she tips her head, while raising that left eyebrow just slightly, as she’d done once before, long ago and far away, when they discussed the value of ships in Meereen. He gives a breathy little laugh, at both the gesture and the memory.

She mutters, more seriously, “You ate whatever that brown stew was that Irri made us in the desert without argument.”

“I was hungry,” he argues, recalling a detail that he’s kept from her for many years, “You know that she used scorpions, don’t you?”

“No, she didn’t,” Daenerys answers back, but by the way her expression changes, he knows she has no idea what the resourceful Dothraki handmaid put in that desert stew. Lizards and scorpions and beetles, mostly. At the time, there was no other choice and the only other option was sand.

“Yes, she did,” he tells her, with a confident nod. “I watched her catch them myself, at nightfall, and then she’d mash them up and throw it all in with…”

“Stop or you’ll make me sick,” Daenerys interrupts him, but she’s smiling. The number of years that have passed since they wandered the Red Waste grows long and their memories are softening to those dire days, as the dangers are forgotten, and only the memory of their time together remains—sitting close and talking together quietly, not so unlike this.

Except they sit closer now. And the adoration that laces Daenerys’s features is no longer reserved but open and overflowing, every time she looks at him or feels his touch. They’ve only just been able to touch each other again like this, as his wounds are no longer in danger of reopening at any stress or press of weight. She’s careful and won’t risk injuring him further. It will be several weeks before they can share the same bed again. But his heart thrills to recognize that she still melts at his simplest touch, as now, her eyes hooded on the feel of his thumb making a smooth pass along the rise of her knee.

She brings the spoon to her own lips, dipping her tongue down to venture a taste.

Jorah is satisfied to see her cringe a little. The Archmaester is a talented man, but his medicine is not all sugar and spice.

“You see?” he says.

“Oh, it’s a little bitter,” she admits to this only, wiping the cringe off her features before setting her expression stubbornly. She lifts her chin, “But what of it? As long as it helps you heal, Jorah. You’ll eat all of it and like it.”

The spoon is asking for entry to his mouth again and he has no option but to take it, as Daenerys’s eyes plead for his compliance. Now, she’s the satisfied one.

Silence settles on them for a few minutes, as his resistance is too easily conquered by her wide, violet eyes and the spoon dips down into the bowl once, twice, three times.

“Do you remember that peach you brought me at Vaes Tolorro?” she wonders, suddenly curious.

Her voice goes a little wistful, her mind still drifting back to the days in the desert. Perhaps it was only natural to think of the heat of Essos here, huddled together on a mess of quilts, dressed in furs and woolen robes, shivering against the icy drafts of winter and the darkness of the northern reaches. The thought of that peach brings her great pleasure, that’s obvious, her eyes going soft again as she sets the bowl in her lap to take hold of his arm for a moment, giving the gentlest squeeze.

“Aye,” he replies, with his own little smile. He remembers everything about that day. How miserable she looked, her skin red and burned beneath the eastern sun, her hair tangled up with dust and cinders. The brush of her small fingers as she took that ripe, blush fruit from his hand.

The look on her face as she bit into the pulpy, juice-filled flesh made his heart swell with affection. And love. He loved her so much, even then.

It had crept up on him, slowly at first, but then like a tidal wave. The kind that sinks ships and drowns men. By the time he found her among the ashes of Khal Drogo’s pyre, those hatchling dragons cradled in her grasp, he was already drowning in his love for her. Her sweet smiles, her little touches—these were all that kept him afloat.

“I wish you told me how you felt back then…,” she muses, not as any sort of rebuke, just an earnest wish to go back and start over at the beginning.

He’s surprised by that wish, suspecting that she would not have looked so kindly on a declaration back then.

…would she?

The spoon comes to rest in the bowl and the bowl rests in her lap, as she explains, “Once we reached Qarth, and they all called me their little princess,” she presses her lips together sullenly on that patronizing term even now, years later, “And Xaro teased me about you and made me think that…well, I was mixed up on what a queen should be and how I should act and if they might judge me for being soft and gentle and all those things you seemed to love best…”

“You had to be strong,” he finishes for her, after she goes silent, understanding much. She nods, closing her eyes briefly.

You have a gentle heart. He remembers saying those words. He remembers her features as she struggled with them, worried that in softening her heart, towards anything or anyone, she’d lose everything.

“I couldn’t think that way, even if I wanted to,” she tells him now, her voice dropping on the admission.

Her eyes are regretful and there’s sorrow there. But there was no need for sorrow. He regrets nothing of what’s happened between them. He didn’t deserve her love back then and he barely deserves it now, despite having no doubts about her feelings. Her actions speak louder than any words ever could, her touch and the look in her eyes betray her at every hour.

And now mirror his own.

“I know,” he says, his raspy voice banishing those regrets to far off corners of the world, where they belong. His hand comes off her knee to lightly brush at the wrist that holds that spoon and then up to cup her chin, forcing her dropped gaze to come up once more.

His spirit is light enough that he can’t help teasing her, on subjects that might once have brought him pain, “I used to envy Daario Naharis but I shouldn’t have, should I?”

She grins wide, shaking her head beneath his affectionate touch. “No, Jorah, you shouldn’t have.”

He understands now. Finally. To have taken him into her bed in Slaver’s Bay, she would have been saying he was worth no more than the sellsword. A distraction, a fling. And how happy Jorah is to be something a little more than mere distraction.

“Do you think he’s still in the Pyramid?” she wonders, her eyes alighting with a little mischief, for the first time since before the battle. She likely can guess what his answer will be, but wants to hear his opinion nonetheless.

“I would guess that your sellsword spent a fortnight in Meereen before taking off in search of daring adventure and exotic beauty,” Jorah replies, having travelled long enough with Daario Naharis to know he wasn’t the type to settle into a lordship, no matter how lofty.

“I hope his dagger keeps him warm at night,” Daenerys’s grin goes wide again, pressing just a little closer to her bear. His hand returns to her knee, before running up her thigh. Her eyes say she has little care where Daario Naharis finally ends up and what trouble he finds himself in, as his corner in her heart has been cleaned out and broom-swept.

To make room for another. One who lives in every chamber, as he is lord of that place.

They chuckle together, lightly, but enough that it disturbs her spoon-holding hand, which has unconsciously come to rest on his forearm. The broth on the spoon spills just a little, onto his arm and the bodice of her dress.

“It’s no bother,” she says, as he mumbles an apology, lifting his hand from her thigh only to retrieve a cloth napkin that is resting in his lap.

Daenerys rises slightly to lean over him and deposit the dwindling bowl of broth on the nearest end table. As she pulls back, he attempts to dab at those errant drops on the waist of her dress, hoping to clean them away before they have a chance to stain…

The mirth from the prior moment vanishes with sudden knowledge. Daenerys goes a little rigid as his hand innocently makes a pass against the folds of that dress, running along her waist. At nearly the same moment that Jorah realizes…

It’s possible that another wouldn’t notice the change, as there’s still little to notice.

But there’s a slight bump that isn’t formed by a bunching of fabric, despite all those layers. There’s a stressing to Daenerys’s waist beneath her dress. It’s invisible to the naked eye and only catches Jorah’s attention because he knows the contours and curves of her body so well, having spent much of the journey from Dragonstone to this castle exploring every inch of them.

His mouth goes dry.

“Khaleesi…,” his voice betrays confusion. He might have accepted some other excuse if she’d tried one, but when he looks up from where his large hand has settled, spreading over the suspect spot, his eyes meet her own. And her hand soon joins his, sliding over his fingers with infinite tenderness.

There’s no lie there. The truth is written too plainly in her features to be mistaken. There’s relief too, and he realizes that perhaps she’s been waiting for the right moment to tell him for weeks.

His mind can scarcely comprehend it but the small bump under his hand and the sheepish look in her eyes declare it to be so.

Daenerys is pregnant.

Chapter Text

She reads the first question in his stunned features well enough.

“If you ask if it’s yours, Jorah…I swear, I’ll finish what those dead men started,” she warns him, perhaps only half in jest, seeing those senseless words jump to his lips and dare to speak in his voice.

It’s second nature, she knows he can’t help it. He will always doubt first. He will always doubt his place and his role in her life, even now, despite being at the very the center of it.

And she knows it’s her fault that he doubts. That terrible day in Meereen, when she refused to look at him, when she closed her ears to his pleas, when she banished him from her side—it will follow them like a shadow, even after years of walking together in full sunlight. So she will spend the rest of her life reminding him that his doubts are groundless.

But she hopes the fact that she’s carrying his child might put some of those doubts to rest forever. For what greater proof could there be of the love they share than the fact that new life has come of it? That a child—half her, half him—will be born from it.

She didn’t believe it. She ignored the signs for longer than she should have. It was only on the night that the dead came to Winterfell that she began to suspect anything at all and then it was just a vague feeling, a passing flicker. A sudden fluttering of life that made her shudder on Jorah’s last kiss, as she suddenly wondered, with dread, if she’d just kissed her baby’s father for the last time.

Even after Archmaester Ebrose forced her to admit it—to him, to herself—she still kept her doubts. She went over them, again and again, listing them out to Missandei, who was patient and gentle and just smiled, as she knew that Daenerys wouldn’t be able to argue away the reality of what was happening.

And then a few more weeks passed and she could no longer deny it, even if she wanted to. Her breasts swelled and her belly started to grow, quickly tightening the stays on her gowns enough that Missandei had already had to let most of them out.

Each night, as she sat up at Jorah’s bedside and soothed him into slumber, she would spare one hand on her knight, while the other ran over that small curve at her waist, wondering how on earth they’d managed to break that witch’s curse, fretting about what would happen should Jorah succumb to his injuries and leave her to bear and raise this child alone.

While he slept, she told him what she dared not tell him in daylight:

You’re going to be a father. I’m going to be a mother. Jorah, we’re going to have a baby…

How? How could they bring a child into a world that was raw and frosted, bleeding out with darkness and death? It didn’t seem fair, it didn’t seem right. And yet, the child took no notice of the death and ruin that tainted this cold place, seeking only life, warming itself in the cozy fires of its dragon mother’s womb, knowing nothing of winter. It grew, asserting its life, that little bump promising Daenerys that she had little time to get used to the idea. As she would find herself cradling a baby in her arms soon enough.

“How long?” Jorah asks, swallowing back the other question, the one she forbids, his blue eyes sparking on her fierce tone. She’s pleased to see the doubt in his features banished away and what takes its place is fierce in its own way, not pride exactly—but a sense of belonging, of honor that he should be the father of her child, of pure joy.

In the meantime, his hand spreads over her growing waist with such protectiveness and wonder, that Daenerys finds her breath catch in her throat.

She’s missed his hands on her. She’s missed it more than she can say. The little touches that they’ve been allowed during his recovery sustain them, but she misses what they had. She wants it back, now more than ever. His hand explores the curve of their child, while gently brushing against her own fingers at the same time, and she finds the inside of her thighs go damp under that innocent touch.

She nearly laughs at herself, unable to control that want. But she’s already pregnant, damn it. Her body shouldn’t be begging for more.

“The archmaester thinks I’m about three months gone,” she says, while adding the words that she knows will most soothe his worries, visible in his furrowed brow, and etched up and down his dear features. She assures him, “He says I’m healthy and that the baby is healthy and that everything seems to be progressing as it should.”

“It was on the voyage to White Harbor then?” Jorah nods on the memory. She knows his mind is spinning and quickly running over the possible “when” and “how.” Remembering it in detail, perhaps? She certainly is…

“Aye,” she adopts his own Northern brogue briefly, in almost a sultry tone, interlacing his fingers with her own before sitting up on her knees to lean closer. She presses her free palm against the mattress for balance as she takes a slow kiss from his willing mouth.

She wants to linger there, but knows they can’t do much more, and the torture of his kisses without being able to take it further is currently too acute. She reluctantly leaves off that kiss, trailing another two across the whiskered edge of his lips and further up the rise of his high cheekbone. She murmurs her own suspicion in his ear, “Maybe even that first night?”

“We…,” he can’t comprehend it, still entirely stunned, and she sympathizes. If he’s like her, it will take some time to accept this. He grasps at the same undeniable facts, that have proved inconstant and weak, disintegrating into dust and cinder, “But you can’t have children, Daenerys. The witch…”

He is using his hand to trace the features of her face, running his thumb along her soft lips, before letting that hand drift back, smoothly running his fingers around her neck and up into the long, looser strands of her hair. She leans into the caress, melting on the sensation. The rushing spill of hormones that are currently racing through her body and coursing through her veins beg for release that only he can give her.

Yet another reason she wants him better as soon as possible.

“She was lying,” Daenerys shakes her head, while closing her eyes at his touch and steadying herself, trying not to recall, with such piercing clarity, the feel of his hands running over her in those wind-battered war tents on the way to Winterfell or under rich furs in the upstairs chamber that had served as her suite until recently. She insists, “She must have been lying.”

“But with Daario…?”

“You are not Daario, Jorah,” she reminds him, rather understatedly. It’s a nonsense argument, and yet it means everything in her head. She honestly doesn’t know why she never conceived with the sellsword. In habit, he spilled himself outside of her often enough and maybe it was just that. But she has a feeling it wouldn’t have mattered.

She has a strong feeling that she was never meant to have children with any man…

Except Jorah. Only Jorah.

“And you’re well? You’re all right?” He’ll repeat this question a dozen more times before the end of the night, confusion inevitably giving way to concern and tenderness, his natural instinct to protect her and comfort her returning with a vengeance. He wants to take her in his arms and stroke her hair and tell her this will all be fine. That nothing bad will happen to her or the child. That it doesn’t matter that the world is falling apart. That it doesn’t matter that this is perhaps the worst time to bring a child into the world.

She nods quickly, without hesitation, taking his hand again and kissing it, just as she had when he first woke…

“I was so afraid you would die without ever knowing…,” her voice breaks a little and she can’t continue the dire thought.

They are huddled as near as two people can be without a proper embrace, but she knows he can’t stand even the slightest separation any longer. Neither can she, her heart aching for him. Yearning for closeness, for his arms around her. He beckons her near and she can’t force herself to hold back from him anymore, despite her better judgment.

She sinks into that familiar embrace with a relieved sigh. And she’s resting against the right side of his chest before either one of them can think better of it. The injuries were less extensive on this side and she’s mindful of those that remain. His wince and grimace as he gathers her close is minor and dashed away by the feel of Daenerys in his arms again. When she asks, he’ll assure her that any pain is worth it.

She lets her eyes slide shut, listening to his breathing. After weeks of icy winter drafts and cold feelings of dread, she’s finally back to the one spot where she feels like nothing can harm her, fully at peace in Jorah’s embrace.

“Are you…,” he struggles to find his next words, perhaps not wanting to even voice them, afraid of the answer. But there isn’t a braver man alive than Jorah Mormont, so he just sets his expression with grim determination, and asks it bluntly. “Do you regret that it happened?”

Daenerys doesn’t bother lifting her head from his chest. She barely stirs, too comfortable against him, with that one good arm holding her close. She lays her palm flat against his chest, breathing in deeply, his scent, his touch, his warmth, the living proof of the man she loves so much.

His question isn’t an unreasonable one. And while she’s tempted to scold him for even asking it, she would have been surprised if he didn’t. She’s asked herself the same over the last few weeks, turning the knowledge of what this means over and over again in her head—the consequences of this child are many. All unexpected, all unplanned.

They’ve never talked of the future, as it’s always been too uncertain. Death hovers too near, even now. And what is the future? Does it still exist?

Once, she thought it was a silver crown and the Iron Throne of Westeros. She’s had little time to consider how her relationship with Jorah would survive the achievement of that long journey, should she manage it. She’d made up her mind some time ago that she’ll never give him up, no matter the ire of her advisors, no matter the gossip at court.

And now…

Outside of this room, only Missandei and Ebrose know that Daenerys is pregnant. She’ll keep it this way, if she can, for as long as she can. But she can’t say that she’s not tempted to smugly spill the news to Tyrion and watch his clever mind sputter and whirl on the revelation that she’s bound herself to Jorah Mormont in a way that can never be taken back.

She has no idea if they’ll survive this winter. She has no idea if she’ll survive long enough to bring this child into the world…

But her hand drifts to the growing bump at her waist and she remembers clearly how that false woman across the sea told her that she’d never bear another child. And she remembers the taste of Jorah’s kisses on the boat to White Harbor and the words of love he’d whispered across every inch of her skin from Dragonstone to Winterfell. She conjures an image of herself amongst green trees and spring wildflowers, holding a fair-haired child with blue, blue eyes and she knows that she can never regret this baby’s existence.

Not ever. Not for one minute.

“I regret nothing,” she answers, with that fierce, regal tone that only Daenerys Stormborn can manage. She’s drawn down the bandages that crisscross his upper chest just slightly and is tracing lines on his breastbone, very gently, a feather touch across new scars that have only just healed over. “You’ve given me more than any other man I’ve ever known, Jorah. You’ve given me everything. You nearly gave up your life for me. I’d want my baby to have no other father.”

“Our timing couldn’t be worse,” Jorah mentions dryly, but somewhat soothingly too, in a way that says he doesn’t regret it either.

“It’s the gods punishing us for taking so long to accept this gift,” she grins against his chest, turning so she can plant a kiss where her cheek formerly lay, at the top of another scar, this one older and familiar to her, collected across the Narrow Sea. Again, for her. Always for her. She acknowledges, in a lighter manner, “It’s my fault. If I’d just seen what was in front of me earlier, you might be father to a whole tribe of little bear cubs by now…”

He chuckles at that unlikely, foreign thought, the laughter rumbling through his chest, if still a bit too wearily for her liking. After another moment’s silence, he murmurs more seriously and with feeling, “You’ll be a wonderful mother, Daenerys.”

“I hope so,” she replies, drawing on the confidence in his voice to cast away her own doubts on the subject. She tells him, “But I can’t say I’m looking forward to giving birth in the middle of winter. And not here—”

She lifts her head, shifting her elbow carefully to gently prop herself up against him. “That’s something I wanted to…”

But she’s unable to finish before Archmaester Ebrose enters the chamber, his shoes scraping against stone, the fire snapping mildly on the taste of a whispering draft brought in with the open door. She burrows down against Jorah once more, at the mere hint of that cold wind, still howling outside the castle walls.

Ebrose wanders in and out of this room regularly, as there are others in the castle who have benefited from the healer’s presence these last weeks. But Jorah was his first patient and has required more care than the others, so his visits are still many.

He seems less than surprised to find Daenerys in Jorah’s arms, despite making it clear that such a thing was not to be done for another few weeks. His disapproval is muted, but obvious. He’s a little more surprised to find that Jorah’s arm has curled around her waist in a manner that allows the man’s weathered hand to rest on the telltale spot where his child grows.

The twinkling eyes peering out beneath those bushy eyebrows seem to be pleased with this development most of all, as he’s been urging Daenerys to tell Jorah about the baby for a fortnight, at least. He told her it might help increase Jorah’s desire and will to live, knowing that he had a child coming. But Daenerys refused and told him that it was her business and that she would tell Jorah when she decided it was best.

The archmaester didn’t know Jorah like she did. She had no doubt that Jorah would love this baby and want to survive to see its birth, but it would make him anxious and worried, for her sake, as he’d know the danger that his own actions had put her in. He didn’t need the extra worry. He needed to get well.

So she won that battle, but has since lost the war. And it’s a sweet defeat, she thinks, resting against her bear as they casually watch Ebrose amble around the room. He notes the near empty bowl of hot broth on the end table with a slight, satisfied curl of his lips.

“If you rip out his stitches, my dear, I’ll not be sewing them up again,” Ebrose mutters, curmudgeonly, as he comes near the bed.

“I’m being careful,” she promises, as Jorah adds, “She couldn’t hurt me if she tried, Archmaeaster.”

“And how are you feeling today?” Ebrose wonders, critically, expecting an honest answer.

“Better than yesterday,” Jorah replies. “And far better than the day before that.”

“Mhmmm,” Archmaester Ebrose nods slowly as he checks Jorah’s pulse and the coolness of his brow, before fussing with a dressing on the left side. The act of lifting the bandage and gauze causes Jorah to suck in a little air through his teeth, but Daenerys has taken his hand and is pressing the palm gently.

The archmaester examines the progress of the deeper gash beneath, “Well, it may hurt but it’s healing”—Ebrose’s lips offer a mischievous little grin as he adds—“and I don’t think we can blame the climate this time, Ser…”

“No,” Jorah admits, with just the faintest blush coloring the skin beneath his beard. He never expected to see the archmaester again, and now that the man has saved his life, Daenerys knows Jorah feels a little worse for deceiving him at the Citadel.

But she’s glad to see that blush on his skin. His color had been ashen for so long. Slowly, he’s regaining his strength but the strides come in days now, instead of weeks. Even the archmaester seems to agree that he’s on the mend.

Ebrose nods at the expectation written so clearly in her hopeful features, answering a question that she’s been asking for some time, “It will take months to recover your full strength, of course, and I’d expect you’ll feel some of these injuries for the rest of your life. But I’d guess you’d be fit for travel in another week or so? Three would be best,” he cautions, tempering the eagerness that Daenerys can’t help but radiate.

Jorah’s face is betraying confusion once again, his gaze sliding from the archmaester to Daenerys. Ebrose, ever observant of his surroundings and the people within them, decides to take his leave at that moment, patting Jorah’s shoulder once before giving them their privacy.

“Daenerys?” Jorah wonders as soon as the door closes behind the old man, the odd mention of travel hovering in the air between them.

Daenerys shifts in his grasp carefully so they are now face-to-face. If she were to lift her chin an inch, she could brush another kiss against his lips. She’s tempted, but there will be time for kisses later. Instead, she reaches up a hand to trace his jawline, sliding up towards the soft skin at his ear lobe, just as she’d done in a hidden alley in Qarth, on a day that feels like three lifetimes ago.

They are the only children I shall ever have…

Not so, Daenerys.

“I want to go back to Dragonstone,” she says, feeling more certain of the plan every day. “I’m not sure if Euron Greyjoy was right and that maybe we can outlast this darkness on the islands—but even if we can’t escape it, I know I can’t stay here. I can’t have our baby here, Jorah. The whole castle reeks of death. It howls at the walls and haunts the corridors. I’m so afraid that if we stay here, I…”

There’s a glimmer of fresh tears in her eyes, but not so many, as the feel of his arm around her is enough to chase away much sorrow. She asks him plainly and plaintively, her voice going very small, as she knows that she can no longer command anyone, least of all him, “Will you come with me to Dragonstone?”

She’s happy to see the confusion in his face give way to immediate resolve, and a soft grin, over her foolishness in thinking that she need ask. He is hers. Always and forever. He made that clear a long, long time ago.

He leans forward to kiss her brow and she accepts it with deep serenity stealing over her features. That kiss fills her up with light and pooling warmth, curling in spirals from the top of her head all the way down to her full and growing womb.

He confirms, “Daenerys, my love, I would follow you anywhere…”

Chapter Text

At midday, there’s a knock at Sansa’s door. At the sound, she looks up from the scratching pen and parchment beneath her hand.

She assumes it’s one of the servants, bringing up a tray from the kitchens. Few of her household remain, as the dead didn’t distinguish between those with swords in their hands and those without. High or lowborn, it didn’t matter.

She’s told the survivors that there’s no need to continue what they’d done before. That the time for fetching her meals and washing her linens is past, as they are all just clinging to survival now. It doesn’t seem right that some should wait on others, no matter what their former roles and titles had been.

And yet, they tell her they want to resume what sense of order they can. They tell her they’ve been serving her family for years and, if it’s all the same to her, they’ll continue doing so until winter finally finishes them all off.

Sansa expects they like the distraction and the routine of having a set job and doing it. She’s much the same and has thrown herself into the same worries and calculations as before the battle. Counting their provisions, counting their numbers, trying to calculate how long they may survive on what they have and whether they are likely to outlast a winter that might continue indefinitely.

She’s sent riders to Deepwood Motte, Torrhen’s Square and the Dreadfort, to see if anyone else survives or has taken refuge in those halls. She’s asked Ser Davos to help her establish a sustainable system of rationing, as he has experience with keeping men fed and healthy while dealing with uncertain conditions and limited supplies.

They will have fewer to feed soon.

Daenerys has informed them that she will be returning to Dragonstone within days, as Ser Jorah is finally strong enough to travel. Missandei, the dragons and the handful of Unsullied who survived the Night King’s victory will be leaving with her. Archmaester Ebrose has already expressed his desire to return to the Citadel, to report on what he’s seen and research a few nagging questions that the comparatively sparse volumes in Winterfell’s library have failed to answer.

Sansa is conflicted about their departure—knowing that it means fewer mouths to feed. But they’ve already lost so many and there’s gloomy regret in saying farewell to anyone else who’s still breathing.

As it will likely be the last time they say it. Sansa’s optimism on their life expectancy only extends so far.

Whenever she starts to lose hope or remembers that the Night King continues south, cloaking himself in winter and storm clouds, intent on the cold destruction of all mankind, she finds her heart hammering in her chest and her gaze, so steady at her work, begins to waver, her hands shaking, her vision blurring, her feelings spiraling into a sort of panic until…

You’ll be all right, Sansa.

Sandor Clegane tends to stay close to her now and she’s glad of it. There are few hours of the day where she’s unable to look up and find his steady, if ever morose, gaze seeking out her own from across the room. In King’s Landing, she used to wonder how he always seemed to be there—ready to throw his white cloak around her bruised shoulders and carry her away from a dirty alleyway, where those grasping men might have finished her long before Littlefinger or Ramsay ever got the chance.

He was Joffrey’s dog but it wasn’t Joffrey’s step he followed. It wasn’t Joffrey he chose to keep safe. And he showed his true feelings for Joffrey the night the Blackwater burned anyway.

Fuck the king.

He showed his true feelings for her that night too.

I won’t hurt you, little bird...

Now, they’ve settled into some strange attachment that she doesn’t quite understand and hasn’t had time to reflect on. But she knows that his presence makes her feel better and that she needs to know he’s nearby. He’s with Ser Davos and Podrick Payne right now, but he’ll be coming back to check on her shortly. To ask if she needs anything, to keep her company, even if she doesn’t. Quiet, familiar company. It’s becoming habit between them.

There’s comfort in that thought. And for a moment, she impulsively hopes it’s him on the other side of the door, as she’s suddenly flooded with a desire to see him.

And the fact that the desire warms her all over is not so shocking. Over the last few weeks, that feeling’s become habit too.

But when she opens the door, Sansa blinks. It’s not the Hound, nor one of the servants. She finds her expression hardening, just a little. Although it’s not from any malice. There’s no anger in her expression. But she finds herself face-to-face with the silver-haired dragon queen and it’s still difficult for her to imagine greeting Daenerys Stormborn in any other way.

“May I come in?” Daenerys asks her, after a beat of silence passes between them.

Daenerys’s expression is just as fixed as Sansa’s, inscrutable, but she’s asking, not demanding. Sansa finds herself nodding slowly, while opening the door a little wider to allow the Targaryen woman entrance.

“Have a seat,” Sansa gestures to one of many chairs around her grand table. All empty, their former occupants are ghosts and dead men.

She returns to her own perch, her hands resting in her lap, clasped together. Her posture is defensive and too poised. But she doesn’t know how else to be with Daenerys. She sees Daenerys hesitate and adds, “Anywhere you like.”

It’s only midday but Sansa has lit most of her candles for want of light, as the day is gloomy and overcast, with little spits of ice and snow hitting against her window panes. Daenerys’s eyes snap under the candle flame as she surveys Sansa’s personal chambers.

It’s orderly, except for the mess of parchment on the table, by which Sansa has been making lists. Of provisions they have, of provisions they need. The set of rooms are richly furnished, trimmed in furs, but with few frills, as is custom in most northern holdfasts.

This had been her mother and father’s room once. The adjoining bedchamber is the same room in which they first read that poisonous scroll from Aunt Lysa that would set everything in motion—kings and pawns, knights and queens, until they all ended up here, as chipped and charred pieces, scattered in the snow.

Sansa wonders why she’s come to see her. There are no matters of state to attend. The state is no more, at least not while the Night King marches south. The kingdoms are little more than a geography lesson at present, ungoverned, a patchwork of blood and snow.

Without ravens, they have been unable to send warnings to Cersei or any of the holdfasts that dot the road to King’s Landing. And no ravens have arrived to tell them news of what’s happening in the South.

Perhaps the ravens are all dead. Perhaps Winterfell is all that remains of the living. Sansa shivers on that lonely thought.

Daenerys takes the chair directly across from Sansa, sliding into it smoothly, while keeping her wool and fur cloak wrapped close around her, as it’s chilly in this room, despite the fire. It’s cold everywhere. No fire is a match for the frosted weather that’s settled over the northern moors. And it will likely get colder as the weeks continue on. The sun is appearing for fewer hours than it was even a month ago, when dawn first rose over those blighted fields of blood.

Daenerys skips any sort of small talk, as they don’t have any.

“I wanted to thank you for what you’ve done…,” she says in a quiet voice, dripping with sincerely. There’s nothing in her voice but true gratitude, coloring every word, lilting every tone. There’s no question about what she’s talking about.

Who she’s talking about.

Beneath the sleeve of her dress, Sansa’s arm is pricked and bruised by a spattering of needle marks that have just begun to heal and scab over. The biting pain of those marks keeps Sansa from feeling a numbness that’s threatened to steal over her entire body since they burned Arya and Bran’s bodies in the godswood.

She hadn’t been lying when she told the archmaester that she wanted to do it. Of course, there was Jon to think of, so she would have volunteered in any case. But it was no great sacrifice, whatever they all think. Ser Jorah didn’t deserve to die and she was happy to have been part of the reason he was spared.

“I—anyone would have done the same,” Sansa replies, with humility. It’s hard to be proud now. And Sansa’s pride was never her defining feature anyway.

In winter, the best and worst part of a person’s make up is revealed. Sansa has discovered more of herself in the few weeks since the massacre outside these walls than perhaps the rest of her life put together. She knows she’s strong-willed, like her mother. She knows she’s built for this season, like her father and his father before him.

But she has no pride in that knowledge. Just confidence, rough and plain, of who she is and what she must do now. She must survive. She must help her people survive. And hunker down and get through this season as best they can. There’s no other choice left.

“Not anyone,” Daenerys argues, shaking her head firmly. Sansa is struck by the fact that there’s a sheen of tears sparkling in the steely dragon-girl’s eyes. Even weeks later, when her knight is out of danger, Daenerys seems deeply affected by the idea that she might have lost him. She stresses, “You’ve done me a greater service than I could ever think to repay.”

“You love him dearly, don’t you?” Sansa says, unable to stop herself from asking, unable to stop Sandor Clegane’s face from gently drifting through her mind at the same time.

She’s not in love with him. Or she doesn’t think she is anyway. She has no idea what love looks like or what it tastes like. She knows that now. When she was young, it was all knights in gleaming white armor, decorated with florets, and handsome princes wearing golden crowns, unblemished skin and perfect smiles.

The Hound never smiles. He says there’s no reason for it. The world is sour and stale and doesn’t deserve their smiles. His face is mangled and his words are blunt. He never promises wonderful endings like Petyr used to or go on about pretty pictures, with no more substance than a snowflake falling on warm skin.

But she likes that. She doesn’t trust anything wonderful or pretty anymore.

Except perhaps that Daenerys Targaryen loves Jorah Mormont. She has eyes, doesn’t she?

Daenerys admits it without a second thought, her lips parting softly on Sansa’s words. She says, in a vulnerable tone, “I don’t think I was meant to live my life without him and I don’t ever want to try.”

Sansa remembers when they all arrived at Winterfell. The image of Ser Jorah helping Daenerys down from her horse is now colored in by more details—the way his hands came away reluctantly, the way Daenerys’s eyes held his for a moment longer than necessary. Sansa muses, “They all thought you loved Jon. They said it was a match fashioned by the gods. My servants said you’d snuck a northern lord into your bed and I just assumed—but it was always Ser Jorah, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Daenerys risks a slight, half-formed smile, biting her bottom lip just a little. Her eyes fall to her lap, where her hands have fallen against her skirt and the folds of that overcoat she’s thrown over her shoulders, hoping to chase away the chill of the wintery castle. When her eyes come back up, she promises, “I wasn’t ashamed of him. And I didn’t mean to deceive Tyrion and the others, or you, but it wasn’t for them to know or speculate. My heart is my own. And Jorah’s. It belongs to no one else.”

Sansa understands what Daenerys is saying. And there’s something in Daenerys’s tone that Sansa envies a little. The idea that she still has a heart, for one thing. Sansa sometimes wonders where her own has gone. She finds it hard to feel anything these days. She wants to, but if she starts thinking about Arya or Bran, then she’ll start thinking about Robb and Rickon too, and then Mother and Father.

Even Jon seems lost to her. He’s been wandering in a fog for weeks and it will not lift. Gone is the brother who promised her they would take back their home from the Boltons. Gone is the confident man who rallied the entire North to fight against their greatest enemy.

She knows why he’s like this. They are home but their home is a ruin. They fought their enemy and they lost. Sansa feels for Jon, deeply. She told him once before but he didn’t listen.

Jon, you don’t know what it’s like to lose.

Well, he knows now. But he has yet to accept it. He’ll not get through this winter without understanding a truth that she and Gilly and Sandor, and she expects, Daenerys and Ser Jorah, learned long ago.

That you cannot survive this life unless they take everything from you. Until you’re broken and you’re forced to mend the pieces back together as best you can. And continue on, despite everything. It hurts and it’s rarely pretty. But there’s no helping it.

That’s survival.

“Pardon me, Lady Sansa,” another voice enters the room, timidly. As expected, one of the servant girls has brought up a tray, of chunks of venison and root vegetables that Gilly or one of the others has turned into a stew, hoping to make it all go a little further.

“Yes, you can bring that in,” Sansa beckons her across the threshold, pushing back her chair just a little to allow the girl room to set the meal on the table in front of her. She looks over at Daenerys, offering, “I can send for another tray, if you’d like?”

“No, I’m fine,” Daenerys mentions, and Sansa notes that she wrinkles her nose just briefly and brings a hand to her mouth on a small grimace, as the strong smell of stewed meat wafts between them. The old Sansa might take offense, too quickly assuming that Daenerys is insulting their northern cuisine. The new Sansa is charitable, and considers that Daenerys just might not be hungry.

Or…

I wonder if she’s pregnant…Sansa thinks, but in an off-hand way that doesn’t stick. It’s there and gone before she can even comprehend it fully, as it’s common knowledge that Daenerys is barren.

She’ll think on it again a little less than six months later, when she and Jon visit Dragonstone, this time together, once again asking for this woman’s help. She’ll recall Daenerys’s wrinkled nose and the blanched look that quickly came and went. At Dragonstone, she’ll see another sudden look pass Daenerys’s face during the summit meeting, this one betraying far more distress.

And she’ll wonder how they’d all been so blind.

“It’s no trouble, my lady,” the servant girl mentions, her gaze flickering to the Targaryen queen.

Daenerys is gracious but firm, “Thank you, but I’ll eat later with Ser Jorah.”

The girl doesn’t push further, bobbing her head to both women before leaving them.

“I’m in your debt,” Daenerys continues once the servant girl is gone. She exhales on a truth that Sansa expects must be hard to swallow. Daenerys doesn’t have a reputation for showing weakness or acknowledging debts, of any kind. And yet, Daenerys admits this one forthright, “But I have nothing to give you…”

She has nothing to give you now. But what about later? Littlefinger’s voice is always in Sansa’s head. She’s getting better at ignoring him. But his cynicism, his lessons in chaos, his grasping knowledge that any moment—no matter when or where—can be twisted into a moment of triumph, persists. Sansa know there’s always something to gain. There’s always a rung that can be added to his damn ladder.

Sansa still has a feeling that somehow, someway, this shadow that has fallen upon them will be banished back. That the Night King will taste defeat and that there will be a vacuum of power left behind. She has no idea how it will happen or if it can happen, but she knows that Daenerys is still alive.

As is Jon Snow. Jon Targaryen, the true king, by birth and right.

Daenerys may not be able to give her anything now. But in this moment, Sansa could force a promise from her lips easily. The woman is too pleased to have her favorite knight restored to her and too willing to show her gratitude. Sansa could ask for a free North, she could ask that Daenerys name Jon her heir. It would be a natural thing to continue an alliance that was meant to save them all.

But it didn’t save them all. And there’s no alliance left. It ended out there on the battlefield, with bloodstains on the snow.

Don’t do it…her mother’s voice now, preaching a different way. Sansa can imagine her mother sitting beside her—Catelyn Stark looking grim but shaking her head with a firm “no”.

Don’t be Littlefinger. Be my daughter. The last living child of Ned and Catelyn Stark.

Sansa swallows back the tears that might have come to her eyes on that thought. She’s dressed in black, still in mourning. She might stay in mourning all her life. She doesn’t want to think of politics or what might happen in the future. If there’s a future. She doesn’t want to think on how she might leverage a good deed into something more. Something twisted, something hollow. She doesn’t want to leverage it. She’s glad to have done it.

She’s weary of games. She doesn't want to play them anymore.

“There’s no debt,” Sansa tells Daenerys, with a slight lift of her shoulders. Her hand comes up to rest on the table beside that tray, as she says sincerely, in a strong tone meant to drown out the ghost of Petyr Baelish, who she knows will haunt her forever, “I’m glad he lived. I hope you both survive this winter. I truly do. And you don’t have to return to Dragonstone. Winterfell is still yours, Your Grace.”

“No, it’s yours,” Daenerys reaches forward and covers Sansa’s hand with her own. The dragon queen vows, “No matter what happens, it will always be yours. I should have—”

“It’s all right,” Sansa mutters, knowing what Daenerys intends to say. “I could have been friendlier to you too. It’s hard to know who to trust.”

“It is,” Daenerys agrees, her eyes taking on a faraway look. She implores Sansa to understand, “And the person I trust most is alive because of you.”

“It was my pleasure,” Sansa is blushing now, just a little, wholly uncomfortable with too much praise. She’s a Stark, after all, and there’s little that the northerners can stand worse than being praised for doing what they see as their duty.

The two women share a weighty glance, one filled with understanding. Finally. Sansa begins to wonder if part of her initial coldness towards Daenerys might have been her own intimidation of this myth of a woman, who arrived with dragons and great armies at her back. Here, stripped of all that, Sansa sees Daenerys as she truly is.

A woman who has lost much. A woman who clings tightly to what she has left. A woman who puts love before all else.

Sansa can’t fault her for that.

Daenerys doesn’t linger in Sansa’s chamber much longer, as there are still many things she must attend to before returning to Dragonstone. Her hand smoothly slips from Sansa’s as she rises, with Sansa rising with her, to see her out.

But before she takes her leave, the silver-haired woman turns back once, as if just remembering something. Her tone is rather light, at least compared to what they’ve been speaking of, as she asks, “I wonder, Lady Stark—Sansa, could I impose on you for one more thing?”

“Yes, of course,” Sansa replies. “What is it?”

"I'd like to use Winterfell's sept for an hour this evening," Daenerys’s expression is a little mischievous, a little frivolous, as she continues, “And I was wondering if you might know where I could find a razor?”

“A razor?” Sansa repeats.

“Yes, a razor.” Daenerys grins.

Chapter Text

“Keep your head still,” she warns him sternly, perched in his lap, razor to his throat.

But even with his chin tilted up, Jorah watches that sternness give way to an irrepressible grin as she brings the sharp-edged blade up his neck and towards his jawline, drawing it through a smooth and sweet-smelling lather, shaving back his mess of a beard, which has grown a little too wild and ragged in the past few weeks.

Daenerys rinses the razor off in the soapy basin of water balanced between them, before returning to make another pass through his unkempt whiskers. The blade makes a satisfying scraping sound as it tames his beard back to a scruff, as he’d worn it since he returned to her side at Dragonstone.

Jorah relaxes under her careful, ministering touch. She’s never done this before but he’s walked her through it and her fingers have been steady throughout, gingerly wielding that little blade with precision. Still, he mumbles, “Easy, Khaleesi,” as she cuts a close shave against the underside of his chin. She just grins at his words, too intent on her work, too confident now that she knows what she’s doing.

She’s a quick study when it comes to her bear.

“I told you to keep still,” she reminds him, shifting her weight just a little, edging up to tighten the angle of that blade. She really shouldn’t be sitting in his lap like this. Archmaester Ebrose would disapprove, giving them another one of his long-suffering sighs if he happens to walk into this chamber in the next several minutes.

Why must you be like this?

But Jorah’s made more strides in the last four days than all the weeks prior and she’s being careful, as always. Daenerys knows his injuries better than anyone, having fussed and fretted over them for weeks. She also knows that his strength is returning, and not just because he stubbornly insists upon it. It’s true. His body is as stubborn as his will, and Jorah has a lot to live for these days.

In the war of whispers waged between death and Daenerys, Daenerys won. He followed her voice alone and has emerged from the shadowlands to return to her side. He has no intention of leaving her side again.

Ebrose’s appearance here, in Jorah’s chamber, is unlikely in any case, as Daenerys has procured one last favor from the archmaester. And that favor currently has him waiting in the Winterfell Sept.

Waiting for Jorah and Daenerys to come join him and bind themselves to each other—formally this time, before the sight of gods and men. At least those few that still remain.

“I’m almost done,” she promises, as she makes another pass down his jaw, her eyes following the movements of the razor attentively.

“You didn’t need to do it in the first place,” he mutters back, despite reveling in the feel of her hands on his face.

She teases him softly, tenderly, “I may be marrying a bear tonight but, given the choice, I’d rather he didn’t look like one.”

Jorah chuckles on the tease. “Am I hideous, Daenerys?” he wonders, but his tone is light.

She nods without hesitation, grinning as she answers, “Oh, wildly so, Ser,” before leaning up to press a kiss against a latherless spot high on his cheek. As she pulls back, their eyes lock for a long moment, very close, as there are many unspoken words that have been passing between them of late.

His grip around her tightens just a hair. His left arm is finally out of that sling and is happy to roam and curl loosely around her as she works, his fingers still marveling at the strange and wonderful feel of that extra weight gathering around her waist, still small, still hidden beneath her gown, but gently increasing. The baby grows daily.

The baby…he still can’t fathom it. But neither can his hands deny it.

His touch is too delicate, a feather-brush against her stomach, and she wriggles against it, her smile going even wider, as she’s prone to ticklishness in that particular spot. As he well knows, the smile lines around his eyes crinkling, his lips curling and threatening to spoil her work.

“Don’t,” she warns him, tapping the blunt side of the blade against his chin twice. She reminds him, “Just one slip of the razor, my lord…”

“I’m at your mercy, my lady,” he replies, incandescently pleased by the truth in those words. He willingly gives her victory in every minor battle they’ve had since he’s awakened.

The number of spoonfuls of that awful broth that she forces him to swallow, the weary number of steps that she urges him to take as they wander up and down the corridor together, building back his strength. He’s using a cane now and no longer needs her steadying arm. But he usually keeps it anyway, as she never complains.

He’s let her win a somewhat less than minor victory too…

“I want to marry you…,” she didn’t mince words, spoken softly and only a few nights ago, as she lay curled up next to him beneath the quilts. They lay apart, but not so far as before. They remained ever mindful of his injuries. Still, Daenerys had crawled up beside him as soon as the archmaester left them for the night, declaring him fit enough that they could at least share the same bed.

He was mere minutes from falling asleep, with his eyes shuttered and his body fully at rest. The sharper pains and terrible aches that greeted him those first weeks had been replaced with more distant throbbing. He had days now when he nearly felt well. With his eyes closed, he’d been thinking of Bear Island, daring to picture a small child with silver-blonde hair laughing and running and skipping in the same meadows and streams that he’d played in as a boy.

It was a nonsense thought. This winter would never end and that baby would likely never set foot on Bear Island, if it lived in the first place. If any of them managed to outlive this defeat and the terrors of a dark season.

And yet, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking these thoughts. Or from holding so close to hope. He’d walked hand in hand with death. Now he walked hand in hand with Daenerys, and there was so much hope in that.

But even his hopes, those of a man unexpectedly restored to the land of the living, extend only so far. And so, at her quiet voice, he thought he misheard her or maybe he’d slipped into proper dreams and was making it all up. And yet, she’d spoken. Her voice lingered in the chamber. So he asked her to repeat herself.

“I want to be your wife,” she told him plainly, meeting his gaze as soon as his eyes flickered open. She propped herself up on one elbow, reaching further under the covers to slide her fingers into his own. They were still restrained when it came to touching each other, but there was no danger in taking his hand. She asked, with hope, “If you’re willing to be my husband?”

The question was too simple, too plain and too easy to answer. But words fled him, abandoning his mouth as capriciously as the Night King had abandoned the bloodied moors of Winterfell. Jorah was left speechless, struggling to reconcile the fact that Daenerys, his Daenerys, had just asked him if he’d be willing to accept the song written on his heart?

Say yes quickly. Before she takes it back…

But he ignored his first impulse and tried to talk her out of it. Of course, he did. He told her it was the shock of everything that happened. He told her that there was no good reason to bind herself to him in that way. That he was a disgraced lord from a minor house. That he would love her forever just as they were. And that their child would be no bastard, even without a marriage ceremony.

Bear Island didn’t hold to those laws of civility so popular on the mainland and she was still the Mother of Dragons and Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, even if there were no kingdoms left to claim. There was no danger. With a single word, her child would be a Targaryen in both blood and name.

“And a Mormont,” she added immediately, frowning at the fact that he neglected to say it. Her fingers tightened around his and her head tipped slightly on the pillow, silently scolding him and waiting for him to amend his words.

“Yes, a Mormont too,” he relented, lips softening into a smile that he couldn’t suppress, his chest filled to bursting with both pride and love for her. She leaned over and took another kiss from his lips, lingering over that kiss a little longer than the last one. And the one before that.

As his strength returned, so did the passion in those kisses, still burning as hot as on the road from White Harbor to Winterfell.

He may have convinced himself that the entire conversation was a dream. But as she leaned over him, he felt the curve of their child again. Ever present, ever growing.

Every time he’s tempted to believe none of this is real, that he died out there on the cold moors and that all this is nothing more than smoke and vapors—he’s reminded that Daenerys carries their child. And the reality of that child grounds him, as not in his wildest dreams would he have dared to imagine such a thing.

Nor that Daenerys would be giving him a shave so as to ready him for their wedding, which would be happening within the hour. Their wedding.

Jorah Mormont is to marry Daenerys Targaryen before the sun rises on the morrow. No, he must be dreaming.

And yet, she feels real—here, sitting in his lap. Her gentle breathing, her soft eyes. The feel of her thickening waist beneath his hand. As she wipes the remaining lather from his face with a cloth, she eyes the results of her efforts, gently using her fingers to turn his chin one way and then the other. She likes what she sees, that’s obvious. And she dips down to steal another kiss from his lips, hands running along his now trimmed beard.

That kiss feels real enough, their tongues exchanging familiar greetings.

Finally, she crawls off his lap to set the basin aside. He runs his own hand over his mouth and cheeks, fingers running along the scruff. She’s kept it a little longer than before the battle, and he wonders why. He asks her.

“I always liked how you wore it in Qarth,” she tells him as she cleans the razor, drying it on the cloth before setting both beside that basin. She’s biting her lip on a memory that must give her some pleasure, as he sees her cheeks go pink under candlelight. When she turns back to him, she allows, “Although why you kept it so long in Essos, I’ll never know…”

“It’s cooler in the heat than you’d expect,” he shrugs, adding, “And the Dothraki don’t trust a clean-shaven man.”

“Neither does a Khaleesi,” she answers slyly, mimicking the way he says the name. Her name. Somehow, he’s made it hers and hers alone. At least when spoken in that musical way.

She runs a wandering hand down his broad shoulder as she passes him. And she takes his wrist as she returns, after fetching the oak cane which is propped up beside the bed. She hands it over to him, patiently hovering as she watches him stand, on his own, rising up to a height that forces her to crane her neck to look up at him. Which she does, with a warm and beaming look of adoration gracing those beautiful features.

Her husband. His wife. They are mere minutes from making it so.

Their timing is perfect, as a soft knock at the door follows. And Missandei soon appears, slipping through that door, all smiles and affection for them both. There is grief and fear still—it currently lives and thrives in the ruined halls of Winterfell—but it will all keep for one night at least.

“Are you ready?” Missandei asks.

Chapter Text

The ceremony is simple and unconventional, but that’s to be expected.

It’s been many, many years since Ebrose performed such rites, as it’s custom for a septon to officiate vows in the Light of the Seven, not a maester. But they are currently short on both in Winterfell and Daenerys cares little for who marries them, just that’s it done.

And Ebrose knows the words well enough. Father, Mother…

The sept is perhaps an odd choice as neither Jorah nor Daenerys have any lasting ties to the Seven.

Daenerys grew up without prayers, as her brother thought piety to be weakness and believed that the gods should bow before dragons, not the other way around. Jorah’s gods are those of root and branch, raven and weirwood tree, but the Old Gods have fled this place for the present, chastened, scattered to the cold breeze.

They may have been tempted to seek the Old Gods anyway. But the godswood of Winterfell is painted in ice, dusted in snow and still stained by the frost-blood and cinders of Bran and Arya’s funeral pyres.

It will be some time before anyone prays in that frozen wood without feeling ice shards pressed sharply into their hearts. And a grave is no place for a wedding.

So that leaves the Seven. And unlikely as it might be, Catelyn Stark’s sept came away from the battle relatively unscathed, its pretty windows unbroken, its roof intact. There is some otherworldly comfort here, perhaps due to Sansa’s nightly prayers or the soft orange candlelight, reflecting off stained glass which depicts spring and summer scenes, casting a near living warmth on the faces of those seven figures who watch so silently from stone altars.

There are only a handful present to witness their vows, as few in this castle know what’s happening tonight.

This wedding is not common knowledge, although it’s no grand secret either. Daenerys gave no notice to her remaining advisors, nor does she particularly desire their presence. She doesn’t seek to bind herself to Jorah for the sake of an audience. She does it because she loves the man and wants to be with him always.

She’s been very clear on this point. Here she stands, Ebrose muses, amused.

As for Jorah, he wouldn’t know if there were a hundred other people in the sept, or only the present six. The man is enamored with his bride and can barely tear his eyes away from her, his expressive face showing off a myriad of emotions that perhaps only Daenerys can read in full. She answers them all, grinning up at her knight with a deep and unchecked affection that Ebrose finds incredibly moving, despite being a bachelor-scholar who usually thinks on love as more of a theoretical construct than anything else.

But there’s no theory here. Only a man and woman who appear to love each other very much.

Missandei stands nearby, to the left of Ebrose, her lips twitching softly into small, sweet smiles as she watches her oldest companions pledge themselves to each other. The Essosi girl is a more than willing witness. And they have a few more to spare, as there are four others present—Gilly has wandered in to watch, with Little Sam in tow, as always.

And Sansa Stark and Sandor Clegane are here as well.

Daenerys didn’t hide her plans from Sansa when she asked to use the sept. And with a balanced mix of traditional decorum and plain curiosity, Lady Stark has made her way down to the sept, to hear their vows be spoken. Her hands are clasped together at her waist, her expression passive as she leans back against the stones at the rear of her mother’s sept, watching the ceremony in quiet contemplation, giving no indication of her feelings on the union, whether in favor or against.

The Hound stands beside her, just as he stood beside her while she prayed over her dead.

Perhaps he can guess Sansa’s thoughts. Perhaps he shares similar ones, as the gruff man’s gaze flickers to the scarlet-haired beauty more than once during the ceremony. She meets that gaze and holds it fast, but they betray none of their shared confidences.

Ebrose can’t imagine either one of them hold any strong judgment, one way or another.

Winterfell is far beyond such things.

When Daenerys plucked him from the Citadel and forced him up to this cold, desolate place, the archmaester had little idea of what awaited him. The wounded have healed but the shock of those first days—the hollow eyes, the hauntings of these halls—has not faded away. If anything, the air has chilled further, the days have grown darker, leaving a sense that night and terror have come to stay.

Ebrose is not surprised that Daenerys is so intent on leaving. A woman who carries life within her can’t be expected to remain in a land so plagued by death. It’s natural for her to seek out safety and home, for the sake of her unborn child.

She’s a singular woman, and Ebrose has found her manner to be abrupt, rash, terribly impulsive and…completely charming. She won him over that first night, when she sank down so heavily at Jorah’s bedside, forlorn and desperate, ready to give him anything if he would only save the man she loved.

Ebrose has spent more time with her since and can see why cities across the sea bent to her will. She refuses to give up, she refuses to accept the inevitable. She loves with a fierceness that is rare and beautiful. If anyone can make it out of this darkness alive, he’s convinced it will be Daenerys Targaryen.

At least so long as Jorah Mormont stands beside her.

They defy convention, these two, just by being together. And here, speaking vows in this northern sept, they defy it again. The bride is not given away but approaches the altar with her groom, steadying his steps. Jorah’s hand remains perched on her shoulder even when they come to stand before the archmaester.

And Daenerys is already wearing Ser Jorah’s cloak, despite the words not having been spoken, as the halls of Winterfell are chilly and frosted and Jorah had given it to her long before they reached the sept, to keep his lady warm.

And she’s been wearing his protection for longer still…Ebrose allows.

“In the Light of the Seven, I hereby seal these souls together, binding them for all eternity,” Ebrose is surprised by how swiftly the words come back to him, despite not attending a wedding in Westeros for a score of years. Weddings in this country have gained a reputation for too much blood and violence lately. But Winterfell’s had a lion’s share of both and will entertain no more tonight. Ebrose urges them, “Look upon each other and say the words, if you will…”

“Father,” Daenerys grins more than she should on that word, at least if she hopes to keep that secret. But she’s shy too, blushing just a little, and melting on the answer that Jorah gives, beaming down at her as he rasps, “Mother.”

Yes, they are father and mother first, husband and wife second. This certainly isn’t the first time two people have come before the gods in such a manner, but the words linger in Ebrose’s head nonetheless.

Father. Mother.

“Maiden, Crone, Smith, Warrior, Stranger…” they finish the remaining verse together, and the whole sept seems to quiver and shimmer with light as those ancient titles are recited. Or perhaps it’s just another blast of winter’s draft, trying to sneak in and disturb the candle flame.

“I am yours until the end of my days, Daenerys,” Jorah changes the customary words just slightly, unable to resist making it personal and renewing vows he’d already given her ages ago and many times over.

“Yes, you are mine,” Daenerys’s smile couldn’t possibly grow any wider. The all-consuming warmth and adoration in her expression as she looks up at Jorah might well melt the winter snows.

She rises up on tiptoes to whisper the soft reply in her bear’s ear, words that only the archmaester and Missandei will hear, “And we are yours, Jorah. Forever and always.”

She presses a slow kiss to his bearded cheek as she comes back down to rest on her heels. Jorah’s eyes close on the caress, his arm looping around her waist to keep her close.

“I proclaim Daenerys Stormborn, of House Targaryen, and Ser Jorah Mormont of Bear Island to be one…,” Ebrose continues. “One flesh, one heart, one soul…”

Now and forever.

These are the usual words, spoken with the whimsy of early springs and fair summers that seem like they’ll never end. But it’s the bleak midwinter, promised to be the longest winter of ten generations, perhaps even the last that any of them will ever see. Ebrose is not one to pretend away the dire, unpleasant truth.

So he says what comes to mind instead, a wish, a hope only, “May you survive this night and greet the morning, together.”

Ebrose is sincere in this wish and Jorah’s eyes flicker away from his bride only briefly, to the archmaester. Mormont’s appreciation and gratitude—for this, for saving his life, for turning a blind eye in the Citadel—is written into those weathered lines.

That glance is cut short, as Daenerys is gently tugging her bear lord’s wrist, then the front of his tunic, while biting at her bottom lip in anticipation. Ebrose knows that the darkest days are before them, but he wonders if that broad smile she wears won’t banish them away, after all.

Joy and love are a powerful draught, and the sept is currently doused in it.

All because of Daenerys’s glowing smile. Made wider by Jorah’s kiss, which he grants his new wife with pleasure, bending down and grinning against her soft and willing mouth, one hand braced on that cane for balance, the other still tight around his dragon girl’s waist. Her arms are twined around his neck in a familiar manner, holding onto him with a gentle possessiveness that says she’s liable to keep him always.

The ceremony is at its end. They expect no applause, as it isn’t the season for it.

But at that kiss, Little Sam claps his stubby little hands, perhaps on instinct. From a high perch in his mother’s arms, the little boy’s hands come together on a flurry of claps, all innocent and animated. Jorah and Daenerys break apart from their first kiss as husband and wife, while chuckling at the little boy’s enthusiasm, even as Gilly starts mumbling a few apologies, not knowing if her son has crossed some southern custom of gentility or not.

She wouldn’t know. This is the first wedding she’s ever attended.

Missandei and Ebrose find themselves sharing a smile and the Hound’s gruff expression softens as well, his naturally sad eyes betraying something that looks almost like amusement.

Even Sansa’s lips curve upwards, as her more passive expression is finally won over. Ebrose notices that the Stark girl seeks Daenerys’s gaze across the sept floor. When she finds it, Sansa bows her head just slightly, letting that smile on her lips linger. Daenerys’s hand has come to rest on her lord’s forearm and she’s still encircled by his loose embrace, happy to stay there. She takes a moment to give the northern lady a small smile back, before turning that same glorious smile back on her husband.

The hushed moors outside are night-clad, barren and cold. As cold as the Night King’s unfeeling heart. But the Winterfell sept currently shines with candlelight, warmth and a child’s felicity—a tiny flame flickering in darkness, if only for a little while.

Father. Mother.

The first two words of those wedding vows are still echoing in Ebrose’s mind the next morning as he makes his final rounds through the halls of Winterfell. The weather is frigid but as fair as they’re likely to encounter. He’ll be on his way back to the Citadel before the end of the day, with a tale that will freeze his colleagues blood cold. This is a day of departures, as Daenerys and Jorah will be on their way to Dragonstone within the hour.

Father. Mother.

As they are, he thinks, with a lingering fondness that’s unusual for him.

Ebrose is a self-aware man and chose rationality over sentimentality long ago. He knows that he considers most of his patients at the Citadel just that. Patients. Without name, without history. The day’s drudgery, to be honest.

It’s partly his age, as the world cuts one’s ability to care deeply, all the way down to the roots. But it’s partly self-preservation too. He’s one of the most skilled surgeons and healers in the world. Over the years, his talents have attracted the impossible cases, the lost causes. And for all his great knowledge and precise expertise, lost causes are mostly…lost.

When he visited Ser Jorah’s cell in the Citadel and nodded towards his sword, he was doling out mercy. But the casual kind, thinking little of the consequences should that man’s life come to an end, too ready to move onto the next patient. Hopefully, one with a better prognosis.

He’d lost faith in miracles, knowing too few of them. Or perhaps he just forgot a simple truth—that lost causes can only be won through risk. The risk Samwell took in treating a doomed man. The risk Daenerys took in flying the length of the country on the threadbare hope to save that same man.

Ser Jorah’s resilience has intrigued and charmed the archmaester. But it’s his lady wife who charms him more. On his death bed, he will remember so well the warmth and tight hold of Daenerys Stormborn’s embrace, as she bid him farewell before leaving Winterfell, thanking him again, from the depths of her soul, for saving her northern lord.

Ebrose accepts her embrace and her parting smiles with a paternal fondness, thinking that if he’d ever had a daughter, he would have wanted one as passionate, rash and impulsive as this one. For she loved and fought for that love with her whole heart, in a manner that was so foreign in the dusty academic halls of Oldtown that it might have been myth.

Myths and prophecy…

Archmaester Ebrose remains a clever, scholarly man, slow to rash action, prone to extended periods of observation. He acknowledges what he’s seen here in the North—dragons, widespread death, a dark plague that is bleeding out across the map of Westeros—and he will certainly share his concerns with Conclave upon his return to the Citadel, spurring them to some action.

Although, what a bunch of old men and older books will be able to do against an army of dead men, he can’t say…

There’s a nagging thought that has budded in the recesses of his mind. It’s a half-forgotten, throwaway line in a book he read long ago, as a young man. Something about the Sept of Baelor, something about the vision that led Baelor the Blessed to build that grand cathedral in the first place.

I see a white, gleaming hilltop, snow and ash, on which seven figures stand guard for the realms of men…

Father. Mother.

Again, those simple words. Commonplace, ordinary. Jorah Mormont and Daenerys Targaryen are certainly not the first to earn those names.

But here and now—in all of Winterfell, there are too few who can still claim those titles. And no others who can claim it of the same child.

For more than half a century, Ebrose has been trained to spot symptoms, even when the condition is still unknown. Even to the patient.

The symptoms of myth and prophecy. And what would those be?

“Good luck with everything, Archmaester,” Gendry Rivers gives him a congenial nod outside the entrance to Great Hall as he passes. The young man’s voice is tinged with a little sorrow, but whose isn’t now?

Gendry must have been a serious young man before all this happened, as he’s strongly-built and has the hands of a working man. He made it through the battle with minor scrapes and bruises that have long healed by the time Ebrose is on his way home.

All except that gash to his heart, sliced open as viciously as Arya Stark’s throat. That wound will never heal, but Gendry will bury it in work and industry. During the weeks since the dead decimated this place, the archmaester has watched Gendry Rivers at work. Quietly, behind the scenes. Reforging what’s ruined, repairing what’s broken.

Gendry’s hands are blackened from work at the forge daily. Even while the world falls apart, he works to keep it cobbled together.

Smith.

“You too, Gendry,” the archmaester replies, giving him the only advice that matters during a long winter. “Keep those fires burning.”

“We’ll have to,” Gendry answers, with conviction. He shrugs and tips his head back to a huddled, hunched figure sitting very close to the hearth in the Great Hall. “She’ll not be the only one seeking out the flames…”

The old woman, Lady Melisandre, is a fixture by that fire. Ebrose has been paying attention to the residents of Winterfell. He knows who that feeble old woman once was and how far she’s fallen, her flames snuffed out to a bed of coals.

She’s said very little since the battle and only to Jon Snow, who in a misguided moment of trying to reclaim his bearings thought he might banish her from this place, as he’d sworn to do it once upon a time.

But no one cares if Melisandre remains among them now. Ser Davos has lost his taste for vengeance and the old woman is mostly harmless. Except perhaps to Jon. She was cryptic in her reply, looking up into his dark eyes to mutter somewhat sadly,

Only death pays for life, Jon Snow…

The boy-king backed off quickly, as her words unnerved him. Her accented voice holds a quaver when she speaks that wasn’t there before. Her god is gone. Yet, her mysticism remains. She’s wizened by defeat and waiting for death.

Crone.

Hmm…

Oh, maybe his mind has frozen over with the rest of the northlands.

Still, it lingers. Still, the simple words repeat.

Father, Mother, Maiden, Crone, Smith, Warrior, Stranger.

Ebrose recalls his childhood. How his mind would fixate on simple, seemingly unanswerable questions. Why was the sky blue but the grass green? What made the crops come up? What made the heart beat? How could a drowning man be brought back to life but an otherwise healthy young maid die in her sleep?

He chased answers to those questions all the way to the Citadel, giving himself over to a lifetime of study and theory, finding rather mundane explanations hiding behind the magic of unknowing.

Perhaps he’ll find the same behind this riddle. If it’s a riddle at all, and not all just grasping at the cold, cold wind.

And yet, on that cold wind, he hears the now familiar screech of a dragon, as the beasts are restless and ready to fly south, knowing their mother will be leaving these halls soon. They are likely glad for it as dragons are not made for this weather.

Ebrose will be glad to leave too. If only because he is anxious to return to the Citadel and find that dusty old book and that half-forgotten verse once more, to confirm for himself whether it matters or whether it’s all just as hopeless as before.

So many here have lost the will to hope. But sensing that life is not done with the world yet, Archmaester Ebrose is not one of them.

Chapter Text

In the dream, she’s running. Always running.

Crunch of snow, scent of iced pine. Purple, spiny thorns tear at her dark hair and bare hands as she forces her way through brambles in a rush, trying to find open ground, trying to get away. She’s breathing heavily. Her lungs burn as if they’re on fire, but there’s no fire in the frosty wilds of the north.

Her heart hammers in her own ears until she can hear nothing else. Not the blistering wind, not the creaking branches, not the haunting scream of…

She stops. So suddenly, that the earth seems to go silent. She’s trying to gain her bearings. Trying to remember…

But the silence of the woods is short-lived. Dozens of crows descend from dead branches, previously huddled together like black lumps on the leafless trees surrounding her. They caw out raucously, dropping low to the ground, and fly by her in a rush of black feathers, an assault against which she cries out, raising her hands and closing her eyes.

No, Meera, you have to run!

And she’s off again. But this time, she’s not in the woods. She’s on ice, she’s in the storm. Her voice is growing hoarse as she continues to cry out, again and again.

Hold the door!

Her arms ache and her hands are going numb. She’s weighed down, desperately pulling that heavy sled through a whirlwind of grey and white, into descending darkness, digging her toes against ice and snow, hoping the storm covers their tracks, hoping the door holds for just a little longer…

Her knees are threatening to buckle, her legs feel like they’re shackled in iron weights. She wants to give in to her weariness, she wants to fall headfirst in those snow drifts. She wants to cover her face with her red and shaking hands and cry.

Oh, she wants to cry so badly.

But she needs her vision and she needs her voice, calling out desperate words to Hodor, left behind, left to die, flinging those words as loud as she can over her shoulder, hoping her voice carries and can somehow match the howls of that storm.

Hold the door! Hold the door!

She cries those words a thousand times in her dreams, over and over again. Her voice travels farther than she can imagine, into the night, into the past.

Long ago and far away, a boy begins to shake and falls to the ground, his voice joining in the chorus.

The words bounce back, echoing across a wasteland cluttered in bones—up, up, up, to white woods. The top of the world is wild and untamed, with sheer glaciers and barren mountains that have no name. The raised voices recede in her ears, growing distant, as she’s carried away from herself on the cold, charging breeze.

North, once more.

She stands on icy hills, beneath a white tree with silver branches and red leaves, watching herself flee calamity—a poor, frightened girl running southward with a god in tow. From this snow-capped mountain, she watches herself and Bran, laid back on that sled she drags, his eyes gone milky-white, until they’re swallowed up by the storm.

There are no tears threatening to spill on her cheeks now.

She watches patiently, with little emotion, like a huntress taking note of some distant prey, standing beneath the white-barked tree trimmed with red tears. The crows are nowhere to be found, all dead, all gone. She’s watching the past.

A single black raven perches in the silver branches above her head, watching too.

At dawn, we watched the world wake up. At dusk, we’ll watch it turn to dust.

The raven stretches his wings out, fluttering them once. And they stand there for a long time. Watching, waiting. But inevitably…

Someone’s trudging up the mountain—a man, or something that still looks vaguely like a man is coming near. He’s dressed in rags and matted fur, limping, leaving a trail of blood stains on the snow behind him.

Meera grimaces at the sight of him, the calm of her spirit starting to go ragged again. She reaches for her bow and locks her arrow.

She inhales cold air. She won’t miss, she must not miss.

The raven calls out a warning in his harsh, gravelly voice. In the dream, Meera looks away from the rags-draped creature for just a single moment. The raven can’t be ignored. He led her here, to this place. As far north as North goes.

Away from what happened in the South, away from corpse lands no longer claimed by the living.

She’s the last. There’s no one coming to save her. There’s no one left to hold the door.

Her heart goes as cold as the Seven Kingdoms. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the figure in rags begin to run up the snowy hill, his gait recovered, his limp vanished, his grasping hands and sharpened knife aimed straight for her still-beating heart.

Meera tries to focus on her arrow, suppressing the urge to scream. Frantically, the raven hammers his beak against the ancient trunk of that heart tree, trying to wake the Old Gods up.

Trying to wake her up.

Tink, tink, tink…

The sound is persistent and carries through the dream to waking.

The dream fades just as the dark figure might have overtaken her, a wind in his wake that covers them all in falling snow.

Meera’s eyes blink open to more solid surroundings. The high ceiling of her bedroom at Greywater Watch, the softness of quilts, the chill of a winter’s morning. Her heart is racing, slowing only as she realizes where she is, her curly head pressed against down pillows.

Home. You’re home, Meera.

Tink, tink-tink, tink…

Even after the dream is gone, she finds that last sound lingers. A raven’s beak hitting the heart tree. Like rain hitting a windowpane? Except it’s too cold for rain. Far too cold. The swamps froze over many weeks ago and the House of Reed is now as snowy and ice-covered as the moors around Winterfell.

Maybe the wind is rattling a loose shutter against ice?

Tink, tink, tink-tink…

The power of the nightmare wears off soon enough, with Meera slowly relaxing her fist in her bedsheets. She hates that she lets these dreams get to her at all. And she doesn’t know why they won’t stop. It’s been months since she returned home. Months since the cave and Hodor and Summer and Leaf and Bran…

Stubbornly, Meera throws back her quilts, shivering as she gets out of bed. Her bare feet sting and ache against cold stone. She grabs a woolen coat from the top of a cedar chest at the end of her bed and slips it on, casting a glance to her dying hearth.

Perhaps the cold woke her up and the sound was just…

Tink-tink, tink-tink, tink…

It’s coming from the sole window in her bedroom, high and peaked, covered in frost. Except for one small spot, where a raven is striking his beak against the glass.

Tink…

When he sees Meera, the raven stops. Very suddenly. She’s caught by surprise by his mere presence. She thought all the birds had flown off further south weeks ago, chased away by that terrible storm that came down from the North.

And he doesn’t fly off now, at the sight of a woman swiftly approaching, which surprises her more.

It’s as if he’s trying to wake her. It’s as if he…

Meera Reed has seen things that no one else in the world has seen. And not through greensight, either. No, that was Jojen’s gift. She’s seen it in flesh and blood, in ice and snow. When she meets that raven’s gaze, she knows that the eyes staring back at her are not a raven’s at all.

Or not just a raven, at least.

These nightmares have haunted her since she returned to her father’s house. And perhaps she should run from that raven, as her dreams all tell her there’s no good to come of keeping company with such a creature.

But Meera Reed is no coward. And she knows there’s no running from what’s coming. Dead of winter it may be, but she opens her bedroom window wide to let that raven hop inside.

Miles and miles away to the east, another window is opened, its stained glass broken and shattered…

…and Cersei Lannister screams as she’s thrown out of it.

Chapter Text

Several months later

Qyburn shivers under his black robes as he makes his way down to his laboratory. The stairs and balconies are hoary with frost. The labyrinth of hallways and corridors in the Red Keep are all iced over.

The Red Keep? No, the name no longer fits. The White Keep rather, crystalline and oh so cold.

Only one fire is kept burning in the entire city and that fire is in Qyburn’s personal quarters. He seeks it out at all hours and stays near it, unless called away on errands. For he’s the only one left in King’s Landing who feels the piercing, aching cold.

He’s the only one left who feels anything at all.

King’s Landing is in ruins.

After Jaime Lannister, or the dead man who still looks like Jaime Lannister, threw his sister from one of the throne room windows, they’ve not replaced the ruined glass.

Nor fixed any of the other rather extensive damages suffered when the Night King came to take the city.

The harbor is locked in ice. Euron Greyjoy’s ships were all wrecked in the blizzard that came down with the Night King. The kindling left behind is frozen in Blackwater Bay, stuck like jagged teeth in the muck beneath, torn sails and rigging encased in crystal. Euron is locked down deep in the ice water, drowned for good this time, chained to his own mast, his skin tinseled and grey, his mad grin twisted and bloated in death.

The Golden Company is silver-plated now, loitering outside in the snow drifts, their armor frosted a white-gold, their faces painted a corpse-grey. Elephants from Essos sway in weather that would kill them if they weren’t already dead. Winter winds sweep through a white desert, crusty snow blowing up against cold city gates.

The red rooftops of the capital are all white, covered in snow and laced in frost. From the ruins of the Sept of Baelor to the Red Keep, the streets are all hushed and abandoned, save for the shuffling dead, who wander, without food or water, without sleep or rest. They are slaves to White Walkers who stand guard over them day and night, silently watching and waiting, should the foolhardy living attempt to retake what is now undisputedly the Realm of the Dead.

And they’re all dead, make no mistake.

The stubborn ones who refused to flee the city before the Night King arrived—those few who believed Cersei Lannister might somehow save them yet, having escaped the clutches and coups of more enemies than any mortal woman had a right to—well, they were so bitterly disappointed.

Cersei remained perched on her cursed throne even as the iron frosted over, freezing the bare skin of her sweaty palms to the cold metal. Her hands ached as she gripped the arms of that throne tighter, fingers going white. She was unwilling to release it, having given up everything to claim it as her own.

When the horned monster pushed open the heavy doors to the throne room, flanked by his white-haired generals, her expression flinched, as it once flinched before the High Sparrow, when she realized she’d walked straight into a trap.

She might have cried out for mercy but any tears would have frozen against her cheeks. And it was too late anyway.

The cold went deep, seeping into stone and marble, crawling across the throne room floor in lace patterns and up those alabaster pillars in tangled webs, climbing high, like ivy made of ice. The temperature in the room fell drastically and the candles and fires were snuffed out at once.

With every slow and steady step the Night King took towards the Queen of Westeros, Qyburn watched her confidence waver, but she’d been stubborn for so long. Perverse in her mad will. It served her well…until it didn’t.

The Night King stood before her, unspeaking, his greatsword sheathed on his back. She raised her chin defiantly, even as Qyburn lowered his head towards the creature, in subservience, knowing the war was over even before the battle began.

He thinks Cersei intended to die in that iron chair, and would have too, if Jaime hadn’t walked in behind his master, shuffling into sight, vacant-eyed, his mouth slack and lips parted. The Night King looked back at one Lannister twin and then returned his gaze to the other—smirking?

This broke Cersei’s resolve in a flurry of seconds. She cried out in pain as her hands came off the cold arms of melted swords, tearing the frozen layer of skin as she pulled away too quickly. She gritted her teeth against the sharp pain and rushed to Jaime’s side, her bleeding hands brought up to run over her brother’s face.

Or the thing that once was her brother.

“Jaime!” With her frantic eyes, she begged him to say her name back. To take her in his arms and tell her that all of this was a bad dream.

But he didn’t know her. Even as she pressed her hands to either side of his face, raking her fingers through his hair and searching his ice-blue eyes for the love she craved, perhaps blind to the rot that had taken hold of her dear, dead brother, perhaps wholly mad in her joy at seeing him again.

Qyburn thought he saw a flicker of hesitation in Jaime Lannister’s dead eyes. The way his good hand might have twitched on her touch, reaching out to gently brush…

But it was gone before he could say for certain. And then the dead thing was growling, low and guttural, in the back of his throat. Jaime seized Cersei’s wrists roughly, bringing her hands down from his face. In an instant, he held her with an iron strength borne of winter.

“Jaime, no. Please, stop this!” she begged, she pleaded. But her words fell on the ears of a dead man. And Jaime was doing his master’s bidding, as the Night King’s gaze slowly turned to the pale winter glow falling through stained glass.

In habit, the Mountain moved, taking a step to save his queen but Qyburn reached out his hand, blocking his path and giving a short shake of his head. The creature stood down, if reluctantly.

Alas, there was no saving Cersei now.

Qyburn remained silent, suppressing the sinking feeling in his stomach, as he watched Jaime drag his sister to the massive stained-glass windows lining the side of the throne room. Upon the flick of his master’s hand, the valonqar threw his sister through that window with a crashing blow, and she tumbled down upon the city that she’d failed to keep safe.

“Jaime, please! Jaime, no!” She screamed all the way down.

Qyburn flinched at the Queen’s scream—his features scrunched up, in borrowed pain, as he heard her hit the hard ground with a damning thud. When it was done, the Night King turned away from the window to the Queen’s Hand.

He’s not sure why he was spared, save for the fact that Gregor Clegane stepped in front of him when the dead might have hurled him out the same window, to join his Queen in a broken heap of bones in the snow.

The Mountain was no more alive than these dead men. Reborn under Qyburn’s hands as a thing stuck in the shadowlands between life and death. He would be willing to serve the God of Death with little convincing.

But Qyburn was his father and there was little he wouldn’t do to protect his father.

Qyburn’s eyes remained on the ground, in humility and submission, as the Night King came his way. He said nothing, his mind spinning on horror and macabre interest both. The Night King raised Qyburn’s chin and looked into his eyes with a cold stare that blackened what was left of the disgraced maester’s soul.

He gave the Night King his allegiance then and there, with sincerity, falling to his knees and kissing the monster’s boots.

“My king,” he pledged, in a wondrous tone.

And so, of all the king’s men, only one of them is still alive. For what purpose, Qyburn can only guess. But as the dead don’t speak—at least not with their tongues—Qyburn has found his usefulness. He is the emissary, he is the messenger.

He is the Night King’s Hand.

Qyburn pushes the door to his laboratory open and shivers again as he slips inside. But this time, the shiver is in relief, as the relative warmth that greets him behind the door is welcome indeed. He sighs on the crackle of a fire in the hearth. He rubs his hands together to coax life back into flesh that is as cold as the dead.

Sometimes, he thinks he might as well be one of the poor souls outside, wandering, waiting, shuffling aimlessly.

But not yet. Not while the Night King still has use for the maester.

The God of Death has taken the throne of men for sport and rid himself of the weaker gods that might have opposed him. The Night King has beheaded Westeros by taking its crowned city and turning it into an icy graveyard.

But he wishes to destroy the remaining limbs as well. He wishes to root out the living, blood and stem. The time has come to finish what was started at Winterfell.

Qyburn is not one to question the motivations of death. Although he will observe them and ponder and tinker in his laboratory over answers that might shock the senses. He wonders what the Archmaesters of the Citadel would think if they knew that he’d found out how to communicate with the dead. He’d send them a message, by dead raven, but assumes they’ll be as disapproving as ever.

It was a simple thing really. Only a matter of opening his mind. And letting the Night King mark him with a sooty, black spot on his forearm. He can hear the creature’s thoughts now. His summons, his demands. And Qyburn fulfills them, not out of fear nor duty, but out of morbid fascination.

He can’t help himself. He’s always been this way.

Qyburn was three years old when his mother and father died, one after another, from plague that drowned their lungs and turned their skin a clammy black. Their house had been marked by a white flag and no one came near for fear of catching the same calamity.

He slept beside their dead bodies for days before anyone realized that the child survived.

And he continues to survive…

After the feeling returns to his hands, Qyburn takes parchment from his shelves and the quill from his inkwell. He dips the nib twice, removing excess ink, and writes in flowing script:

Many greetings to Jon Snow, Bastard of the North…

Chapter Text

“Daenerys?” Jorah says her name with a gentle rasp, not wanting to startle her.

She didn’t stir when he entered the tower room, and he wonders if she heard him come in at all. She’s bent over the scribblings of loose, hand-written pages that she’s pulled from a little wooden box on the desk beside her—letters maybe? A few are scattered in her lap, a few more are in her hands. She holds the pages towards morning sunlight, which is faint and pale but resilient too, finding its way through the high windows in the small, winter-kissed chamber nonetheless.

Cold winds are blowing off the churning sea and they whip against the old stones fiercely.

Dragonstone has thick walls, those of a last-hope refuge, but that doesn’t scare off the winter breeze, skimming the icy waters before dancing across frosty islands airily. Jorah hears the wind moaning noisily against the walls as he climbs the spiral staircase.

Here, in the tower chamber, the sound is muffled, but constant, nonetheless.

And it’s colder up here than in the main chambers below. The windows are small and round. The door to this chamber is hewn in heavy oak and crossed with irons. The furnishings are sparse and practical. That wooden box beside Daenerys is carved with the burnt image of a stag in autumnal woods but it’s nearly the only decoration in the entire room.

The chamber has a naturally austere character that tempts to mind a prison cell. And the fact that it’s located near the very top of the castle, up a spiral staircase with near endless steps, affixed by a turret like a windy nest at the very top of Dragonstone—it doesn’t help the feeling of exile or things purposely hidden away.

This was once Shireen Baratheon’s bedchamber.

Her belongings are still here, scattered around the little room. Those books on the shelves by the inner wall are hers. The writings in Daenerys’s hands are likely hers as well. The quilts on her bed are rumpled slightly, as if made in a hurry, and her rag doll still sits, propped up on lumpy pillows, forever awaiting her friend’s return.

Jorah’s heart pains a little at the sight of that lonely rag doll. How could it not?

He never met the young Baratheon girl but he can easily imagine her up here, by herself, hugging that doll or sprawled on her bed, flipping through the pages of her books. Perhaps it was more nest than prison when the girl was here, cozy even. Although she must have spent so much time alone. And why did they choose a tower room for a little girl?

Even if her face was as scarred as they all said, she was still just a little girl. Her father’s claim on the throne made her a princess of the Seven Kingdoms. And yet, Stannis and Selyse kept their only child hidden away in this tower like a monster. Jorah’s opinion of Stannis Baratheon has never been high—but lessens a little more at the sight of his daughter’s bedchamber.

Daenerys is sitting in the wooden chair at Shireen’s desk, her eyes flickering over the even lines of those loose pages, written on both front and back. Her expression is preoccupied, captured by the words she reads, but she looks up immediately at Jorah’s entrance and the familiar sound of her name falling so softly off his lips.

He will never be over the way her eyes light up when she sees him come into a room. It’s always been this way, even before, across the sea, when they were nothing more than a lost princess and an exiled knight, thrust together by the competing whims of chance and fate.

Even then, it would give him pause, chasing away the urgency of whatever errand brought him to her side. He’d have to remind himself to speak, drawn in too easily and too blissfully by a look that she reserved for him, and him alone.

She gives him that look again now. And her mouth breaks into a sweet and affectionate smile. That smile plays at her lips many times a day, springing to life nearly every time he enters a room, no matter how long since she saw him last.

A minute, an hour? It doesn’t matter.

And it doesn’t matter how many times he sees that smile—he replies back with one of his own, the gentle kind he reserves only for her. The words he has primed on his lips vanish, as the only thought that manages to keep hold in that moment is how pretty his wife’s smile is and how lovely she looks under the glow of winter sunlight…if a little drawn and tired-looking too.

His smile falters a little at the weariness lacing her features, knowing too well the reason for it. The warm layers she wears are no longer enough to hide her advancing pregnancy. Not when she’s sitting down like this, the waist of her dress and robe billowing out over a child that is near full term. The babe sits low in her womb and it won’t be long now.

A couple more weeks, she says, but he’d wager the time left can be measured in hours rather than days.

She didn’t sleep well the night before, as the baby wouldn’t settle, wide awake and kicking up a storm. When Jorah woke, he found her perched on the bench beneath their bedchamber window, sitting up with hands braced on either side of her, gripping the edge of that bench, her eyes closed, her lips pressed together, her breathing deliberate, as she waited for the child to calm down and go to sleep.

She didn’t wake him, though he’d begged her a thousand times to make certain she would. But he woke anyway, and went to her side without delay, taking the seat beside her, rubbing her back lightly as his other hand went to the rambunctious child, his steady hand willing the baby to give her mother some rest.

Shhh, my dear. Shhh…

The hand on Daenerys’s back made its way around her shoulder to tug her close, gently pulling her to his side, letting her lean against his tall frame. Her eyes remained closed and she took a deeper breath, her breathing pattern going even as she found relief in lying there, her head snuggling close to find a familiar pillow at the crook of his neck. One of her hands released its iron grip on the bench to drift up to the man who held her, finding a hold on the front of his nightshirt instead, her fingers curling in the fabric.

“Sing to me, Jorah…would you?” she mumbled, in weary, miserable tones that broke his heart. He knew that she wanted this baby desperately and that she regretted nothing—she tells him this often, seeing the doubts that can’t help but haunt his eyes, even now—but it still hurt him to see her like this.

So yes, he’d sing to her. Gods, he’d do anything for her.

He rested his chin on her head, keeping his voice low, as it was the dead of night. The old lullaby he chose was well-suited to the hour and the season, soothing in its tone and melody, a song for the child as much as the mother:

“Baby, sleep, gently sleep,
life is long and love is deep.
Time will be sweet for thee.
All the world to see.
Time to look about and know,
how the shadows come and go.
How the breeze stirs the trees,
how the blossoms grow.”

In his arms, she slept until dawn. But still not long enough to make him happy. For days, she’s been dealing with vague, unpleasant pains. They come and go irregularly and she insists it’s nothing more than the baby shifting position, but he’s seen the force of something stronger flicker across her face a few times over the past two days.

She tells him it’s too early. But he wonders if she’s not lying to herself, afraid of reaching the end of this. Afraid of what comes next.

Since they landed on Dragonstone, winter has dug its stubborn heels into permafrost and the news from the mainland is mostly cold, cold silence. They receive few messages as the lines between ancient holdfasts have been broken and most of the ravens have gone south or died in the snows. And the little they have heard is damning and confirms that the Night King continues his victory.

They say King’s Landing is infested by dead men. They say thousands froze in their beds, as storms came down from beyond the Wall. They say the fields in the Reach are barren and covered in snow.

There’s no helping what’s happened. And there’s little to be done about it…

Or so they assume.

Yet, Jon and Sansa have sent word that they sail for Dragonstone. What news they might bring or what would lead them to venture so far south of Winterfell, Jorah can’t hazard a guess. They’ll find out soon enough, he expects, as the Starks are due to land on the island this very day.

Daenerys seems ambivalent to their coming, her mind on other matters.

She’ll hear them out, if only because Jorah talked her into it, pressing kisses against her hair, saying, “They just want to talk, Khaleesi…”

But he knows that she doesn’t care what plan Jon Snow and Sansa Stark have come up with. Or what reckless games they wish to play with the god of death. Daenerys is a dragon who has returned to her nest, to lick her wounds, to birth her child. She won’t be leaving her safe haven anytime soon.

As the months have passed, Jorah’s watched his wife lose some of that confidence that kept her strong throughout everything that’s happen. Liberating cities and wrangling the Dothraki, scolding masters and men of the north, fighting dead men and riding dragons through winter storms—

All this she did without fear, with the steely determination of a woman who has traversed hell and come back again, stronger for it.

But he knows that what happened at Winterfell shook her to the core. Faced with loss, she recoiled from it, ran from it. And she recoils more now, as she has more to lose than ever. There’s more fear in her eyes than he’s seen in a long time, hiding just behind the joy, peeking out more often as the time nears.

The waiting doesn’t help matters. As her body’s grown, she’s become cumbersome and useless to many tasks, relying on him and Missandei to a greater degree. And she’s not used to that.

So accustomed to doing something, anything, she now must wait. And the waiting is sapping her strength. He knows it, he sees it. Her strength wanes, even as he recovers his own. Enough that he doesn’t even notice those many stairs up to Shireen Baratheon’s old room.

Except to count their number and set his jaw on the fact that Daenerys climbed them all, alone and heavily pregnant, to come up here.

Gods, the woman was infuriating sometimes.

He wants to scold her, but finds he can’t. Her tender smile melts away most of his prior thoughts. And the way she instantly reaches out for his hands, drawing him close to her, makes him forget everything else. There is nothing but her, sparkling violet eyes and silver-blonde hair, bathed in winter sunlight.

Daenerys Stormborn, his wife. His brave, beautiful, tired, impossible wife.

He joins her without argument, standing over her, taking off his outer cloak to drape it around her shoulders, before reclaiming the hand that asks for his. Those hands remain clasped as he crouches down beside her chair, his other hand coming to rest on her knee.

“I thought you were resting?” he manages to ask this evenly, keeping his voice level.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she shrugs, as if there’s nothing to be done about it.

She’s resigned to these weary days and tells him she’ll gladly bear it, but her restlessness concerns him. As does the way her breathing changes every once in a while, betraying those dull pains that she tries to hide from him. He caresses the knee beneath his hand lovingly.

“But did you have to climb all the way up here?” he wonders, careful not to scold. Daenerys may love him dearly but it’s her natural impulse to bristle at being told what to do. All dragons are the same. He treads carefully, allowing, “Missandei couldn’t find you. She was worried.”

She tips her head just slightly, knowing his aim and reminding him flatly, “I’m not a child to be coddled and looked after, Jorah.”

“No, you’re not,” he agrees, as his caressing hand comes up to rest on the child. The babe’s quiet now, having been awake for most of the night. He tells her, “But you are carrying one, Khaleesi. One that will soon be here. And I wish you’d take it a little slower and easier in the meantime. Perhaps not climb so many stairs?”

“I was careful,” she promises him, pressing her fingers against the palm of his hand to prove it’s so. She’s adamant with him, in a way that is simultaneously endearing and infuriating.

His wandering hand goes up further to cradle the side of her face, his thumb running over the smooth curve of her cheek. He knows she’s tempted to lean into his caress. With careful prodding, she might even let him lead her downstairs, to their bedroom, to rest.

But something sparks in her and that restlessness persists. She explains, “I needed to think.”

“About what?” His questions are all delicately asked. He knows her mind is cluttered. He knows she’s been thinking about Rhaego and worries that the same thing will happen this time. But he knows her thoughts go further too, spinning on darker thoughts she hasn’t shared with him. Not yet.

She sighs a little, but not at him. Maybe at herself? He suspects she’s frustrated that she can’t shake her fears, whatever they may be. With that soft caress against her smooth cheek, he urges her to share her fears with him.

Let me help you. Please…

A gentle touch convinces her where words might not. And Jorah’s touch has proved most potent in this regard. She sets the handwritten page she holds on her knees, turning it to him, so he can read the words that have caught her attention so fully, written in Shireen Baratheon’s young hand:

…Mother says I’m to go with her and Father to Castle Black. She seems pleased that I’m coming this time. At least, she didn’t forbid it. I noticed that she looked at my face for the first time in a long time. She didn’t look long but she said she thinks the scars might be fading a little and that maybe someday they’ll be faint enough that I’ll be able to sit with her at court dinners in King’s Landing…

A shadow falls across Jorah’s features at the young girl’s plainly written words, reading Selyse Baratheon’s abuse of her own daughter behind the simple observations of a princess who was kept hidden away in this windy tower.

They both know how that story played out, and the grim reason why Selyse might have been pleased to take her daughter North. Lady Melisandre has never said how much Selyse knew but Ser Davos says the woman hanged herself in the woods in grief…and regret.

“She was a princess born here too. Just like me,” Daenerys swallows, muttering. “Perhaps our daughter’s cursed before she’s even born.”

Jorah’s gaze flickers up on her forlorn tone. His brow furrows severely and he meets her gaze with concern, finding too much sincerity in those false words.

“How can you think that?” he asks, chiding the very notion.

“Wasn’t I cursed?” she wonders, almost rhetorically. “Wasn’t Shireen?”

Her eyes close on the depth of those unspoken fears rattling around in her head, but Jorah coaxes them from her just by continuing his soothing touches, that hand that lingers along the side of her face, the other that moves to set Shireen’s sad scribblings aside and take up her hand once more, interlacing his large fingers with her much smaller ones.

When her eyes open again, her tangled expression breaks a little under his soft attentions, and finally, it all spills out.

She asks him frankly, “What if I’m not a good mother? Or what if I’m gone before she knows me? What if you’re not here? What happens if she’s all alone, Jorah? I can’t bear the thought,” she looks down at her lap, bringing her other hand around to take comfort with his own as well.

Daenerys moistens her lips on old memories, “I remember what it was like to grow up without my mother or my father. I know my father was a monster. I know that. But that didn’t make it any easier to know that I’d never hear him say my name or feel him lift me up into his arms…”

She pauses but Jorah waits for her to finish, listening, keeping her hands close.

She tells him, “When I was little, I used to wake up in the middle of the night and cry out for my mother. Viserys said it was nonsense. He told me that it was impossible to miss someone I never knew. He said I must have been lying.”

Daenerys presses her lips together, and Jorah sees a glimmer of tears in her beautiful, violet eyes. His thumb runs over the rise of her knuckles, much as they did on the beach that day he left for Eastwatch, before he stepped forward to press a kiss against her temple and whisper words of steadfast love in her ear.

“That’s not going to happen to you or this child,” he promises her, in a solemn voice fashioned for vows and sworn oaths. He uses it now, emphatically, to assure her, “Our daughter will have her mother and you will have your daughter.”

“You can’t know that,” she says, blinking away her tears under eyelashes that have already gone a little damp. But at his tone, she smiles, if a little sadly. The smile gives him hope. Her eyes betray how much she’d like to believe him. Oh, he wishes she would.

Trust me, Khaleesi…

“I know it as well as you know the babe is a girl,” he answers back, smartly, teasing her a little to lighten her spirits. He’s still unconvinced that she could know such a thing, even though she’s told him many times now that it’s a certainty.

It’s a girl, Jorah. I’m sure of it.

He hopes she’s right. He hopes their daughter looks just like her.

The tease is light-hearted and chases away a little of her melancholy. He’d feel better if he could chase it away completely. He shifts on his heels.

“Your brother was a fool, Daenerys,” he reminds her of the simple truth. But one that bears repeating. “He wasn’t worth listening to while he was alive and he’s certainly not worth listening to now.”

“Viserys was weak. And a liar. And a fool,” she agrees, finally…after years and years of failing to say more than two words against that slippery garden snake. Jorah has wondered for a long time if she still fears she’ll wake the dragon somehow, even though he’s been dead for near a decade and she has two living dragons at her command. His eyes light up as she grumbles, quite unexpectedly, “I don’t know why I named Viserion after him.”

“I don’t why either, lass,” he chuckles, glad to hear her say it.

She grins with him, and he’s happy to see her spirits appear a tad lifted. Jorah thinks she’s beautiful in any humor, but sadness and melancholy suit her least of all.

They stay like this for a while, Daenerys resting in that chair, Jorah beside her, reading through a few more of Shireen’s musings together, speaking without words again.

As he reads over Shireen’s hopes and dreams—to travel with her father to Braavos, to see the massive skull of Balerion the Dread in the catacombs beneath the Red Keep—Daenerys’s hand drifts to his greying temples, where she fiddles with his curls, before brushing over his bearded cheek, grown longer again during these endless months of winter. The renewed contentment in her expression lingers, doing much to ease Jorah’s peace of mind.

At least…until she catches her breath on another one of those pains, tensing, her hand pulling back from his face, her posture going just a little rigid as her discomfort is plain and too suddenly felt to hide from him.

But like the others, it doesn’t last. It’s there and gone soon enough.

Now he’s the one frowning, thinking again on how she climbed this tower when she knew the danger, “Khaleesi…”

“It’s not time yet,” she insists, stubbornly. She’s been dealing with these pains for days and the baby seems content where she is, cozy and safe in her mother’s warm womb. She tells him that she felt similar pains with Rhaego throughout her pregnancy, minor contractions that don’t linger but bleed away into nothingness. “I’m still weeks away.”

“Babies come in their own time, Daenerys,” he counters. He rises from the floor, bracing his hands on the arms of her chair while leaning forward to plant a kiss to her forehead. She clings to his arm, leaning close to accept the kiss.

As he pulls back, he whispers at her ear, “And this one has an especially impulsive and headstrong mother.”

“A stubborn father too,” she replies cleverly, making him huff on a little laugh. She keeps his wrist, then his hand, even as he straightens up to stand guard beside her chair, while she gathers up Shireen’s scraps of parchment from her lap and returns them to the wooden box.

She’s more malleable than she was earlier and he’s hoping to convince her to return to bed soon. She’ll tell him she’s not an invalid but allow him to take her arm on the way down, steadying her steps.

He’d rather sweep her up into his arms and carry her the whole way. He’ll get his wish later this very day, but it will come with more urgency than he’d like.

For now, he’ll tease her more or bend down and kiss her more. Or would have…

But there’s a bullhorn sounding out distantly, from somewhere down below, competing with the wailing winds and crashing sea, heralding northern boats landing on the beach.

Jon Snow and Sansa Stark have arrived at Dragonstone.

Chapter Text

When Sansa penned her brief note to Dragonstone, heralding their arrival, Tyrion suggested that she not mention his name.

Even if this meeting was his idea in the first place.

Daenerys and Tyrion had not parted on friendly terms. He was her Hand no longer, the schism made most finally at Winterfell, in the hours before her departure. He’d been left behind in the Stark castle, to brood, to mourn, to drink.

Oh, he’d been very drunk when he confronted her and that was part of the problem. Wounded pride and misplaced grief served another part. With a little envy mixed in for good measure, that persists to this day, he won’t deny it. His father wouldn’t be surprised by the envy—

You are an ill-made, spiteful little creature full of envy, lust and low cunning.

Tell me how you truly feel, Father.

But this is a sad sort of envy that even Tywin Lannister might not have begrudged him. Envy that anyone could find a safe harbor of love and happiness in the frosty pit of hell they currently find themselves in.

He’s not above admitting it, especially now, having had several months to go over it all in his head. Forced sobriety does wonders for clarity of thought.

She married him. She married him without a word of warning to anyone. Not to Varys, not to Jon, not to him.

Tyrion Lannister, Hand of the Queen.

After the battle, he knew the title was plain nonsense. He knew that the game of thrones was over and that they’d all lost, the board cleared, the pieces put away. Tossed in ice and fire, to burn, to freeze, to die. He knew life was vanity and power was a trick. Just a shadow on the wall, as Varys was so fond of saying.

And yet, that day in Winterfell, he found himself clinging to all the old titles and court games by his fingernails. His brother was dead, his dreams of a better world shattered and broken. His title was the last shred of dignity and purpose he had left.

He’d even clipped the pewter pin on his jerkin before he came down from his own chambers. The simple act of pinning the damn thing took longer than it should have, as his fingers were clumsy with drink and his vision a little blurred and unsteady. He affixed it in a sloppy manner, with the fabric bunched up and the iron finger pointed straight down.

That was appropriate, as that’s where the path of his miserable life was headed.

But he was little concerned about any of it. It wasn’t he who was acting like a princess raised by savages, flagrantly setting aside all they’d worked towards and casting off the advice of her advisors for the sake of impulse.

He barged in on them while they were in private quarters, thinking he might as well catch them in the act. That would give him a little satisfaction, at least, as he planned to give them a dressing down from the moral high ground…even if the high ground seemed a little wobbling at present.

But the newlyweds weren’t alone.

They would be leaving for Dragonstone shortly and Archmaester Ebrose was giving one last once-over to Ser Jorah’s injuries, while Missandei chatted with Daenerys nearby, all of them aglow with beaming, kindred smiles, misplaced to Tyrion’s eyes—smiling, as if the world wasn’t upside down and everything hadn’t gone to hell.

They heard him enter, as he made no secret about it, announcing himself loudly by bellowing out, “I need to have a word with you, Daenerys Storm—” he hiccupped at just the wrong moment, “…born.”

Daenerys must have read his stern, twitching features too well, for her smile instantly fled her fine features and she cast a quick glance to Jorah, sharing some unspoken decision—Gods, why didn’t they use their mouths to speak like everyone else?—before ushering the dwarf back out into the drafty corridor.

She closed the chamber door behind them, tightly.

“Well, Lord Tyrion?” she asked, her chin already rising a hair in defiance, arms crossed over her chest. She was a very small woman, but she towered over him, nonetheless. He was forced to look up at her, which didn’t improve his mood in the least.

“Fucking him is one thing, but marrying him is quite another, Your Grace,” he slurred along her title, giving it too much emphasis.

“I’m not seeking your advice in this matter, Lord Tyrion,” she kept her own voice steady, warning him off continuing. But his wine-soaked tongue wasn’t to be stopped this time.

“An exiled lord,” He spit out the words, as if in bad taste, “A disgraced knight…”

“A man who has saved my life over and over again. A man willing to give up his own life for me at every turn…,” she replied, in a steely tone.

But Tyrion wasn’t put off. And the simmering tension between them finally boiled over, culminating in strong words spoken over each other.

“…from one of the poorest houses in the Seven Kingdoms! With no wealth, no renown…”

“…an ancient and proud house, with bloodlines tracing back to the First Men…”

“…a man who lost his honor, condemned by Ned Stark…”

“…the first of my Queensguard, the best and bravest of my knights…”

“…whom you banished,” he recounted bluntly, digging where he knew it would hurt the most. He watched her flinch and was glad. He dug a little deeper, “Twice, if I recall?”

“I’m not interested in your recollections,” her voice had gone chilly. As chilly as the frostbit corridor they stood in. Tyrion had neglected to wear a cloak down here, as the flush of red wine warmed him from the inside out.

But standing before the last surviving Targaryen, with her violet eyes turned dark and stormy, he suppressed a shiver. And a cringe.

Still, he was committed now. And not quite at his cleverest.

“You shame your ancestors by binding yourself to a man so far beneath you,” he stated it with too much arrogance, too much of Tywin Lannister coloring his tone.

A lion doesn’t concern himself with the opinions of the sheep…

He scolded her, like a child, “Your brothers would shake their heads in disgust.”

“My brothers are dead,” she told him, flatly. “And you shame yourself. This is none of your concern—”

“As your Hand, I strongly disag—”

“You are not my Hand,” Daenerys wouldn’t let him finish. Her eyes snapped with fire, “Since we arrived in Westeros, your advice has led me to ruin. You lost me Dorne and the Tyrells. I lost Viserion above the Wall. You were so convinced that dragging that wight down to Cersei would bring your sister to our side…”

Her voice broke, just a little, at the mention of her lost dragon.

She paused only briefly, before continuing, “You and Jon brought us to this terrible place, to fight an evil we were all powerless against. We lost thousands, Tyrion. My Dothraki riders and the Unsullied are counted in dozens now. Grey Worm is gone. Forever. And this doomed campaign almost lost me the man I love. I love him, Tyrion, do you understand?”

She regarded him with a mixture of pity and disappointment, saying, “No, of course you don’t. How could you? You didn’t know us before Meereen. You don’t know what he’s meant to me. What he means to me.”

“You’d give up the Seven Kingdoms for an old man’s cock?” Tyrion snorted rudely. His ribald musing skipped over the crux of her words, as he wasn’t really listening to her. The haze of wine made it hard to focus.

He’d watched her burn men alive and he’d never considered himself a brave man. And yet, he added, with reckless snark, “But madness does run in the family, doesn’t it, Your Grace?”

Daenerys might have struck him. He expected it. It’s what he thought was coming when she uncrossed her arms and raised her hand. He almost welcomed it, desperately wanting to feel something. But the blow never came. Instead, he felt a rough brush against the front of his shirt. When he dared open his eyes, one and then the other, he realized that she’d snatched the pin from his breast, ripping it off the fabric.

She held it in her palm, staring at it. Then her gaze flickered up, staring at him.

The residual happiness from her wedding likely tempered the fiery rage hinting behind her eyes.

Still, her words were steady, sure things, as she closed her hand around that pin, making a fist, “Tyrion Lannister, I no longer require your services. Nor will I tolerate them. You are free to seek your own way in the world. Stay here in Winterfell or cast your lot with your sister in the south, my lord. But you are not welcome at Dragonstone.”

And then, without waiting for a reply, she strode away, seamlessly slipping back into the same chamber she’d ushered him away from. Again, she closed the door tightly behind her, to keep out winter’s chill…and Tyrion.

Just before the door shut, he watched the sweet smile leap to her features once more, as she likely caught sight of her knight and wished to set his mind at ease on what had transpired in the hall.

Tyrion grimaced at her dismissal then, and again later, when she failed to look back as they left the castle, evidently having no regrets about leaving him behind. Or Varys, who stood beside him on the battlements, bundled up in northern furs and a hood that covered his bald head against constant flurries of snow.

“You didn’t have to confront her like that,” the eunuch hissed at Tyrion, his usually calm demeanor cracking just a bit. He’d been testy since realizing that Daenerys’s banishment applied to him too.

As the dragons flew off into the distance and the handful of Dothraki and Unsullied who survived followed by horse and wagon below, Varys pursed his lips and shook his head, with regret, “Dragonstone is an island. And the dead can’t swim.”

“If you want to chase after her and beg her forgiveness, you have my blessing,” Tyrion grumbled to his companion, rather bitterly, knowing that Varys would have no hesitation in blaming him for any bad luck which might follow them now, stranded without king, queen or destiny, in the charred and blackened ruins of cold, cold Winterfell.

“I did,” Lord Varys mentioned, with a grim tone of defeat. “It didn’t help. Whatever you said to her, she says she’ll kill you on sight if she ever sees you again. And me, by association.”

Tyrion scowled miserably, at frosted stones, at the departing caravan. He was starting to regret the whole thing. Loss and loneliness began to creep across his soul. But his feelings were still too blunted by the haze of alcohol to admit it.

At least that day.

But later, after the wine ran out, only Winter remained.

Freezing, endless, barren.

Hopeless.

There was a moment there, a few months back, when he considered just walking out into the snow drifts and ending it all. Varys hadn’t talked to him in weeks. The Starks kept to themselves. The castle remained hushed and cold. The sun spent little time above the horizon, shying away from the sting of northern ice. Their limited stores sustained them, but only just. Survival became the most compelling reason to get through the day.

But then an intrepid rider came from Oldtown, carrying a letter from Archmaester Ebrose that was so strange, it had to be true.

And then a raven with ragged wings and iced entrails spilling out from its rotten body brought a dark summons that laid a shadow over a holdfast already steeped in misery.

Tyrion read Ebrose’s letter a hundred times. The old man was an academic and logic permeated his very core. In his letter, he failed to suggest anything outright, but what his words implied was fantasy found in fairy tales.

Over the last several months, Tyrion has reminded himself again and again that he doesn’t believe in grumkins and snarks. He doesn’t believe in princes that are promised or fates that are intertwined. Or half-cooked prophecies in dusty, old books.

Or didn’t, anyway. But that was before he ran his hand along the scales of dragons and witnessed Stark corpses rise up from their graves, so what does he know?

That we’re all going to die.

As Tyrion follows Missandei into the Chamber of the Painted Table, he tries to pretend that his plan will work, thin as it is. He tries to forget how many of his plans have failed in the past.

The halls of Dragonstone are as somber and grave as ever, gargoyles of scaled and grotesque beasts watching the near silent procession pass. Varys scuttles, as always, the hem of his long robes sweeping the stone floors. Jon Snow and Ser Davos follow, speaking together—of Stannis, of years of waste and fighting between the living—but they keep their voices hushed. Further back, Sansa, the Hound and Brienne of Tarth are letting their gazes wander over severe Targaryen architecture, taking in the unfamiliar surroundings with awe.

Gendry lags behind, offering a hand to Lady Melisandre, as she’s feeble and slow, and the blacksmith is apparently a forgiving soul, never one to hold onto a grudge.

Tyrion feels a foreboding sense of repetition in this walk. It was less than a year ago that they met in these halls and in this very chamber, with ten times the men and a fool’s hope.

Now they have no hope at all. Just the stubborn, stupid belief that it’s better to go down fighting.

Here’s hoping they agree, Tyrion thinks, hoping he’ll have a chance to speak before Daenerys gives her gruff husband the command to cut him down, or gives her dragons leave to burn him up to ash.

Given their testy farewell, he knows it’s unlikely, unexpected. As unexpected as…

Tyrion is a consummate observer. He’s known for it.

And when he walks into the war room, Tyrion sees Daenerys and Ser Jorah at the windows overlooking the cold sea. They’re speaking together, quietly, much as he’d seen them do dozens of times after Ser Jorah’s return. She always preferred Mormont’s counsel above anyone else. That was never a question.

And there’s no difference now, except he’s her general and her husband.

But the last time they’d been in this room, she’d been defiant and sure, her posture impeccable, her demeanor calculated and unyielding. Now, Daenerys is resting against the obsidian pillars wearily, while Ser Jorah’s hand is at her waist, gently moving along the curve of her…

My gods, she’s pregnant.

He barely has time to register the sudden knowledge before the others follow him in, on a clatter of footsteps that can’t be ignored.

At the sound of their arrival, Ser Jorah has snatched his hand back from its telling caress. The others don’t see, rounding the corner too late. And as Daenerys turns to greet them, Tyrion notices she’s careful to arrange her cloak and furs in a way that won’t betray anything further. But it’s in these deliberate, delicate movements that Tyrion knows he’s right.

Ebrose had been very clear on what roles Ser Jorah and Daenerys were to play. Father, Mother. But Tyrion never thought to take the meaning so literally, thinking the woman was as barren as the Red Waste.

As for why she would hide her condition, he can’t say.

Yes, you can, Tyrion. You spent long enough with her to know.

He remembers their first meeting in the Pyramid in Meereen, just after she sent Jorah away that second time, and how they spoke of their terrible fathers and how she didn’t flinch when she told him the Mad King had earned his name.

She didn’t call him her father. Just the Mad King. And then, when she leaned back on her couch, so casually telling him, Perhaps I’ll kill you after all.

Oh, she was unshakeable. Impassive. And so very strong. Queen of all Meereen. Queen of Dragon’s Bay. Queen of all she surveyed.

He’d been enamored with her immediately. She was too beautiful, too confident and too glorious. He found her resilience inspiring and her command of a room alluring.

Later, he would say he must have imagined the tears in her eyes when she sent Ser Jorah away. For her tears were long gone by the time she met with him, her expression deadly calm, her words emotionless and glib. And he remembers thinking—how could such a strong, powerful woman shed any tears at all? Over anything?

As he enters the chamber on Dragonstone, he’s wearing a severe frown, ready to spar with her, just as he had in Meereen.

But all that melts away as he suddenly sees something that he’s not supposed to. He suddenly understands something that has been elusive, hidden from his (as it turns out) not-so-clever mind.

She doesn’t want to show weakness. She’s afraid to show it. Even now.

Tyrion blamed her for losing Viserion. He called her impulsive and reckless for having gone after the men above the Wall. He hated when she made mistakes, following her heart to ruin. As her advisor and her Hand, he begged her to temper that part of her. To be the calm and collected dragon queen, who felt no fear, who acted with precision.

Except she wasn’t the dragon queen, was she? She wasn’t the mask she wore. She was a flesh and blood woman, who felt love and fear and anger and sadness, just like everyone else.

And only Ser Jorah knew that…

It dawns on him with piercing clarity. No wonder she fell in love with Mormont. He’s the only man on earth who saw her as she truly was.

He almost laughs at his own foolishness but resists the temptation. He’s distracted by the sudden epiphany, so long-coming, so painfully obvious. In the meantime, a hot flush of anger floods Daenerys’s face as she catches sight of the Imp, bristling at his presence here. In her home, where she forbade him to show his face.

Tyrion takes no offense. He expected it, after all. He just hadn’t expected the rest.

He feels his grim features break into an astonished, completely inappropriate smile—at life’s unpredictability and the way a single moment can erase years of misunderstanding.

He takes a moment to recover. And when he does, he’s careful to phrase his greeting in a way that he hopes won’t rouse her, even though a dozen smart and clever comments are primed on his tongue. He can’t help it. He was born with a talent for penetrating wit.

I see you’ve been busy since we last parted, Your Grace?

No, she’s too close for this to have happened recently. She must have conceived at Winterfell. Or before. She looks drawn and Ser Jorah looks troubled, although that’s not unusual for the glowering northern knight.

Tyrion opens his mouth, but closes it before his first thought can escape. He decides his first act of good will shall be to ignore what he knows. He’d like to start this meeting off on the right foot. And he owes her this, at least.

Here’s hoping she appreciates it…

“My lady,” he bows to Daenerys, then to Ser Jorah, “My lord. We come to you in desperate times and at the end of all things…”

Chapter Text

Daenerys remains standing, even after their guests have filtered in, with most taking seats around the carved table. She braces her hands against the decoratively scrolled stiles that adorn the high back chair at the head of the table. She keeps her expression severe, hoping they’ll mistake the reason she neglects to take her familiar seat as a sign that she is unsettled by this meeting.

Oh, she is unsettled. But the visitors from Winterfell have little to do with it.

Even if it’s certainly strange to be back in this chamber with Tyrion at her right hand once more, and Jon and Ser Davos choosing the same spots that they occupied at their last summit meeting, a little less than a year before.

How things have changed, she thinks, shivering on winter’s undeniable chill, seemingly colder every day and always harshest in these seaward-facing chambers, where the fires do little to banish away icy fingers of frost. Winter sneaks under glass and wood moldings to cling to black stones.

The bulky wool and furs she wears keep her warm enough, but she’s careful not to let her hand unconsciously drift to the generous bump her garments barely hide, as her shiver is not from cold alone.

She ignores these other reasons, as she’s been ignoring them all morning. Even as they become consistent enough that her body tenses on the expectation of another aching, clenching pain to come. One of many. Too many in a row. Still, she ignores it.

And how some things never change, she notes instead, with eternal relief, as Jorah comes away from the window to take his place beside her. He remains standing as well, within arm’s reach, as always.

Her eyes flicker to his, just as the last of their guests choose places around the table, their expressions all shades of dour and solemn. Jorah’s eyes remain on her, not the others. His mouth is grimly set, as they’d been speaking of the baby before the others arrived, and he’d wanted her to skip this meeting and go to bed. He says she looks tired and anxious. He says she needs rest.

She refuses, stubbornly. She tells him that she’s fine and that it’s important that she attend. She says they’ll wonder at her absence and start speculating wildly and she doesn’t want them to know their affairs.

“They’ll know soon enough, Daenerys,” Jorah reminds her, but softly.

“They’ll be gone long before she’s born,” she argues back, unconvincingly.

And as the minutes tick by, she’s beginning to lose confidence in her own obstinate words.

She hasn’t admitted it to Jorah, not outright, but those pains from the night before and this morning haven’t left her alone for more than a half hour’s stretch. And before Tyrion and the others wandered in, she was nearly swayed to listen to her husband. He needed only a few minutes more to convince her.

For as much as she’s convinced herself that it isn’t time yet, her body is telling her otherwise. The contractions are stronger than before and the way the child moves has begun to take on an urgency that wasn’t there before.

She feels heavy and restless. She’s suddenly aware of the baby’s weight and the burdensome feel of another inside her, in a way that hasn’t bothered her all through this pregnancy.

For she’s loved carrying this child…

A child that she never expected, never planned for, never dreamt would exist. And yet, the baby’s real. The way she grows, the way she moves inside of her. Daenerys feels every kick and little hiccup her daughter makes. She knows when she’s sleeping and when she’s wide awake. She knows that the baby calms best under her father’s voice. And better still when he sings those old lullabies from Bear Island.

These months at Dragonstone have been some of the happiest Daenerys has ever spent, on either side of the sea, even with the howling winds of winter and bleak news from the mainland. Winter has come to stay and the land is blanketed in shadows and snow, but Daenerys barely notices any of it.

Drogon and Rhaegal have taken refuge in the island’s craggy caves—to sleep and keep warm and gather their strength, even as the sea spits on icy waters and blizzards of snow too often swirl around the island.

And Daenerys has done likewise.

She spends her days here in relative quiet, with no more wars to fight and no more supplicants to appease. She and Missandei often sit by crackling, merry fires, just the two of them, and talk of white beaches in Naath or lemon trees in Braavos and how they’d give much to be sitting beneath a summer sun and once again taste the juice of fresh pears and peaches on their tongues.

They talk of Grey Worm sometimes too, but only for a little while, as the mere sound of his name stings as badly as frost on their fingertips.

At night, Daenerys makes a nest for herself in the bed she shares with Jorah, stoking glowing coals in the hearth before huddling deep beneath a soft mess of blankets and quilts…and her bear’s golden fur.

She nestles close to Jorah in the long nights, sinking into his embrace as she joins him in bed, drawing more warmth from his body than anything else. She can never get enough heat, as she’s a true daughter of dragons and wasn’t made for cold climates. Jorah doesn’t seem to mind, as he tells her that he prefers her in his arms.

She prefers it there too. When she’s in Jorah’s arms, everything she loves is so close, safe and within her grasp. And the winds may howl and the darkness may surround them like ghouls in the night, but she knows nothing but light and warmth.

Her husband’s heartbeat is strong and steady beneath the ear she lays against his broad chest. Their baby’s heartbeat is strong and otherworldly, a flutter inside her, a marvel beneath Jorah’s protective hand.

A haven to shut out the horror.

She loves the nights for other reasons too.

Jorah’s injuries healed well. And it wasn’t long after they landed on these shores that they renewed more than just chaste and careful kisses.

She’d been undressing for bed, standing before a looking glass of polished bronze, one that may have been here when her mother still walked these halls. She was reaching back to undo the laces running up the back of her dress when she felt his familiar presence behind her.

Without a word, his hands took over and undid the rest for her, pulling those laces loose with two fingers. Afterwards, his hands came to rest on her upper arms, bare now, as the shoulders on her gown and the shift beneath dropped to her full breast, and he bent down to press a lingering kiss against the tender spot where her shoulder met her throat.

Her eyes slid shut on his amorous touch, pulse quickening on the not-so-distant memory of his lips trailing from her collarbone all the way down to the inside of her left thigh, as they lay together in a bed at Winterfell in secret. And how she’d found herself going flush and soft and breathless under his continued attentions. It had been months since she’d had such kisses from him, months since she’d felt his hands all over her.

Months too long.

She turned her head just slightly, nuzzling her nose against his temple, before meeting his lips with her own.

“Should we?” she whispered the words against the side of his mouth and whiskers, as they briefly broke away from a deepening kiss. She’d already turned in his embrace, her fingers drifting up into his ginger-grey hair.

“I think it’s high time I made love to my wife,” he whispered back, his forehead gently caressing her own, his voice husky with feeling and want. His head dipped slowly as he pressed a slow and seductive kiss against the pulsing vein at her throat. He murmured against her skin, “If she’ll have me?”

The way she melted on that kiss, and the way her hands came down from his hair to twine around his neck and bring their bodies closer together, answered for her. Still, she hesitated, belatedly remembering Archmaester Ebrose’s instruction that they take things slow for as long as possible…

“Are you sure you’re strong enough?” she asked, but in a sultry voice that was equal parts caution and temptation. One of her hands had slyly wandered down from the perch around his neck to play at the ties of his breeches, quite of its own accord.

She couldn’t help herself. Since finding herself pregnant with Jorah’s child, she’d only craved him more.

And dragons aren’t known for their patience.

She felt his mouth break into a grin against her own, breaking their kiss in the process, and she gave a sudden, but not unpleasant, shriek, followed by velvet laughter, as she felt her feet slip out from under her, suddenly losing their hold on the stone floor.

She was in his arms before she knew it, as he lifted her up in one quick swoop. Even with the extra weight from the baby—which, at that time, was still admittedly not much at all—he held her as if she weighed nothing, proving his renewed strength easily. He shifted her in his grasp nimbly, as she pulled his mouth down to hers, seeking out his kiss again, quickly resuming what they’d started.

They continued that kiss, as he carried her to their bed, and indulged in dozens more, after he laid her down on the soft mattress.

Their lovemaking has been different than before—slower and less urgent, deeper and lasting, growing familiar in a way that thrills her and would fill her up, if she wasn’t already fit to bursting. But there’s an additional level of care too, and of holding back. Just a little.

First, for his sake. Later, for hers.

He’s always been so attentive to her needs, even before this. But as the months passed and her body changed and swelled under their child’s growth, he naturally took less of his own pleasure and gave more to her, in a way that’s been neither cloying nor expected and she’s found herself amazed by him anew.

Although, she doesn’t know why she should be so surprised. There’s no other man in the world who reads her moods so well. Or can guess her wants and feelings with such precision.

Jorah Mormont is the other half of her soul.

She knows he’ll likely sense her feelings now, as her fingers tighten against the back of that chair without choice, knuckles whitening as her grip goes iron-clad on a painful ache that ripples through her lower abdomen, stronger than the one before, which was stronger than the one before that.

But she breathes through it without flinching, without anything to give her away, save the strength of that grip, which only loosens after near half-minute’s passed.

Even as the pain ebbs, she finds it hard to focus on the odd things that Tyrion’s saying. Still, she tries, knowing they’ll look to her once the Imp quits his incessant chattering. Thankfully, that might be some time, as the others interrupt him multiple times, to pepper him with questions and air their doubts.

Apparently, he didn’t tell his companions everything at Winterfell, although some of them must have read Ebrose’s letter as well. Yet, Tyrion drew more from it than the others. Far more. And he’s saved the bulk of his plan for this meeting.

Daenerys can see why. He’s talking utter nonsense.

“You want us to walk into King’s Landing without any army at all?” Ser Davos says, plain consternation written up and down the sailor’s craggy features.

“No, I didn’t say that,” Tyrion is exceedingly patient with his audience. He must know how it all sounds. He’s not a stupid man. Daenerys knows this, despite all the times she’s insinuated the opposite to be true. He continues, “I only said that the summons that Qyburn sent to Jon presents us with an opportunity that we likely won’t have again.”

“An opportunity to die and be done with it,” Brienne mutters, from the far end of the table. Daenerys hears a little resignation in the woman’s voice and can’t tell if her words are an argument for or against. Perhaps she doesn’t know herself.

“Maybe,” Tyrion concedes. At least he’s being honest. “But I don’t know that the Night King cares about whether we live or die in the end. Otherwise, wouldn’t he have finished us off at Winterfell?”

“He didn’t need to,” Melisandre’s exotic accent quavers now, in age. She’s bent and gnarled and her eyes are clouded with cataracts. But when she speaks, she still gives off the air of the siren-priestess who brought Stannis Baratheon to ruin. Especially when she speaks of the gods and things beyond the sight of mortal men, “The war was never between the living and the dead. It still isn’t.”

“Exactly, my lady,” the dwarf agrees heartily, repeating himself, “Exactly.”

“What do you mean ‘exactly’?” Missandei speaks up, with a slightly bitter tone in her generally light and timid voice. She’s still standing, like Jorah and Daenerys, leaning back against the inner wall of the chamber, with her arms crossed over her chest.

The pin that Daenerys forced off Tyrion at Winterfell is now affixed to Missandei’s collar.

Daenerys is under no illusion that she’s Queen of anything, other than perhaps her husband’s heart. But she told Missandei to wear the pin anyway, as she deserves it and should have had it much earlier. Daenerys was doomed to blindness in Meereen, first in banishing Jorah from her side, then in choosing a stranger and a Lannister for a Hand.

She’s set these things right, at last.

She wonders if the pin gives Missandei the confidence to speak up, as she’s never said a word at one of these meetings before. Not unless she was translating for others.

But no, Daenerys knows it has little to do with a worthless trinket. And much more to do with the way death has made a mockery of high lords and commoners alike, cutting them both down like chaff that night at Winterfell.

Grief and loss are the only true instruments of equality. And they’ve made Missandei bolder than she ever was before.

Daenerys knows that Missandei has never disliked Tyrion, but she watches the Essosi girl scowl at him severely, as she demands, “You’re saying that Grey Worm died for nothing?”

“I’m saying that the gods use us as playthings, Missandei,” Tyrion is gentle with his explanation. Daenerys can read his features clearly from where she stands. He doesn’t wish to bring more despair to anyone in this room, least of all those he’s come to convince, but that’s a difficult thing to do. If not impossible. He says, “Soldiers, corpses and sheer numbers—that’s what we are to them. I’m saying that this was never about us. At least not to the Night King’s way of thinking.”

“Then why does he summon Jon to King’s Landing now?” Sansa wonders, wisely. And with a calm practicality that brings to mind her late father. She’s been observing this meeting quietly, speaking up sparingly. Daenerys has felt the Stark girl’s eyes linger upon her more than once.

“Because the war between gods isn’t finished,” Tyrion replies. “Because although the Red God appears to have fled and the Many-Faced God and the Old Gods—at least one of them—met their fate in the godswood that night, the gods of life remain.”

“You’re talking about the Seven,” Jon’s eyes narrow under a brooding glare. His brow is furrowed most decidedly. He’ll have deep wrinkles before he’s an old man if he continues holding his expression in this way so often.

“Yes,” Tyrion nods his head again.

“The Seven didn’t make an appearance at Winterfell,” Sansa reminds him. “If what you say is true, I would think that’s proof that they’re all dead. Or never existed in the first place.”

“Unless the Seven were at Winterfell and we just didn’t know it,” Tyrion insists, looking around the table at the gathered lords and ladies. He marks each face solemnly, and in a way that suggests something impossible. He stresses, “And still don’t, even as they sit here.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“You think we’re gods?” Jorah’s tone is more polite than perhaps it should be.

Years ago, Daenerys knows he would have laughed at the little man, as he once chuckled wryly in an Eastern market, when she’d asked him about dragons. But he tempers his disbelief now, in a humble way that became habit for him the morning after he found Daenerys amongst ashes and cinder, with three baby dragons clinging to her naked form.

“I think that it’s possible that the Seven have chosen favorites among the living. Not necessarily their only favorites, but ones that will suffice.”

“Suffice for what?” Lord Varys asks, with heavy skepticism clouding both his tone and his expression.

Tyrion gives his long-time companion a look that says he’d appreciate a vote of confidence. Varys offers a thin smile, as he doesn’t appear inclined to oblige.

Tyrion sighs and pauses briefly, as he’s fast approaching the part of his plan that must be madness. He has the same look on his face now as when he encouraged them to go fetch a dead man, and bring it south to lay at Cersei’s feet.

Daenerys sees how he hesitates and how he has little confidence in what he’s about to say. There’s nothing to gain here and everything to lose.

“They say Baelor the Blessed built his Sept in King’s Landing after he had a vision,” Tyrion relates what they’ve all heard since they were children. And what Archmaester Ebrose has repeated in his letter. “But no one ever talks about what he saw in that vision…”

“Well…?” Missandei prods, after Tyrion retreats back into silence.

The dwarf passes Ebrose’s letter to Jon Snow on his right, who thereafter passes it to Missandei, so she can read the passage the archmaester scribbled out in its original language, a strange, potent mix of Valyrian and the Old Tongue.

She reads silently first, her eyes following the lines, before translating it for the rest of them:

“I saw seven men and women standing on a white hill. I watched them stand against death. Father, Mother, Maiden, Warrior, Smith, Crone and Stranger, all together. The seven faces of life shone like sunlight against the ravenous face of Death. Pray they triumph, children. Blessed be the gods, both the Old and the New.”

The ancient words seem to shimmer and soak into the chamber, with Missandei’s delicate reading voice giving them more gravitas than one might expect.

“So which are you, Lord Tyrion? The Warrior?” Ser Davos muses. The words are meant as a joke but there’s little to joke about these days, and even Ser Davos’s naturally jovial manner suffers from months of hard winter.

Tyrion purses his lips at the Onion Knight, but again, he does so patiently. Daenerys wonders where he found all this patience. At the bottom of his last wine bottle?

“The Smith and the Crone were easy enough for Ebrose to make out,” Tyrion gives a weighty look to Gendry and Lady Melisandre.

“But she’s a red priestess,” the blacksmith says, turning to the white-haired woman beside him. He scoffs and shakes his head in a manner reminiscent of his father, Robert Baratheon, although he wouldn’t know it. He tells her straight, “You serve R’holler, not the Seven.”

“I serve no one, Gendry Rivers,” the old woman counters, without any fight behind her words. They’re just matter-of-fact and as bitter as the winter wind that blows so viciously against the castle walls, “Not anymore.”

They can’t argue with that. Her former god and master abandoned her in a way that manifests itself too obviously, in the dry twine of her long, white hair and the deep, creased lines in her ancient face.

Tyrion’s gaze sweeps from one end of the table to the other.

He regards his hosts evenly, while addressing the rest. He continues carefully, as he knows he speaks only at Daenerys’s pleasure, “In his letter, Ebrose suggests that Ser Jorah Mormont and Daenerys Targaryen might serve the roles of Father and Mother.”

He lets the brazen idea hang in the air, his gaze flickering up to Daenerys for the first time since he walked into this chamber. And while he’s respectful, humbled even, that’s when she realizes that he knows.

With his expression turned away from the others, he lets his gaze drop deliberately, down to her waist, before coming back to her face. She swallows back the grim frown that threatens to spill over her lips, distracted well enough by another cresting pain that she suffers through silently, without moving an inch.

Tyrion must have seen more than he should have when he came into this room. But she’ll not give him the satisfaction of confirmation, no matter how much emphasis he puts on that title.

Mother.

Yes, she’ll be a mother soon enough.

Jorah’s taken a step closer to her. It’s a subtle change in his stance, and she wonders if it’s the threat of Tyrion’s revelations or the fact that he reads her body language well enough to know that she’s hiding her distress. Perhaps not as well as she thought she was.

Sansa Stark is likewise watching her face again, thoughtfully. As are the others, waiting for her delayed response.

With effort, she forces steady words through her lips, but only after the pain recedes enough that she trusts herself to manage it. She observes flatly, “Because I’m the Mother of Dragons, I suppose?”

“Yes,” Tyrion plays just as dumb, holding her gaze for a long moment before switching to Jorah. “And that means Father for you, my lord, by default—” He pauses, then tips his head and raises his eyebrows, evidently not completely cured of his sly wit after all, “Although I have to say the irony of the man who fled Ned Stark’s justice representing the god who demands it most often hasn’t been lost on me.”

Jorah says nothing in reply. When Daenerys looks his way, she notes that he’s sparing not a single glance on the dwarf. He’s watching her. And his dear blue eyes betray that he isn’t listening at all. Not to Tyrion. Not to the others. Only to her, and the words she has yet to say aloud.

The baby is coming, Jorah. The baby is coming now.

Mother and Father, oh yes. She would laugh on the simple truth of the idea, if only these pains would leave her alone for long enough.

“Which leaves the Maiden, the Warrior and the Stranger…”

Tyrion nods to Sansa on the word “maiden.” Everyone’s gaze, save Jorah’s, has swiveled towards the Stark girl as well. It’s the obvious choice. And Tyrion speaks for them all when he says, “There’s no one else who fits the Maiden so well, Lady Stark.”

But Sansa is shaking her head ruefully, even before he turns to her, “I’m no maiden, Tyrion.” Her blue-grey eyes fall to her lap, where her hands are tangling together. She mutters, “Ramsay saw to that.”

“That’s not true,” comes a brusque but certain reply. There’s a growling anger in The Hound’s surly voice at the mention of the Bolton bastard.

Sandor speaks up for the first time since they all arrived. And his voice is laced with enough intensity that Daenerys is not the only one to notice. But he seems unashamed to continue, speaking to Sansa as if there’s no one else in the room but them. “Fuck Ramsay, girl. No man can take that from you. Not like that. You’re a maid still.”

Sansa’s gaze is snared by his voice, her eyes lifting from her hands to meet those of the man sitting beside her, giving him a look of gratitude and…perhaps something more? Daenerys can’t be sure but she recognizes the tone of the look that passes between them at least, having shared similar ones with Jorah for many years now.

She wonders at it and wonders more at what’s passed between Sansa Stark and Sandor Clegane in Winterfell over these last several months.

She wonders at the identities of the Warrior and the Stranger as well. Who wouldn’t?

Or she would have, anyway…

But in the moment of silence that follows, Daenerys feels a sudden flood of water spill between her legs and run down the inside of her thighs, soaking her skirt and falling with a small splash on the stones beneath her feet. She hardly hears the sound as her hands are now gripping the stiles of that chair too tightly. Without leave, she finds her forehead lowering to her wrists as she doubles over, inhaling sharply under the force of a heavy contraction, one that catches her by surprise.

And a small moan escapes her lips this time, one she can’t stop. Just as she can’t stop her descent to the floor, knees going weak, as she finds the pain that comes this time overwhelms her and will not be ignored.

She doesn’t fall. Jorah won’t let her fall.

He’s there before she can call out for him and she’s aloft, held in his arms within seconds. But the relief of being held by him is stained by sudden dread. As this scene is too familiar. It’s as if they’ve gone back however many years and are replaying the same scene in the grasslands again, standing before a horselord’s tent, with the eerie buzz of cicadas and desert breeze, ragged shadow creatures dancing and the unearthly wail of a witch singing spells, as Jorah takes two steps forward, with no other choice but to…

No, no, no!

She feels tears sting at her eyes on the terrible memory, suddenly afraid that it should leap into her head so easily. Now, here, at this moment. This is the same fear that has been following her for days now, like a shadow, one that she dares not give a voice for fear that it will come true.

And that she’ll lose this baby too.

But no. It’s not the same, she promises herself. Jorah’s not in armor this time and there’s no tent, with no witch on the other side. Qotho’s blood is not on her face. The air bites with cold and frost, not heat and dust.

Jorah’s speaking soothing words at her ear that bring her out of the past and into the present, “I’m here, Daenerys. I’ve got you. You’ll be all right.”

When their second child is born, she’ll accept the signs earlier and spare Jorah the added grey hairs that would come if he’s forced to carry her in such a state for a third time.

But for now, she grits her teeth on the pain, while clutching her swollen belly in one hand and the front of his shirt in the other, no longer in a position to hide anything at all. From anyone. She’s a woman in pain. She’s a mother in labor.

And her child is coming now.

With eyes closed and blurred by tears, she misses the stunned faces and open-mouthed stares of their gathered guests.

“Move out of the way, damn you!” is all Jorah has to say to Tyrion and Jon as he quickly carries her from the room, with Missandei following close behind.

Chapter Text

Night falls on Dragonstone.

“She might have said something,” Tyrion is grumbling to Jon and Ser Davos, as the three of them stand in a small half-circle, chatting by the nearest hearth. Sansa neglects to listen to his grumblings with any lasting attention.

She’s had years of practice listening to Tyrion prattle on, beginning when she was still a young girl. Cersei and Tyrion were both so fond of words. And Sansa was Tyrion’s wife once. Isn’t that what wives do? Nod along blankly to their husbands’ list of complaints and grievances, before finally coming in with a light-hearted, “Yes, my dear,” once the talking finally stops?

Sansa is standing a few feet from the men, hovering beside another bowl of pitch and fire, this one perched on a squat stone pillar, carved in the image of a dragon’s claws. Varys is hovering in the entryway to the chamber, gaze wandering, thoughts kept to close to the chest, as always.

The others are elsewhere, meandering in and out, mulling around the ancient Targaryen castle at will. They are all idle and on edge, aimless, hostless, with the proverbial wind so abruptly removed from their sails. All must wait, all must linger.

A child’s entrance to the world too easily stops time, slowing it down and stretching it out, until the hours bleed into one another.

Nothing will break the tension but a newborn’s strong cry.

In the meantime, they are left to fend for themselves, without any chaperones whatsoever, save one of those few remaining Unsullied soldiers or Dothraki riders who sometimes materialize in an odd corner, grim and scowling like the gargoyles and dragon-styled décor they keep guard beside.

Dragonstone is a grand, if rather austere, palace. But, like Winterfell, it suffers from the hauntings of winter. With cold winds wailing and too many empty rooms. There are few servants here, as the Baratheons lived monastically, even in milder times, always shying away from excess. And most of those who served Stannis fled the island the hour they heard the dragon queen was sailing their way, convinced that she came with fire and blood, and a vengeance against any family name but her own.

The ones that remain are skittish and keep to themselves, but they are of Stannis’s practical persuasion and have nonetheless turned down an appropriate number of beds in the guest chambers and provided a suitable evening meal for all. Ser Davos greets most of them by name. Sansa notices that they side-eye Lady Melisandre, their eyes narrowing with vague recognition, as if they can’t quite place the old woman.

It's likely better for everyone if they don’t.

Sansa may not be listening intently to his words, but she watches Tyrion’s expression nonetheless, pondering on many things.

She wasn’t lying when she said he was the best of them. They would have made a tolerable match. Maybe. In a different life, perhaps.

Sansa can’t see it in this one. Since that bitter morning when she emerged from the Winterfell crypts to so much death and defeat, her thoughts have too often turned to another. A man of rougher manners, but a quieter tongue. A man whose mere presence brings her comfort when the world is at its darkest.

And so, it’s difficult to imagine a series of events that might lead her to becoming Lady Lannister again.

Impossible, she amends. The months have made her confident in the honest desires of her heart.

Still, she understands Tyrion’s frustration. She sympathizes. She knows he doesn’t like to be caught unaware. He doesn’t like when he fails to recognize something that seems so obvious in reflection. He’s used to being the smartest man in the room and clings to his clever mind when all else fails.

She doesn’t know why he’ll never understand that it’s his kindness that makes him worth knowing. Not the cleverness.

Littlefinger was clever too. That didn’t make him any less cruel.

And Tyrion shouldn’t be so hard on himself anyway. He wasn’t the only one surprised. Sansa chides her own foolishness in not guessing Daenerys’s condition earlier. She looks back at her last conversation with the woman, however many months ago, and sees it through new eyes.

No wonder Daenerys was in such a hurry to leave Winterfell.

Now, Daenerys’s labored cries fill up Dragonstone. The tense sounds of a woman giving birth are hard to muffle. And she must be in the thick of it now, as it’s been hours since Ser Jorah carried her from this chamber in a rush.

He’s with her now, as is Missandei. They’ll not leave her side until this is over. Sansa prays that it’s over soon, for both Daenerys’s sake and the ones who love her. She witnessed the deep lines of worry etched on Ser Jorah’s face as he carried his wife from the room.

Will Sandor look the same someday, when I’m on the birthing bed? She considers, knowing the answer. She hopes she’s able to see it for herself, as she’ll take great satisfaction in seeing The Hound show his true feelings so openly.

“I thought you said she couldn’t have children?” Sansa finally speaks up, directing her words to Jon, in a tone that skirts on patronizing. Just a little. It’s a sister’s gentle reproach and Sansa finds comfort in the fact that they might retain these roles.

After all that’s happened. And despite the fact that they aren’t brother and sister at all.

The others still don’t know that Jon is Rhaegar Targaryen’s son. Sansa hasn’t been inclined to tell them. Jon won’t, as he doesn’t know what to do with the knowledge. He’s still adrift, unsure of how to reconcile his identity.

He's a stranger to himself.

At Winterfell, he lost…but he lost as a bastard boy against insurmountable odds. In some ways, that makes the defeat easier to take. For what could be expected of a bastard?

But the king’s son? True heir to the Iron Throne of Westeros? The ponderous weight of those expectations might crush him.

Sansa suspects he dislikes his new name and wishes to bury it forever. She expects this won’t be possible and hopes he sees why soon.

For now, Jon merely sighs and seems at a loss, which is his natural state these days. He speaks plainly, and a little sheepishly, “She told me she couldn’t.”

Yet another labored cry from a distant chamber proves those words terribly false. The men cringe on the sound, each and every one. But Ser Davos soon gives a shrug too, having seen his share of miracles and oddities, saying simply, “Apparently, she was wrong.”

In reply, Sansa gives a breathy laugh, a little amused by the men. They all seem so forlorn and downcast at the news, and troubled by Daenerys’s cries. She can understand the latter, as no one likes to hear the sounds of a woman in distress.

But, as for the former, why should they mourn that Daenerys Stormborn bears her lover’s child? Her husband’s child?

Ser Jorah has broken a curse for his beloved. How many other men could do such a thing?

Few, Sansa allows, and then thinks she’s being too generous. One or two.

Again, her thoughts drift to Sandor Clegane.

He’s not here. He left the chamber some time ago and she’s not sure where he’s gone. But she’s not surprised by his absence, knowing that Sandor doesn’t enjoy these conversations. He and Tyrion have settled into a truce but Sansa knows he tires of the Imp’s voice very quickly, having had his fill in King’s Landing many years ago.

He has little patience for talk in general. He appears to crave silence. She understands why.

Words clutter the air. Words bite and twist and fail. And sometimes, words just aren’t enough. For how can they adequately explain how a woman’s feelings might change so completely and how something that once was so unthinkable slowly becomes the only thing that fills her waking thoughts.

She watches the dancing flames in that basin beside her, licking at the edges of the iron grate, and bites her bottom lip, just slightly.

“I told her Ser Jorah wasn’t a fit consort,” Tyrion continues, but in a way that says he regrets it. Deeply. They all know how Daenerys banished him from her side. They’ve all seen how he lost himself afterwards, only now crawling back from an abyss that might have swallowed him whole. He muses, “A Mormont sparks the Targaryen line back into being. Who would have thought it?”

“Anyone with eyes, Lord Tyrion,” Sansa resists the urge to roll her eyes at the little man, as she sways from the pit of fire, suddenly in the mood for a walk. The baby might be a surprise, but the identity of its father certainly isn’t.

Of course, Ser Jorah would be the father of Daenerys’s children. Who else?

Yet, she offers Tyrion a shadow of a smile instead, in no mood to scold. He’s still licking his wounds from Winterfell. But it’s not his fault he was doomed to blindness all those months ago. Nor any of the others. Sansa has learned that men are rubbish at recognizing the signs of a woman in love.

Even if they’re on the receiving end of that love.

She tires of their conversation and makes her exit, saying again as she passes them, “Anyone with eyes.”

Sandor is sitting alone in an otherwise empty room. A few candles are burning, wax melting down to short stubs. He’d light more but has no fear of the dark. And it’s late enough that he should try to get some sleep anyway.

Although, it’s doubtful any of them will sleep tonight.

Daenerys Targaryen’s current state is not to be ignored and the very walls of Dragonstone seem to tense and hold their breath every time she cries out in pain, the danger and the hope mixing together in a way that keeps them all balanced on the edge of a knife’s blade. But that knife is unsteady and slips more with each passing hour.

And if Daenerys and her child don’t live through this…

A baby is being born in the halls of Dragonstone. In the middle of winter, in the middle of the night.

Even Sandor Clegane, who has never held a baby in his life, who ran down the butcher’s boy without a second thought to his king’s ruthless command, suddenly finds himself hoping that the little slip of a Targaryen girl has the strength to bring her child into the world.

It'd be nice to have a little hope for a change.

He’d pray, as he’s finally been convinced that the gods might exist after all. What happened at Winterfell made converts of them all. But he doesn’t know the proper words, and honestly, he still says they’re a bunch of cruel fuckers, even if they do exist. So maybe it’s best to leave them out of this completely.

Unless the Maiden is willing to intercede…he grants, having a soft spot for one deity, at least.

Which is serendipitous, as he hears a familiar footfall slow in the hall outside, approaching his hiding place.

He’s sitting in a chair beside a cold hearth, his head tilted back and his eyelids closed. He doesn’t stir for a long moment, but opens his eyes after he hears the hinges whine, as Sansa pushes the door open just wide enough to slip through. She closes the door behind her as he leans forward, elbows resting on his knees as he watches her enter.

They’re comfortable in each other’s presence, forgoing any sort of formal greeting. She seeks him out naturally now and it’s rare that they go more than a few hours without seeing each other.

In winter, you keep your loved ones close. He knows he has no right to claim her like this, but it’s the thought that dances through his head, nevertheless.

She’s without her cloak and rubs her hands briskly over the woolen sleeves of her upper arms, telling him something he already knows, “There are rooms with fires, you know?”

“Aye,” he says, but they both know why he chose this one.

Fuck the cold, but fuck the fire more.

It’s a necessary evil in this weather that fires should burn at all hours. But Sandor’s never trusted the flames. Beric’s damn fire priest forced him to read those flames once, in that ramshackle hut where they found that damn farmer and his daughter, frozen to death, and he saw Eastwatch by the Sea, waves coated with ice. But look how that turned out?

Thoros should have known better than to let a dog read his fire god’s prophecies. Maybe he’d still be alive.

But maybe Tyrion is right and the gods use them as playthings.

Sandor would expect nothing less. And he finds himself wondering if he’s being played again now.

For the way Sansa is looking at him strikes a chord in his heart that can’t be right. That tender softness in her eyes, the way she takes a few steps towards him, until she’s standing so close. Close enough that he could reach out and run his fingers along the silhouette of her skirt, finding her delicate fingers and drawing her the rest of the way easily.

He’s tempted to do it. He’s tempted to do many things with Sansa Stark.

He hasn’t. He wouldn’t. He has a mound of regrets, piled like the grave dirt he dug out of a hole, his hands stinging with cold and frost, his shovel threatening to break in two on hard ground, as he dug deep enough to bury those poor, wretched souls—the farmer and his daughter. He might as well have slit their throats.

But of all his regrets, he cringes most to think back on those words he spit out to Arya when he thought he was dying. He flushes with shame, all over, whenever he thinks about what he said.

And your sister. Your pretty sister…

He was his worst self in that moment. The monster that deserved every rotten thing that had ever befallen his worthless head. He feels the need to atone, forever if he must. He’ll protect her, he’ll stand beside her, he’ll keep her safe from killers like him.

That’s all he can do. He can think of no other reason the gods would spare a dog like him.

Surely, they wouldn’t be kind enough to bless him with more than that?

“Do you think what Tyrion says is true?” Sansa asks him, wanting his opinion. She knows he won’t hold back, as he has little experience with tact or pretty words. And yet…

“I think if there’s a woman in the world who the Maid would choose to favor, it would be you,” he says, without guile, without expectation.

The Clegane house was never very devout. He remembers only bits and pieces of The Song of the Seven, but for some reason the verse of the Maiden comes to him easily now, as he stares up at Sansa:

The Maiden dances through the sky,
she lives in every lover’s sigh.
Her smile teaches the birds to fly,
and gives dreams to little children.

Aye, she does. He thinks, his eyes locked with hers. He knows she’ll see unchecked fondness in his gaze but he takes no pains to hide it. He’s not one for subterfuge.

He admires her. He adores her. He’s in love with her.

He’ll be in love with her until the day he dies.

He resisted at first, as he’d thought of her as a child for so long. But she’s a child no longer. Tall and willowy, with her mother’s eyes and her father’s strong bearing. She’s a true daughter of the North and winter suits her. She’s a survivor.

He’s remained by her side at Winterfell, as she attempts to build something up from the ashy ruins. If not for her, Jon wouldn’t have left his chambers to come to Dragonstone. If not for her dumping bottles of wine in the snow, Tyrion might have drunk himself to death a long time ago.

And if not for her, Sandor would have little reason to think there was reason to hope. For anything.

He finds no warmth in fire. But he finds his heart warms with her near. In a way that might outlast the winter.

Perhaps reading his thoughts, she moistens her lips and quotes him another verse of that old lullaby:

“The Warrior stands before the foe,
protecting us where e’er we go.
With sword and shield and spear and bow,
he guards the little children…?”

She ends with a slight inflection, tipping her head just slightly, asking him if he thinks…?

“No,” he shakes his head on the unspoken notion, growling on words that he’s said more times than he can count, reminding her again, lest she ever forget, “I’m no knight, Sansa. Killer, not warrior. Remember?”

Sansa seems to be turning something over in her head. Her demeanor is so calm and open but he finds he can’t be sure what she’s thinking. She’s not disappointed in him. If anything, his reply appears to soften her expression more. Or perhaps that’s the candlelight, playing on her natural beauty.

He continues, leaving no room for doubt, which he suspects might be clattering around in her head. She’s being too generous and not thinking straight. He’s more than willing to correct her, “It’s Brienne, if you ask me. Ser Brienne. Jaime Lannister said she would have bested him in single combat if the Boltons hadn’t interrupted them and she nearly finished me off in the Riverlands. All to honor your mother’s name and save your sister from a known killer. She was born to the role, and you know it.”

“But you…”

“Be honest. Can you see me guarding little children?” he asks her, with a dark turn of humor, lifting his burned face to her in plain recognition. Of who he was, and still is. He doesn’t hide his scars from her, the ones on his face, the ones inside his heart.

But if she was honest, as he asked, she’d say yes.

And years later, he’ll do just that. Guard little children from feral wolves and northern marauders, and other, more mundane dangers like fear of thunder or a scraped knee. He’ll guard their children. And Sansa will take great pleasure in teasing him about this night and how he seemed so set on denying his true character.

Indeed, she’ll tell him that it was this moment, when he denied himself the Warrior’s blessing, just as he denied himself the title of knight, that she knew she would love him forever.

He may not be the Warrior. But he is her warrior.

Sansa has sewn up the distance between them without his knowledge and he finds her hands are resting on his broad shoulders lightly. His hands have somehow perched themselves on her hips, as if they belong there.

He knows what’s happening, but can barely fathom it, his mouth going dry as her hands slide off his shoulders and move to cup both sides of his marred face. She bends down to press a feather kiss against his lips. She tastes like winter berries and frost.

A frost that melts on fire, as she takes a second kiss and he answers with a third.

He hasn’t kissed a woman in too many years to count, but finds it comes back to him with little trouble. She’s soft and willing and his lips part on a kiss that can’t be real, finding her tongue daring a tryst with his own. As that kiss deepens and lengthens and stays, Sansa sinks onto his lap. His hands clasp her near, by ringing around her slim waist.

You’re dreaming. You must be dreaming.

But from somewhere in the castle, Daenerys Targaryen cries out again, in a piercing way that breaks their kiss. If only for a moment, their lips hovering within inches, exchanging breath between them. Sansa remains close, her forehead now pressed against his.

“You say I’m a maid still. You say no man can take that from me. Neither my heart, nor my body,” she whispers, and he’s glad that she seems to believe it. But then she adds a few more words that send him reeling, “But you have one already, Sandor. And when this is over, I’ll give the other to you freely.”

“You shouldn’t, little bird,” he cautions her, but in a way that doesn’t hold up.

If anything, his grip on her tightens, as he notes she licks her lips on the growl of that pet name. Her fingertips are now exploring the burned side of his face, running along the scars and the ruined skin, in a careful, curious manner that says she’s wanted to do this for a long time.

As much as that touch thrills him, he knows his visage is monstrous, even in this low light. He’s no dandy prince, nor a fresh-faced lord. He’s nothing of what she wants, or deserves.

It kills him to say it, but he reminds her again, flatly, “You deserve a better man.”

“Maybe I do,” she agrees, as she’ll hide no hard truths from him. Not then, not later. Yet, she smiles in a way that crinkles the tiny lines beside her pretty eyes. And she swears, in a way that says she’ll never take it back. “But it's my choice to make and I choose you.”

Chapter Text

Missandei has followed Daenerys halfway around the world.

She respects her as a woman and a leader. She admires Daenerys’s stubborn, strong-willed nature and how she’s overcome tragedy and treachery and men who would see her in chains. The life she’s been forced to lead would have broken almost anyone else, but Daenerys survived, against all odds. And she triumphed, making her own way, all while allowing others the chance to make their own way too.

Missandei cherishes their friendship. She loves Daenerys, as if they were natural-born sisters.

But honestly? Sometimes, she’d like to throttle her.

If she knew the baby was coming, why did she not say something earlier? Why did she push herself to the point where she nearly collapsed at the meeting with Lord Tyrion and the Starks? If Ser Jorah hadn’t been there, she might have fallen to the cold, stone floor, risking injury at the precise moment she most needed to be strong and well.

But he was there. And he is here, with no intention of leaving her side until this is over.

Missandei knows most men wouldn’t have the stomach for a birthing chamber, nor the skill to be useful. But Ser Jorah grew up with women and Bear Island apparently raised its sons and daughters to have no secrets or shame about how babies come into the world.

He knows what needs to be done nearly as well as Missandei. And she’s grateful that he’s there, for she’s not at all confident in her own abilities, suppressing the strong urge to run from this room in a rush and find someone better to attend Daenerys.

But there’s no one better, because there’s no one else.

There’s no proper midwife on Dragonstone, none to be found for a hundred leagues or more. So the task falls to Missandei. She wouldn’t think to argue otherwise, or abandon her friend to do this alone. Or Ser Jorah for that matter, as the man’s temperate and cool nature is tested now, seeing Daenerys struggle in such pain. Pain that he’s powerless to take away.

He remains calm and steady for Daenerys, but the desperate glances he’s thrown in Missandei’s direction betray just how deep his fears truly run.

Ser Jorah’s terrified.

And Missandei’s little better. For she’s using knowledge gleaned years ago, when she was little more than a child, called to the crowded slave quarters of Master Kraznys’s palace, wide-eyed but willingly disposed to do whatever the other women bade her, fetching water and clean linens, as they all fussed and fretted over a young slave girl who had been their master’s favorite for too long.

“It’s a natural thing, but by the gods, I can tell you it doesn’t feel that way when you’re in the midst of it,” one of the older women had commented to Missandei. Her words held too much personal experience. Once, she’d been a favorite of the masters too, bearing half a dozen children in her time. Children who didn’t have names, who’d all been sold off to wealthy houses in Yunkai and Meereen long ago, never to be seen again.

As Missandei stood with her, tensely watching the midwives attend the laboring girl, the old woman gave her a bit of advice that would serve her well tonight, in a foreign castle, half a world and many years away. She impressed upon her, “The best you can do is tell her you’re there and that you’ll be there until it’s over. No woman wants to face this alone.”

Missandei doesn’t need memory to tell her this. She knows it to be true.

Her compassionate heart nearly breaks when Ser Jorah first carries Daenerys into this room, laying her down on the mattress with care. For Daenerys twists her fingers in the front of his tunic tightly as she feels him pull away, begging, delirious with pain, “Jorah, please don’t leave me.”

“I would never leave you, Daenerys,” he assures her, with a hitch in his voice that says he’d do anything to take away her pain.

Anything.

He cups Daenerys’s face in his palm, taking up one of her hands in the other and keeping it close. His somber expression is still so brave and steady, if deeply lined and mostly pretense. It’s a suitable mask, worn for the purpose of bringing calm to his suffering wife. But Missandei too easily sees the cracks and fissures in it as he casts another glance her way, momentarily seeking his own reassurance.

He’s much older than her and has seen more of the world. He’s a battle-tested soldier and a knight who has stood before the hordes of death. It frightens her more than anything else that he is looking to her. But Missandei is well-versed in drawing strength from scraps of hope. She meets Ser Jorah’s gaze with encouragement, with wide brown eyes that confirm they must be Daenerys’s strength.

It’s all they can do.

Jorah forces his voice not to waver, as he turns back to Daenerys. He squeezes her hand and repeats himself, “I won’t leave you. And neither will Missandei. We’re here. We’ll be right here until the moment she’s born.”

“But Rhaego…,” Daenerys’s features are cut up by misery, as she shifts her weight beneath pain that makes her wince and grab at her pregnant belly again. But it’s not only physical pain that brings a renewed flood of tears to her eyes.

She’s said her dead child’s name at least twice already, and she can barely say it again. The grief and fear that accompanies that lost name is so palpable, that Missandei suppresses a shiver.

But Ser Jorah’s voice is sure, as he stops the faithless words from escaping Daenerys’s lips, by placing his forefinger against them.

Missandei finds herself relying on the words he speaks, as much as Daenerys.

“Shhh, Khaleesi,” Jorah says, calming her, while gently stroking strands of her silver-blonde hair back from her sweaty brow. He soothes her into accepting this truth, reminding her that the past is the past, and they are far from its reach now, “Rhaego was stolen from you by a witch who forced you into a false bargain. But there’s no witch here, love. Only me, only Missandei.”

At Missandei’s name, Daenerys reaches for her tearfully, stretching out her other hand, the one not held by Jorah. And Missandei takes it up immediately, in both of her own, sinking onto the bed at her other side and giving her as much confidence and strength as she can impart in a simple touch.

She watches Daenerys struggle on her fears, drawing strength from the two people that she loves and trusts more than all others. Under Jorah’s continued caress, she even manages a plucky little smile through her tears.

Yet, that smile on Daenerys’s face is too short-lived. Missandei feels a crushing grip as another contraction seizes the other woman, building slowly but steadily. Daenerys gives a soft moan on the sheer force of it, her breath quickening as she sobs out a louder cry. The pains grow stronger each time, and Daenerys’s anguish increases. Jorah and Missandei don’t pull away. They let her ride through that pain, lending their presence as support, as they have little else.

They can’t take on this burden for her. But they can be here for her. And that’s what they’ll do.

That’s what they continue to do, as evening comes and goes, twilight settling over the snow-dusted castle and ice-kissed waves of the sea. Somewhere downstairs, Tyrion paces and sends up a prayer for his former queen. Ser Davos and Gendry find a dusty cyvasse board and start playing a game of kings. Jon Snow broods beside a fire. Sandor Clegane and Sansa Stark keep their own company, in their own way.

The moon rises and the night wears thin and crisp, spattered with cold stars, but still, the baby doesn’t come.

Missandei has begun to worry that the child is as stubborn as her mother and father both. From what Missandei can tell, the child’s turned the right way and she’s moved low in Daenerys’s womb. She’s just in no hurry to be born, taking her time and advancing slowly, which saps her mother’s energy. And Daenerys is already exhausted from hours of slogging through labor pains that sear her body like fire, without end, and with little relief.

On the latest one, Missandei frets, as she sees Daenerys fall back on the propped up cushions and pillows with too much weariness, with her eyes shut and her head lolling to the side, a bit too listlessly, as if she’s close to unconsciousness.

It’s taking too long and Daenerys’s cries have fallen away in strength, which is never a good sign. She must keep this up until the child’s born. There will be time to rest afterwards.

“We have to get her up,” Missandei warns Ser Jorah, keeping her voice level, even though her insides are going cold at the thought of what will happen if Daenerys is too tired to finish this.

She crawls towards her friend and quickly pats her cheek in quick succession, rousing her, “Daenerys? You have to stay awake.” Her gaze darts to Ser Jorah with insistence, commanding, “Bring her to side of the bed. Make her stand.”

Jorah doesn’t hesitate, even as Daenerys mumbles, breathlessly and between fits of tears, “I can’t—please, Jorah. Just make it stop.”

“Soon, Daenerys. Soon,” he promises, gathering her up from the bed and taking her to the edge, where he holds her up, even as she arches against him and cries out against the change of position. His powerful arm is slung beneath his wife’s breasts, and her hands grasp his forearm and his shirt, whatever she can hold onto, her fingers clutching at him like a vice grip.

She’s writhing and wholly uncomfortable, even under an ebbing pain. And when the next one comes right behind it, rising, building, cresting, Daenerys’s moans turn more guttural than they have been, and she seems to bear down more, even as her eyes remain closed, tears leaking like waterworks from beneath her damp eyelashes.

In the meantime, Missandei grabs a basin of water, a small knife and short string from the wooden trunk at the end of the bed.

Jorah continues to hold her upright, as Missandei is now kneeling on the floor, going between the other woman’s legs, peeking beneath Daenerys’s skirt to find something that makes her lips part and her mouth break into a relieved grin, for the first time in many hours.

Hours, days, weeks, months? Has she smiled once since Grey Worm died? A true smile, born of true relief?

The top of the baby’s head is finally visible, all wet and silver-haired. Missandei pushes Daenerys’s skirt up further on her knees, out of the way. Daenerys is at the crisis, and one pain follows the other with only a beat in between.

“On this next contraction, you have to push, Daenerys,” Missandei encourages her further, grabbing a clean, dry cloth from the side of the bed, tossing it over her shoulder. It will be needed soon. She reaches up to feel the muscles in Daenerys’s swollen belly begin to tighten and contract once more, so intent on expelling the child within. She urges her, “Push now. You have to push.”

Missandei doesn’t need to tell Daenerys what her body is already screaming. Neither does Jorah, but he adds softly, “Steady, Daenerys. You can do this.”

“Almost there,” Missandei’s voice is becoming lighter, losing the grimness of the hours prior. Her grin grows wider, her hands supporting the baby’s head as the crowning child slides a little further from its mother. Missandei gently coaxes the shoulders to follow, even as Daenerys is crying out on a pain that likely feels like it’s ripping her in half. Missandei remains calm and says, “So close now…push, Daenerys! You have to push!”

Daenerys’s last cry is one of terrible pain…but sudden, exhilarating relief too, her voice reaching the rafters of Dragonstone as the baby comes free, her little shoulders, waist, buttocks and legs all sliding out, to be caught in the waiting hands of Missandei.

She takes the wriggling, pink, sticky little thing into her hands, drying her with that cloth and clearing the child’s mouth just as the babe scrunches up her tiny features to give a cry that rivals her mother. So piercing, so loud, so alive.

The baby is crying. Daenerys is alive. It’s all over. The danger is past.

Missandei balances the wailing baby on her knees and cuts the cord with her knife, tying it off with fast fingers and that short length of string. And she hears Jorah’s voice, as he gathers up his wife, lifting her again—her tired arms sliding up around his neck, her tear-streaked face buried against his chest—his tone heavy with a husband and father’s raw emotion as he whispers at her temple, “It’s over, lass. It’s all over.”

As Jorah tends to the mother, Missandei tends to the child.

It’s a baby girl, just as Daenerys had said and she must be healthy, if she can cry like that. Missandei’s grin goes wider still, and a little laugh escapes her throat, as she looks down at the squalling infant, arms flailing, imposed upon and angry, as she’s been forced to leave her warm cocoon to join them in the chill of winter.

“Oh, you’ll be fine,” Missandei coos at the child, as she picks her up carefully and dips another clean cloth in the waiting basin, where she uses warm water to wash the child clean of the sticky, bloody mess that covers her from silver-fuzzed head all the way to her tiny, little toes.

“Is she all right?” Daenerys has recovered herself, breathing heavily but steadily, looking over from Jorah’s arms to ask Missandei the only question that must be howling through her head. Missandei looks up to find Daenerys’s tear-washed eyes begging for an answer, anxious as any new mother.

“She’s beautiful,” Missandei replies, without a moment’s hesitation. Her smile never dims as she assures her, “She’s the most beautiful thing…”

The babe doesn’t quit crying until she’s swaddled and passed into Daenerys’s arms. And even then, it takes a few minutes, as Daenerys shifts her in her grasp, balancing her scant weight, making sure that Jorah can see her too. Jorah is cradling them both, as Daenerys lies back against his broad chest.

Missandei feels tears prick at her own eyes as she watches the weathered knight’s eyes flood with feeling as he looks down on his wife and their baby daughter.

Daenerys doesn’t quit crying at all, or at least her tears don’t stop. But they’ve switched from tears of pain to tears of joy while Missandei wasn’t watching. Her cheeks have been damp for hours, and now they’re damp again, as she reaches down and brings the blanket hiding her child’s face down just a little, her eyes sparkling on everything.

Bliss, joy, hope, love.

Missandei’s heart is so full, she wonders if she might pour some of this feeling out and save it for later.

The weariness of the night will catch up with them all soon, but not quite yet. There are quiet murmurs and little touches, happy tears and many smiles, as Jorah, Daenerys and Missandei hover around that new baby, taking in the wondrous sight of her little features.

Winter winds continue to howl outside and the dark night encroaches, bleak as ever.

But a beacon of light persists, cast out of a high window at Dragonstone, in a room where life has now proved its resilience most fiercely.

Chapter Text

Little breaths and tiny eyelashes. A fuzz of silver hair and pink, rosebud lips. A little fist, the size of a walnut, curled in sleep, held near her soft, delicate cheek. Specks of fingernails, so tiny.

He’s never seen anything so tiny.

He’s been all over the world…but he’s never seen anything like her.

His daughter. His firstborn child.

How something so small and perfect and beautiful could exist is beyond Jorah. But nearly everything is beyond him now. He has no concept of time or place, of history or regrets, or really anything outside of this room.

The baby sleeps, swaddled and lying in the middle of the bed between them, a little bundle, a tiny newborn. A new person, little more than an hour old.

Daenerys is curled on one side of the baby and Jorah is on the other, facing each other, their attention on the child sleeping snug between them—enraptured, enthralled, marveling over a miracle that no words can capture. Not with any justice.

Jorah still remembers wandering through that Eastern market of Vaes Dothrak, with Daenerys beside him, and how he chuckled over the unlikely idea of dragons, off-handedly chiding her girlish fantasies. He’d laughed so heedlessly, as if such a thing were impossible.

That day, he had little left to believe in. He was a ruined man, an exile—far from home and beyond redemption.

Or so he thought.

Later, as he walked through smoke and ash on a desert dawn, under a blush sky scorched by the raging and greedy flames of the night, and discovered Daenerys alive, with cinders in her hair and dragons cradled at her breast, he was thoroughly chastened.

Blood of my blood…

Now he’s chastened again. Having thought he’d witnessed the greatest miracle of ten generations, he’s suddenly confronted by another. One that has caused even the birth of dragons to pale in comparison.

Another dawn, another birth. The birth of their daughter.

They were two, Jorah and Daenerys. Now they are three. Lounging in quietness and euphoric calm, a silver dawn after a stormy night.

Missandei left them a little while ago, after she’d helped Daenerys change into a clean chemise and a soft, fur-trimmed dressing gown. She gathered up the soiled sheets and linens, removing the basins of now lukewarm water and all those blood and sweat-stained rags.

Jorah watched Missandei grin at the baby’s first squalling screams, relieved by the sound of such a healthy pair of lungs breaking the tense night. His own relief followed, as Missandei soon handed the crying child into Daenerys’s awaiting arms. Missandei’s irrepressible grin was doused in encouragement and love, knowing firsthand how Daenerys had foolishly worried and fretted for months that she’d not know what to do once the baby was in her arms.

But Daenerys was a natural mother, always had been.

She needn’t have worried. Jorah and Missandei both told her this a thousand times. And they were pleased and unsurprised to be proven right. The baby calmed at Daenerys’s gentle touch and soon nursed with little trouble, her first cries falling away to nothingness.

Before Missandei leaves them, to claim her own, well-deserved rest elsewhere, Jorah stops her. He needs her to know…

He finds that he has no idea how to thank her. Words have become such clumsy things and he hasn’t slept in a day and a half. So he’s not sure how to say that he’ll never forget this, that he can’t repay her, as the debt is too great.

Missandei merely smiles up at him, shifting the basin to one arm, freeing one hand to reach up and pat his bearded cheek fondly.

Her intelligent eyes say much. Her mouth says only, “I know,” but it’s enough. He takes that hand and squeezes it with affection before releasing her. With that sweet smile still lingering on her lips, Missandei pulls the heavy oak door closed behind her, giving them their privacy.

Now, the child sleeps soundly, as the night had been long for the little one too.

“You should get some sleep, Daenerys,” Jorah muses to his wife, reaching across the slumbering babe to run his fingers down the length of her nearest strand of silver hair. The color is so like the hair covering the baby’s soft scalp that they’re nearly indistinguishable.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

Daenerys’s head is resting on lacy pillows but her eyes are open. Her expression glows with pure contentment, even though he knows she must be exhausted and sore from the whole ordeal. But Jorah knows it’s difficult for her to take her eyes from the sleeping babe. He’s faced with the same problem, too fixated by the child’s perfect little features.

“I will,” she promises him. “Soon.”

The morning sun rises behind wisps of clouds and a soft flurry of winter-white. It snows, even in sunshine. Natural light fills the chamber, in indigo hues and then paler blues and violet-grey. The candles that saw them through the night are no longer needed and they let them burn out, oblivious to anything but the child nestled between them.

Daenerys’s hand lingers on the baby’s chest, feather-light, fingers stroking the soft, new skin beneath warm blankets. And she keeps smiling to herself, sweetly, maternally, as if recognizing again and again that her child is here.

She’s alive. She’s well.

Jorah’s heart leaps on Daenerys’s glorious smile. All the pain of the prior night blunts on the gentle curve of that gorgeous smile. He finds himself in stunned awe, knowing that he had a hand in conjuring that smile on her lips.

Knowing that he had a hand in creating the little miracle that lies there, so quiet now after those first few minutes of red-faced squalling.

His own hand reaches out to brush Daenerys’s wrist lovingly and then softly trace the line of their daughter’s fisted fingers, five little fingers clenched in sleep, belonging to a tiny hand no larger than his thumb.

He can feel her tiny breaths puff against his fingers. It stirs a feeling in his chest that he’s never felt before.

Love.

No, it’s more than that.

He knows true love. He shares it with this child’s mother. But what he feels now, in this moment, staring down at a baby that is so dependent upon them to survive, so small, so helpless…

You are a father. You are this little girl’s father…

He’ll never let anything happen to her. He promises, he prays. He’ll swear a thousand blood oaths before whatever gods demand it.

The wave of protectiveness that overcomes him is strong and lasting, filling him up and giving strength to his limbs and his heavy eyelids, banishing away the weariness of a night spent in tense worry. Daenerys must be feeling the same, as she’s watching his face now. The look she gives him is filled with a deep understanding that goes even beyond their usual shared secrets.

“You should sleep too,” she chides him.

“Soon,” he repeats her own promise.

He sighs on just the slightest regret, even if hard to manage in his current blissful state, “She gave you such trouble, Khaleesi…”

Before he can continue, Daenerys props herself up on her elbow, to lean across their sleepy child and press a soft kiss against his willing lips, assuring him, as she pulls back, “I’d do it again, Ser.”

She smirks on a drowsy tease, as she lowers her head back to that pillow, closing her eyes briefly on restful comfort and content. She adds, “Although maybe not right away.”

His hand follows her, to linger at her cheek. He murmurs, “You did wonderful, Daenerys,” which just deepens her smile more, dimpling the cheek beneath his hand. She says no more for a long while and looks so peaceful that he considers she might have finally fallen off to sleep.

He’s glad. Both his girls could use the rest.

Both of my girls. His heart might burst on the idea.

But Daenerys isn’t sleeping. Not yet. She keeps her eyes closed under his gentle caresses, but reminds him of a task that is yet unfulfilled, “She still needs a name…”

A name? They hadn’t thought on it, hadn’t dared speak of names before her birth.

“Do you have one in mind?” he wonders, completely inclined to whatever Daenerys desires. If he had any worldly goods, any lands or titles of note, he’d give them all to his wife then and there. She has his devotion and his love forever. He’d give his life to secure her happiness. But it still doesn’t seem enough.

She deserves everything. And then some.

Daenerys’s eyes flicker open again and she regards him with more tenderness than he’s ever seen. And she’s not one to hide her affections. He feels exposed under her gaze, as if she’s peering into his very soul, as if she knows every thought that’s echoing through his head. For she must, as they match her own thoughts too closely.

Love—love, how you have blessed me.

She nods her head slowly against her pillow, holding his gaze for a long moment, grinning with expectation. She tells him, in a solemn voice, “I want to name her Jeorgianna. After your father.”

If he was speechless before, he’s not sure what to call himself now.

His father’s name is an open wound in his heart. Daenerys knows this. She knows too that his daughter’s name might be the only balm to heal it. They’ve spoken of his father often in these long winter months, quietly and whispered in the night, as she gently pulls his deepest regrets from him—to share them, to keep them with her so she might banish them away whenever she has the chance.

Like now, too generous, too…

His mouth opens but he fails to find the words. She must see how her choice affects him and she seems pleased by it. More than pleased. She reaches up to drag his hand down from the side of her face, claiming it for her own and pressing a kiss against his knuckles before tucking it at her breasts, with a contented sigh.

As her eyes go weepy again, she laughs a little at herself. She asks him, “How do I have any tears left?”

“They suit you,” He uses his thumb to wipe saltwater away, feeling his own eyes fill at the sight of the tears in her own. But happy tears all. And ones that they soon turn back on their sleeping child.

“Hello, Jeorgianna…,” Jorah whispers to the infant, trying the name out. It fits her so well that the air itself seems to shimmer on those musical syllables, spoken in Jorah’s rasped timbre. His hand breaks its tryst with Daenerys’s as they return to the babe, naturally, both gently fussing over her, taking turns with their little touches.

“Jeorgianna, we love you,” Daenerys adds. Her eyes are closed again and she’s murmuring through quiet marvels, a bit dreamily, another satisfied smile hovering over her lips as she tells him, “She has your eyes, did you notice? That same shade of blue…”

“Mhmm,” Jorah nods, his answer given as a deep rumble in his chest, smooth and slow, one that he hopes encourages Daenerys to finally fall asleep. She says no more, her breathing pattern evening out in a way that grants him peace.

He did notice Jeorgianna’s eyes, almost surprised by it, as he expected the child’s Targaryen blood to overwhelm his own. He expects that color to fade into violet as she grows older, but it won’t. The blue color will stay, steadfast.

When their son is born, Jorah will find himself even more astonished, as the boy will take after him as much as Jeorgianna takes after Daenerys. And he’ll see blue eyes blink back at him once more. For all of their children will have his eyes.

Daenerys practically insists on it.

But he’ll be forced to accept this as truth. And will. For he’ll have far more practice in accepting truth that he doesn’t believe is real. Truth his eyes and ears cannot deny.

Truth he feels, as his thumb brushes by the baby’s hand once more, to find her fingers uncurl just a little, before curling again against his rough, calloused skin, finding a hold and keeping it. Wrapping those tiny fingers as far around as she can—which isn’t all that far, he must admit.

So, so tiny…

But in the span of just over an hour, Jeorgianna has already wrapped herself around his heart a thousand times, with knots and ties that he’ll never undo.

Chapter Text

After a long night, Daenerys Targaryen has given birth to a baby girl. A princess.

A princess who none of the sojourners from Winterfell knew was coming. A princess who was not promised, not by any vision or verse or prophecy—Melisandre can attest to this as she’s well-acquainted with all—but one who promises life is not done with them yet…just by the simple act of being born.

The newborn’s cry precedes the dawn by an hour only.

The news travels through the castle very quickly, as they all heard the child’s first cries, awakening those lucky few who had managed to fall asleep and lifting the heavy spirits of those who had kept a tense vigil throughout the night, pacing and stewing, not for a sworn queen or a feared conqueror, but for a young woman in the throes of childbirth. A woman who they all know lost a child across the sea.

But she doesn’t lose this one. Jeorgianna Mormont lives and breathes, and now sleeps soundly in a bundle, cradled snugly between her mother and her father. Daenerys sleeps too, finally, with Jorah keeping a careful, hushed watch over them both.

Missandei confirms the happy tidings to Ser Davos. She meets the Onion Knight in the dawn-lit corridors of Dragonstone just before she retires to her own chambers, to shut her door behind her and collapse onto a soft mattress in exhaustion, gratitude and sweet relief.

She’ll sleep straight through to late afternoon and wake up with a small smile still hovering over her lips. It’s a pleasant thing, she’ll think, to have something to smile about again.

Ser Davos soon passes the news along to the others, his craggy features going a little softer with each person he tells, as if the words are made of beams of sunshine and the mere act of saying them aloud brings light to dark places.

“The child lives and so does her mother…”

Jeorgianna’s birth will be a moment that will be imprinted on many hearts, and repeated in many songs and stories, as it represents a change on the wind, a rare misstep of the cruel and everlasting winter.

A cold dawn still whispers at the eastern horizon, chewing on ice. Snow continues to swirl on chilly waters, winter-tossed and full of menace. But the icy grip wrapped so tightly around their throats seems to loosen just a bit, as if Winter too is surprised by the babe’s appearance and stops to gawk.

Melisandre feels the change deep in her feeble bones.

The newborn’s cries stir something in her breast, a thing forgotten and left behind, years and years ago, somewhere far across the sea. Lost to her in the East, after she traded out her soul, her heart and her conscience for the power to see visions in the flames.

Innocence. Purity. Hope.

Melisandre turned her back on such things when this child’s great-grandmother was still bawling away in her cradle. Only recently has she begun to regret it…

She’s pondering on these regrets, and an entire bushel of others, in a high-backed chair beside the smoldering fire in the Hall of the Painted Table, when Ser Davos comes in and passes the news on to those he finds there.

His eyes find Melisandre’s first, but this is a mistake—as he’ll not direct another word to her in this lifetime, she’s quite certain—but he recovers quickly, moving on and addressing Jon Snow and Lord Tyrion, the only other two who remain in the room with her.

“She’s had the child,” Davos confirms, with a satisfied nod, divulging what he knows. He may not have known of that baby’s existence until yesterday, but he’s come around to the news in true form. He muses, with something like affection already, “A little girl…”

Tyrion’s features lighten considerably at the confirmation, as the dwarf obviously cares for Daenerys, despite all the ill feelings and bitter words that have passed between them in these recent months. Jon Snow is less moved, or at least, he doesn’t show it outwardly. A brief, terse lift of his chin, a short nod and then back to staring at flame and cinder, moody as ever.

Melisandre could warn him off staring into the fire, telling him that it will only bring him to ruin, but she’s sparse with her words these days. She has a limited number left, so she’s decided to wield them wisely.

“Don’t look so glum, Jon Snow,” the Onion Knight says. He brings his fingerless hand down to rest upon the younger man’s shoulder blades, thinking the boy’s thoughts remain dark for the sake of what lingers across Blackwater Bay, the creature that sits on an icy throne in King’s Landing.

As should they all. A baby’s birth doesn’t depose the King of Death.

But Melisandre knows Davos Seaworth well, and she can guess the smuggler’s cheery thoughts without much effort. He’s predictable in this way. For all his hard truths, he’s an eternal optimist and doesn’t think there’s any harm in pretending the greater threat away for a few hours. Not with such glad tidings such as these.

Indeed, he says it plainly to Jon, without shame or reticence, “There’s a princess at Dragonstone again. This is a good omen, to be sure.”

Maybe he’s right. Melisandre must demur to Davos now, in any case. She wouldn’t think to argue otherwise, as they are long past the days when they both stood in this room, one to the left and one to the right, fighting over Stannis’s soul. She won that battle, only to lead that man to his own destruction.

And his daughter…

She cringes inwardly, at the mere mention of a princess in these halls. He must know how the words fall on her ears. But this time, Ser Davos neglects to look her way before he takes his leave of them, unwilling to be reminded of anything other than the fact that a little girl was born tonight.

A little girl who, Gods be good, will not die screaming on a pyre.

Melisandre can’t undo what she did. And Ser Davos can’t forget it. She doesn’t begrudge him his hatred. Even if her current state stirs pity in some, she knows she’ll never receive it from him.

She’d paid little attention to Davos when they were here years ago, as he was a gnat to be flicked away, a thorn to be pulled from her palm. But she watches him closely now, even when he refuses to acknowledge her. As he leaves the room, she notices that there’s a spring in his step that’s been absent since the night the dead came to Winterfell.

Even Tyrion appears to be looking on the bright side, as he mentions, “Well, this is the first time we’ve added to our numbers in a while so…” he shrugs without finishing the thought before he too, leaves them, to find an empty bed and a downy pillow.

But Jon lingers by a lonesome hearth, even after the other men have gone.

Melisandre can’t move without effort and she’ll not ask any of the others to help her. Gendry might have assisted if he were here—the blacksmith’s nothing if not amiable. Ser Davos could learn a few lessons in forgiveness from him. But he’d wandered off to get some rest hours ago.

So she remains perched in her chair by the fire. She’ll sleep there, with whatever scraps of shuteye she can manage. Old age prohibits any deep sleep, and all those past sins interrupt her rest as soon as she finds herself drifting off.

She has only one nightmare, repeated over and over again. Serenaded by Shireen’s screams.

Mother! Father! Please help me!

She is haunted by what she did to that little girl. It’s a bone-chilling truth that she’s not brave enough to face most nights. And with all this talk of a princess on Dragonstone, there’s no escaping it this time. Melisandre keeps her eyes open, and distracts herself by observing Jon Snow.

He’s an odd one, she’s always known that. Her fire god was convinced that he had a role to play in the wars that have come and gone. The boy who died at Castle Black. The boy she brought back to life for reasons yet to be known.

Oh, but she can guess. She wonders if he guesses the reason too? Perhaps that accounts for his moodiness.

Of course, it might be something else. Something that has nothing to do with fate or prophecy or anything so dramatic. Something that has to do with an old wish, so close he can almost taste its sweet nectar, so far away that he’ll never be granted a drink.

“It must be strange for you,” she suddenly rasps to Jon, breaking the silence.

He takes a moment to respond, perhaps having forgotten she was there at all. Melisandre has found that she easily fades into the background these days. Having spent so much time as a red siren, a flame for moths, she can’t say that she dislikes her new role. She knows her time draws to a close and she’s content to spend it in penance and quiet breathing.

But she was so fiery for so long. Her spark remains, somewhere deep within her sagging breast and wrinkled skin. And she hasn’t forgotten those things her lord revealed to her before he left her for good.

Rumors, secrets…

“How’s that?” Jon’s voice is rigid. He hasn’t quite forgiven her for how she tried to seduce him at Castle Black. She knows this. But he shouldn’t take it so personally. He was one of many.

And besides, they’re forevermore tangled up each other’s destinies. Doesn’t he see this?

She was the one who brought him back to the land of the living. She’ll be there to see him returned to the land of the dead.

Their time grows short. There’s no way around it.

“You always felt deprived of a family. A bastard boy, all alone,” she mentions, not trying to be cruel or clever, just stating facts. Still, her words must pierce him, for he flinches. She continues, “And now a child is born who is equal parts fire and ice. Just like you. Your own cousin. And yet, she’ll have what was denied to you. She’ll grow up with her own name and the love of her mother and father. She’ll know who she is from the very beginning.”

Jon doesn’t seem surprised that she knows. Perhaps he’s even a little relieved. She expects he’s not the kind to hold secrets well.

“What’s it matter?” he snipes after a minute’s silence. But there’s little fight in him. His fighting spirit’s been doused since the Night King marched on from Winterfell. He mutters, “We’re all going to be dead soon anyway. Including that little girl.”

If there’s regret in the bitterness, it’s buried deep. Melisandre’s cloudy eyes narrow a little.

He’s a dark one, isn’t he?

“That’s uncertain,” she replies, somehow calming the quaver in her voice enough to sound, for a single moment, like the confident fire priestess who once held Stannis’s ear in all things. She tells him, “Nothing’s so final, Jon Snow. A man who was once dead should know that better than the rest of us.”

“What good did it do?” he asks her, plainly, turning from the fire in a rush. His dark eyes seek out her soul. Or would, if she had one. He demands of her, “Why did you bring me back?”

“Because Ser Davos ordered me to do it,” Melisandre is honest with him. She shrugs, “Because I saw you in the flames, standing before the King of Night with the sword of House Mormont covered in ice and blood…”

“Aye, I stood before him,” Jon states, so much bitterness lacing his tone. “And I didn’t stop him. So what does your god want with me now?”

“He’s no longer—”

“Yes, I know. The Lord of Light is not your lord any longer. But, of all of us, you’re the only one who’s ever talked to a god, my lady. So you know why the Night King summons me. You know why I’m still alive when so many of the others are dead. You must know.”

Melisandre is careful, as she’s made a vow not to cause further pain, if she can help it. Yet, she realizes that he’s being a tad facetious with her, which is unusual. Has he had a vision?

No, not Jon Snow.

There’s so much Stark in this boy, it’s a wonder that he’s not Ned Stark’s son—Rhaegar Targaryen’s blood is watered down, utterly drowned out. But he was a lesser dragon so it’s no wonder. And perhaps it was the gods’ mercy that Jon would resemble his mother and her family, for the sake of an innocent child, and all that came after.

Mercy. Melisandre hardly understands the word. She has little time left to learn its mysteries.

But she knows much about sacrifice…

Only death pays for life, Jon Snow. She was compelled to tell him that at Winterfell, by a force greater than herself. She might repeat it now, but there’s no need, as the old line is currently rushing through both their heads.

Only a god of death can give his life for the living. And the Night King isn’t the only god of death who traverses Westeros these days.

“When you first joined the Watch, you expected to be a ranger. Jeor Mormont named you his steward instead,” Melisandre reminds him. “When you went above the Wall, you were meant to destroy the wildlings. But you grew to understand them. You even loved one of them, didn’t you? Stannis offered you the name of Stark, something you’d always wanted, but you kept Snow. When your people named you a king, you bent the knee to someone else. You expected to die a hero at Winterfell, but you lived, a failure…”

“Is there a point to this?” Jon’s scowl darkens.

“We can’t escape our fate,” she says it flatly. “And yours appears intent on forcing you away from anything else.”

“I should have stayed in that cave…,” he grumbles to the fire, so low she knows his words aren’t for her, his eyes shutting fast, weary of it all. Melisandre wonders if his wildling girl can hear him, wherever she is.

“She would have died anyway, one way or another,” Melisandre tries her best at empathy but it falls flat. “Her scarlet hair was never meant to be kissed by snow.”

“The Old Crone’s not one for comfort…or beauty, is she?” Jon now grumbles at her, digging at her vanity, as she’s wounded him and he’ll wound her back if he can.

She takes no offense. In his shoes, she’d probably act the same. His life has been a cursed one from start to finish. And the curses aren't over yet.

She tells him what he already knows, “The Crone holds her lantern to the Stranger’s face and marks death upon it…” She shakes her head, “There’s no saving either of us, Jon Snow.”

Chapter Text

Two months later…

Samwell Tarly is dead.

Or…

Well, maybe he’s dead. There’s a strong possibility that he’s dead. Although, to be honest, he’s been a bit uncertain about that lately.

Do the dead think? Do the dead consider whether or not they’re dead?

Sam considers. He wonders.

At least, he thinks he does. And certainly more often now than before. It comes and goes, like a candle suddenly lit and then blown out again. He’s been considering these questions for at least thirty seconds in a row and the candle has yet to go out.

He’d like to consult a book on it but he doesn’t know where the books are kept in King’s Landing or if they survived the icing over. Besides, he’s not quite sure that he knows how to read anymore. And even if he could, he finds that his eyes don’t follow what he wants to see, his hands don’t pick up what he wants to feel and his feet don’t go where he wants to walk.

His mind wanders, but snaps back with little resistance.

Qyburn is telling him to fetch something from the opposite side of the laboratory and he’s doing it, without question. He does everything without question.

No, that’s not true. He has some questions.

Where’s Gilly? Where’s Little Sam? What is this place? Why can’t I control the movement of my own hands?

Those questions seem to scream out from somewhere far away. He can hear his own voice but the sound is so distant, tinny and lost in a fog. It’s as if he’s only half himself, a shadow where his soul should be, and sometimes, he imagines facing the other Sam from one side of a vast, snowy field. Or perhaps it’s a lake covered in black ice, just waiting for him to try to cross before pulling him down and drowning him with pleasure. There’s something sinister about it, in either case.

And, either way, everything between them is all smoke and mirrors and howling winds and one Sam turning his ear, while the other cups his hands over his mouth to holler out, “Wait. What did you say, Sam?”

He can’t voice these thoughts. He can barely form them, much less express them. He hasn’t spoken a single word since Winterfell. None of them have. His mouth doesn’t work. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t bleed, he doesn’t die, having died once already.

If I’ve died, how do I still live?

“Yes, I’ll take that now. Thank you and bring that lantern over here, would you? I need more light,” Qyburn’s talking to Sam, mumbling away while he works. Or maybe he’s just talking to himself? The Night King’s Hand is much chattier than he used to be, although Sam wouldn’t know it, having never met the disgraced maester before in his life.

And yet, Qyburn must have picked him out as a student of the Citadel, or someone who knew his way around a maester’s chambers, for Sam has found himself frequenting Qyburn’s laboratory more than any of the others. He’s told to fetch this and fetch that. He’s told to hold a lamp higher and a scalpel at the ready. While Qyburn works, he stands to one side, eyes hollow and mouth slightly agape. Observing, without any comprehension of what he’s observing.

At least…this is the case most of the time.

But sometimes, Sam’s eyes start to clear a little, brown spots showing in the blue, and his mind starts to spin a little and Qyburn’s words, mumbled as they are, make their way into his head and stick there.

Qyburn continues, as he mixes beakers of bubbling concoctions, reading the pages in the old book beside him like a recipe. He narrows his eyes at the fraying page, pressing two fingers to the underside of his eyelids as he peers closer, attempting to shift the light so he can read old words written out in fading black ink.

He talks out loud as he works, “This is a complicated procedure, I’ll have you know. If they think it’s an easy thing, I’d like to see them try. Making wildfire is child’s play compared to making this nonsense. And I’m no pyromancer. Although, I suppose this would be…glacimancy? But I don’t remember any famous glacimancers in the history books, do you?”

In another time and another place, Sam might appreciate Qyburn’s running commentary as he works. Or the opportunity to study under a brilliant—and it must be acknowledged that he is brilliant—if deranged, man who is neither chained by the laws of morality nor even the laws of the living.

“I do wonder about…,” Qyburn mentions, wiping the pads of his fingers off on his apron, grimacing at the grey-blue stickiness that clings to his first finger, before washing it off quickly in a basin of water, lest he be burned by a fast-spreading frostbite.

He looks up and around, finding Sam hovering in his usual corner. He points to a nearby metal tray of instruments and beckons him to bring it closer with a flick. With a breathy grunt, Sam picks it up and brings it to his master immediately.

Qyburn picks over the instruments and items on that tray with interest, taking a pair of tongs from his work table to pick up a silver amulet with a ruby center—one of many crown jewels commandeered from the Lannisters who once lived here—by its long, slim chain. He gives his undead assistant an “Ah, thank you,” with an encouraging smile, as he takes it and slowly—very, very slowly—begins to lower it into one of his bubbling cauldrons.

He doesn’t want to spill whatever will coat the face of that amulet, nor lose the necklace’s chain in the boiling mixture. It boils but there’s no heat. Sam is standing close enough that he would feel the steam on his face, but there’s no steam. No warmth. There’s just ice, forming on the lip of that cauldron and making frost patterns on the bowed sides of the iron pot.

Qyburn lays the chain over the side with care, before exhaling and stepping back, as he waits for the amulet to steep. Sam grunts again, on the sound of a “g” which gets caught in his throat before it reaches his mouth.

“G” for Gilly. “S” for Sam. You see? Shireen taught me.

At Sam’s low though muted grunt, Qyburn casts a brief glance at his assistant, regarding him curiously, peering at the grey pallor of Sam’s skin, poking at the holes of the clothes he died in. He murmurs, almost as if he’s talking to himself and not to Sam, “Are you still in there?”

It’s a strange question. For Sam is gone for good. Isn’t he?

But it’s a valid question too, given recent events in King’s Landing. And the fact that Sam hears the question and almost knows what it means…

Until he doesn’t.

He knew Gilly’s name a few moments ago, and now he’s grasping at the edges of it, bumbling as he tries to keep hold of the sound of her voice and the fuzzy, half-image of her sweet face, her eyes diligently running over lines of an embossed book in Oldtown, her mouth tracing the odd words she reads with her lips, before she lifts her head and says, “Did you hear me, Sam?”

No, he didn’t hear her. She slips from him again, obscured in a blizzard of snow.

“I wonder sometimes…,” Qyburn muses, conversationally. He does this often, as he has no one to talk to and the silence must eat away at him. He must be lonely. Or perhaps he’s just grown close to the dead, as he’s surrounded by them and might as well be one himself. He concedes, “And that little she-bear is certainly giving our master much trouble.”

For some time now, Lyanna Mormont—or the creature who once was Lyanna Mormont—has been locked in a cage in the Throne Room. The metallic sound of her hands rattling the bars echoes up and down the frosty Red Keep, reaching the bowels of the castle, even down here in Qyburn’s laboratory. She never gives up, day or night. Not ever.

The change happened so quickly. As docile as the rest from Winterfell to King’s Landing, but then, one night, about two months ago, she suddenly broke ranks and charged the Night King on his icy throne, intent on scratchy his eyes out.

“Our king wonders if she’s waking up and he wants me to find out. He wants to know why. But how am I supposed to know? He uses ancient magic that no one has seen in a thousand years and I’m meant to decipher its mysteries? And its failings?” Qyburn is speaking rhetorically, but there’s a deceit of rabid interest in his words as well.

There’s a satisfied grin playing at the man’s lips and twinkling up his eyes, which betrays that despite his complaints—the challenge, at least, intrigues him.

“Perhaps after we’re done with this project, you and I will do some further study on this, hmm? Together, yes?” Qyburn’s eyes continue to sparkle on the notion, looking at Sam like he’s potentially…fascinating.

Do the dead feel dread as the prospect of being an experiment? Or being cut open and pulled apart piece by piece on Qyburn’s worktable?

Luckily, Sam feels no dread this time. He’s back to feeling nothing at all, his eyes as ice-blue as ever. The struggle within is over for now and his stare has gone vacant once more.

Sam remembers Gilly again a little later. He can’t believe he forgot. And how long has it been since…?

He’s outside now, although he has no idea how he got here. He’s wearing the same clothes as always, the ones he died in at Winterfell.

Did you die? No, stop wasting time on that question, Sam.

He should be freezing, but he doesn’t feel any cold. The wind whips at his clean-shaven cheeks and bearded chin, still with bits of blood matted there, even all these months later. Locks of his chestnut-brown hair blow across his forehead in frosty winds coming off the sea, falling into his eyes and obscuring his vision, but he doesn’t brush them away.

Sight is relative and he sees through eyes that are turned for him. The Night King calls them here to play witness, but the dead play a strange and silent audience, as ever.

Sam’s with the others. A great host of them, all standing, grave and huddled together, on the beaches and iced harbor of Blackwater Bay. What are they doing here? Sam’s forgot that too.

No, he hasn’t forgotten. No one told him in the first place. But oh!

The ice-blue in his eyes dim just a little, a murkier color under moody winter skies. He sees the amulet that had been in Qyburn’s laboratory. He sees Qyburn himself, kneeling on the snow before the Night King, with the charmed jewelry offered up, its chain and periapt laid out on a red, velvet pillow.

The Night King slips one fingernail beneath the chain and pulls the amulet free, leaving behind an outline of frost that clings to the pillow’s fabric. Qyburn nods his head subserviently and moves away, joining the first line of the dead, squeezing between them, while pulling his robes tighter around him, too susceptible to the cold.

The maester shivers as the dead remain still as ice statues.

Before them, Blackwater Bay tosses and turns in restless temper. The waters are icy cold and frothy under winter winds that refuse to settle. Frost rings the bay in ethereal white and the harbor has been frozen over for many months, but the deeper waters beyond remain stormy, black and open, a deep chasm between the mainland and the far-off islands that gate the Narrow Sea.

The Night King’s gaze is drawn out across the water, fixed in a northeasterly direction.

Sam doesn’t know much but he expects their king wishes to cross those waters. This seems to be folly, as it’s a known fact that the dead can’t swim.

Sam has no idea how he knows this. At present, he’s just holding fast to what he does know which is…nothing. Nothing but those same old questions, spoken with insistence by the other Sam that lives in his head, calling across the lake until his voice turns hoarse.

Where’s Gilly? Where’s Little Sam? Are they safe? Did they make it out alive? Can you hear me?

The Night King and two of his White Walkers approach the water on slow, unhurried steps.

They have nothing but time in King’s Landing. Winter isn’t going anywhere. All of Euron Greyjoy’s ships are stuck in the harbor, keels, decks and masts coated in ice that’s a foot thick. The battlements grow icicles that reach from the ramparts to the base of the wall. Nothing melts, even under sunlight, too pale, too distant.

The Walkers have six of the undead Unsullied with them. The one leading his brothers was once one of Daenerys’s commanders—Sam can’t presently remember his name but he’s straight and tall, wearing a bronze helmet that covers the unhealed wounds on his face, and carrying a spear tipped in frost.

Sam knows this. But then he doesn’t.

Knowledge flickers in and out of his head so easily, like the flicker of snow across his eyelashes out here in the elements. He doesn’t blink. He just stands, watching, unfreezing, undead. One of many beside him.

Sight and hearing are strange for the dead. They’re far from the Red Keep. And yet, still, a rattle of chains and iron bars echoes across the icy city and that young girl’s voice rises on the crisp and crystal wind.

“Let me out of here, you gods-damn fuckers!”

Lyanna Mormont is in fine form this morning, nothing but brown-eyed in her iron cage, speaking words and growling orders, as if she were alive again. It won’t last, it never does. Even a stubborn little she-bear can’t break the curse of death, even as she fights against it, her will as undying and undead as her body.

It’s all very odd and stirs another something in Sam that he thinks he must have forgotten.

But then he forgets it again, before the thought is even formed.

Perhaps whatever it is might be the reason that they’re all out here. For the Night King seems to be on a mission. He’s grim and silent at all times, but he seems more determined than usual this morning. His gaze is still fixed on a point far beyond the open water. He’s gathered his army to watch some new sacrilege, Sam expects. So there must be a reason.

The dead can’t swim.

The Night King nods at his captain. A Walker with long white hair and a hollow, deeply lined face takes the amulet from his king, with the air of a mage. Like the whole city, the necklace is coated in a sort of ice, but it’s not a natural ice—it’s a blue color, but burnt and charred, smoking even. The silver chain blinks, catching the paleness of the winter sun, which has begun to creep out of clouds hovering over the eastern horizon.

The White Walker wades out into shallow water, the shore ice breaking under his boots.

The sea wind whispers at the Walker’s hair. And Sam has gone back to knowing nothing.

Much like a friend he once had?

Oh yes, he remembers something. This is all because Jon Snow has delayed his coming and their king grows weary of waiting for him.

But maybe Jon is dead too? Sam hopes not. He hopes some of them made it out alive.

With that amulet firm in hand, the Walker bends down and lays his palm flat on the surface of the sea, letting the smoky-blue film skim the water in a half-moon shape. It sizzles when it hits open water, before it starts to crack.

Ice springs to life beneath his long fingers and that magic-stained jewelry, spreading out in veins, like frost crawling up a window pane, like iced-ivy, growing wildly, filling in the spaces between with solid white soon after. The Walker trudges out of the water just as the ice forms behind his footsteps, capturing the shape of one of his watery boot-prints in its zeal to solidify.

The ice is wild. It’s unnatural, untamed and it’s fast.

It spreads over the sea in a rush. And grows outward, mirroring the half-moon shape drawn by the White Walker, a plague upon the waters, headed north, south and east. The ice forms with a fierce cracking, gaining speed as it spreads out into Blackwater Bay, faster and further, black waters turning ghostly white within minutes.

The sounds of the sea go quiet and the sea wind dies away, locked under a sheet of ice.

The ice is strong and willing to bear weight, spreading and growing until there’s no open water to be seen, rushing beyond view, wild-ice headed straight towards the Island of Dragonstone.

Chapter Text

In the southward-facing tower chambers of Dragonstone, the view of the sea is unparalleled, as the castle is perched on high, sheer cliffs, its walls adorned with massive, glass windows that catch sunlight in clear weather, blinking out at merchant ships exiting Blackwater Bay for the wilds of the Narrow Sea.

The night that Daenerys was born, the ships at anchor in Dragonstone’s harbor were split into kindling by bolts of lightning and ferocious waves that threatened to spill against the battlements in their rage. That night, a few of Rhaella’s servants watched the fleet destroyed from these very windows, catching only glimpses beneath a bloodied twilight that was as dark and ill-tempered as the sea.

They spoke of omens and curses. And storms sent by the gods. They shook their heads and muttered on the unlucky hour, and the new Targaryen princess born within it, thinking she and her brother wouldn’t last the year. Or even the month. It was all dark news from King’s Landing, with Rhaenys and Aegon Targaryen’s funeral dirges sung out of these halls in sorrow. If the whisperings of war were to be believed, Stannis was on his way. And Aerys’s children would meet the same fate as their oldest brother and his children.

But Daenerys didn’t meet that fate. She lasted the month, and then the year. And all the years after. The very last of her bloodline to survive, until recently…

And now, she stands by one of these grand windows herself, just as her ancestors had done for centuries before her.

But she thinks of no evil omens and no terrible curses, even with snow piling up against the lower panes and spider webs of frost criss-crossing the glass edges. Her eyes are not on the sea. Her will and desires are no longer fixed on King’s Landing. Her violet eyes are downcast instead, focused on the child cradled in her arms and held to her naked breast, grinning softly at Jeorgianna’s tiny, suckling sounds.

While she nurses the baby, Daenerys paces beside that window, slowly but with a tiny bounce in her step for Jeorgianna’s sake.

Their little girl loves to rock and sway, at all hours. They’ve found this is the only way to get her to sleep at night. Jorah does it best, often rising from their bed first at Jeorgianna’s cries, to pluck the fussy infant out of her cradle and bring her tight to his broad chest.

Before he crawls out of the furs and leaves the bed, Jorah tells Daenerys to go back to sleep, in a murmur that ends with a kiss pressed against her hair. But once he leaves her, she often curls on her side instead, scrunching her pillow beneath her head, sleepy eyes blinking open to watch her husband tend their child.

“There now, my little lass, don’t cry,” he’ll say to Jeorgianna, in low, soft tones meant to soothe.

He dances with her, his large hand supporting that tiny, silver-fuzzed head with care. His crinkled smiles and deep, midnight tones chase away her little tears. As she settles in his arms, that same hand gently falls to hug her back, moving in soft, calming circles as he sings their daughter a lullaby, just as he’s been singing to her since before she was born.

Jeorgianna soon dozes off again, tears dried, tiny eyelids shut and baby cheek pressed flat against the crest of his shoulder.

The dulcet tones of his voice tempt Daenerys back to sleep almost as easily. The image of Jorah holding Jeorgianna lingers even as she closes her eyes once more, dropping back into dreams that are calm and unhurried and filled with little things, some from their past, some from their future.

Jorah, pointing out a falling star in the Red Waste, as they sit together in the desert night. Jeorgianna, picking a bouquet of daisies on Bear Island, as they walk together through green meadows.

Daenerys’s heart blooms in tenderness often these days, melting away any ice that might threaten to frost it over, as spring has come to her life again, despite a long winter that refuses to let go.

She pities the others, for she knows that their spring has yet to arrive.

They are tense and on edge, bracing for new calamity.

In the southern tower, they all hover over the long, pine table at the center of a room fashioned with cathedral ceilings and etched obsidian. Daenerys listens to their lengthy discussions half-heartedly, as she’s too focused on her child’s needs to care for anything else. And she’s quite certain all this planning won’t matter much in the end. Plans are for simpler times and calmer seasons.

But if it makes the others feel better and distracts them from calculating odds that are stacked far in their enemy’s favor, she supposes there’s no harm in it.

Ser Davos has spread out a cloth map of King’s Landing and is pointing out landmarks that he knows well, together with all those secret passageways and quick exits that he knows even better, having grown up in the capital as an urchin child on Gin Alley. Gendry nods along to most of it, butting in only to let the older man know when his knowledge is forty years out of date.

“They sealed the tunnel to keep out a few beggars? But why would they do that? It cut the distance to Silk Street by half the time—even for the gold cloaks,” Davos is incredulous and stunned, not a man to understand how a royal’s genteel sensibilities might be so offended by the mere knowledge that dirty vagrants are crouching and scraping a living beneath one of their prettier streets, that they must throw them out by force.

Gendry just shrugs, commiserating, but telling Davos what he knows, “King Robert kept it open even when Cersei complained. But apparently, they sealed it up a couple days after his death. Joffrey’s soldiers weren’t the brightest. Just the most vicious.”

An awkward silence might have followed, as Sandor Clegane stands to one side of Gendry and his jaw moves at those off-the-cuff words.

It was a long time ago but the Hound’s cloak had been snow-white once. Daenerys’s eyes flicker up to gauge the burned man’s reaction. From where she stands, over by the windows, she’s privy to more than the others. She sees Sansa’s hand feather-brush the Hound’s fingers below the table, in a private gesture that she likely isn’t meant to see.

There’s no danger in it. Daenerys will keep Sansa’s confidences forever. She owes her a debt that will never be repaid. Not in this lifetime. And this is no secret anyway. Half the members of their company might guess it already, if they weren’t all so distracted by the final battle to come.

With his usual skill for mediation, Tyrion diffuses the tension before it truly sparks to life, giving a brief, “Watch your audience, Gendry,” without raising his eyes from the map. He’s standing on a wooden chair, one palm laid flat on Sunspear for balance as he peers at the spot Davos has marked in King’s Landing. He shakes his head, befuddled, and musing, “For the life of me, I can’t remember there being a tavern on that corner…”

“It wasn’t a tavern for a lord’s son, my lord,” Davos mentions, dryly. Gendry smirks at this, agreeing by expression only. There’s as much pride in humble beginnings as lofty ones. Perhaps more sometimes.

Tyrion isn’t offended. If anything, he seems more dismayed by the fact that he never had the chance to visit this phantom tavern, one that’s likely long gone by now—either burned by Cersei’s wildfire or frozen over by the Night King’s ice.

“That never stopped me from sniffing out wine and women before, Ser Davos,” Tyrion argues smartly, tilting his curly head in Jorah’s direction. Jorah is standing at the opposite side of the table, facing Daenerys and the baby. Tyrion continues, “Mormont can tell you that I have a talent for finding the seediest of establishments, on either side of the Narrow Sea.”

Jorah’s too focused on the map to hear what Tyrion says. But at the sound of his name, Daenerys watches her husband’s ginger head come up, summoned from his own thoughts. He wasn’t listening, that’s obvious, but by the expression on Tyrion’s face, he seems to know he needn’t bother answering.

Jorah handles Tyrion with infinite patience these days, although, to his credit, the dwarf makes it easier. He concedes, even before Jorah has a chance to speak up, “Sorry. It’s an old joke. Not a very good one.”

Tyrion’s changed. He’s been beaten down by defeat, like the rest of them, and it’s worn down his sharper edges.

He came up to see Daenerys a few days after Jeorgianna’s birth, hesitantly, knocking at her door with a timid, “May I come in, Your Grace?” She’d let him enter and was glad to see he left all his clever words downstairs, saying little, granting only a sincere hope that the princess would grow up to be as beautiful as her mother.

Daenerys can almost forgive him for the things he said at Winterfell, even if she doesn’t regret leaving him behind. He was never meant to be her Hand. They both know that now. But perhaps they can be friends, after all? So long as he continues to behave himself…

She meets Jorah’s gaze from across the room and they share a flickering glance, a shadow of a shared smile to be tucked away for later, when they’re alone. Sometimes she asks Jorah to tell her about his travels with Tyrion, as it makes her grin to think of her gruff knight having to deal with the Imp’s chattering mouth all the way from Volantis to Meereen.

How Tyrion survived that journey, she’ll never know.

She turns her grin down on Jeorgianna once again, letting it widen at the movements of the baby’s little fist. Jeorgianna’s hand is free to wander while she nurses, and her tiny fingers catch the ends of Daenerys’s braid, holding the strands fast with a strong, healthy grip.

As strong as ten mainlanders…, Daenerys thinks to herself, glad in this, glad in so many things.

Ser Davos doesn’t let them wander off topic for long.

“With any luck, we’ll only have a handful of Walkers to contend with when the dragons set Daenerys and the rest of you down here,” the Onion Knight mentions, the thumb on his fingerless hand coming to rest on the Sept of Baelor.

On the map, the place is marked by the icon of a grand cathedral, one that the mapmaker likely thought would stand for generations to come. Future cartographers will call it “Cersei’s Ruins.” It will be the only thing ever named after the Mad Queen.

Tyrion peers at the map again, his mind obsessively clicking away on contingencies. But he remains silent for the present, thinking.

From the opposite corner, Jon is scowling again, but it’s no darker than Jorah’s expression, once Daenerys’s name is mentioned. Both men seem to think this plan is foolhardy nonsense and doomed for failure. But Daenerys strongly suspects it’s for different reasons, as she knows well that Jorah’s hesitation is all for her sake. And Jon’s reasons, whatever they may be, would have little to do with Daenerys.

Both Jorah and Jon remain as hushed as the others, letting Davos continue. It’s all just details at this point and they’ve been arguing about those details for weeks, as they wait and then wait some more.

The plan won’t work without the Seven. And if they are to call down the New Gods and beg them to intercede on behalf of the living, they must do it right. Which means that Daenerys—the Mother’s favorite, there’s no denying it now—must be fit for travel, which wasn’t the case until recently.

Jeorgianna is eight weeks old, as of yesterday, and Daenerys is as strong as she’s ever been. Fiercer too, as she’s a dragon with her hatchling and a she-bear with her cub. She has regained the fire in her heart that seemed to go out when she first landed in Westeros, in those bleak days where only despair appeared to await her homecoming.

Those days when everything went sideways and the West seemed to take and take, and then take some more. Smothering her flames, daring her to be snuffed out. But then Jorah came back to her—appearing out there, on the cliffs when they were still green. He tended her heart’s fire, softly, carefully, in his own way, as gently as he’d always done.

And with Jeorgianna’s birth, that fire has sparked back to wild flames again. Daenerys feels full of life and purpose once more, driven by that same force of will and desire that had once allowed her to bury her boy in the sands of the Red Waste and continue trudging on, even when she might have been tempted to lay down beneath the desert sun and die.

The source of her strength remains the same—Jorah, always Jorah—but her goal has changed.

This time, it’s not revenge that compels her forward, nor an Iron Throne that she seeks. She’s found her Iron Throne and it’s made of flesh and blood, all softness instead of steel. It’s in the warmth of Jorah’s loving arms and the sound of Jeorgianna’s soft breathing, as she naps on Daenerys’s shoulder.

Her family, her home.

They are here. They are both in this room. One safe in her arms, one only a few feet away. If she reaches out for Jorah, he’ll come to her without a moment’s delay. And she’ll not let anyone take them from her, she’s made up her mind. Not even a god of death.

I will keep what is mine, in the fires that get me through this winter, in the blood that binds us together.

And so, when her eyes happen to glance out through those windows and fix a point across the sea, they do so without fear. She knows what gathers across the waters and the manner of creature that lingers there. She knows why the others fear what comes next. But she doesn’t fear the future. She has a surety of spirit that some of the others would kill for.

She shares that knowledge with Jorah, lying curled against him at night, limbs entwined, tracing his scars and reminding him, “My dreams come true. And all of my dreams are of spring on Bear Island. Standing at the top of that waterfall again, with you and Jeorgianna.”

And then she reaches up and softens the deep worry lines on his face with her touch alone. If he starts to argue with her, she kisses those faithless words away.

In the end, he always gives her victory, saying nothing more and merely holding her near, as she knows he wants to believe it too.

“…and if the distraction at the Mud Gate works, the dragons won’t have to contend with the dead at all,” Ser Davos continues, knowing this has been a concern for Daenerys in using Drogon and Rhaegal. A dragon is not impervious to a swarm. They understand that now. That’s how she fell to the moors that night at Winterfell.

Alone, surrounded. She doesn’t want to think of the tragedy that almost came with her recklessness in bringing Drogon too close to the ground…

But he uses the wrong word for this part of the plan. Distraction.

Missandei flinches nearby, noticeably, and Daenerys shakes her head, turning from the window to face Ser Davos and force him to amend his words directly.

“The Essosi are no distraction, Ser,” she scolds him, gently but firmly too.

She’s taken a less active role in these discussions and she doesn’t pull rank on any of them anymore. There’s no discussion of kings or queens at Dragonstone. Not in the dead of winter. But she’ll not let his remark go by without speaking up. And she has the bearing of a queen as she says, “They’re free men who have graciously agreed to help us.”

“Yes, m’lady, they are,” Davos amends his words immediately, chastened. She knows he meant no offense so she doesn’t hold her frown but merely nods at him, appreciative that he doesn’t argue with her.

Davos wouldn’t dream of it. He’s not that proud and, despite serving two kings that might have denied her claim, he is soft towards her, more so now than before. She knows it. She can see it in his eyes when he nods his head her way.

She watches his face blush a little beneath his beard, as he notes she’s nursing Jeorgianna. She might chuckle on that, as she’s being more than modest about it, with those swaddling blankets covering almost everything. This is for Jeorgianna’s benefit, as she doesn’t want her to catch any sort of chill in these drafty halls.

Ser Davos is lucky they’re not in Essos.

If she’d borne Jorah a child in Qarth or while they marched on the cities of Yunkai and Meereen, she knows that she would have dispensed with any covering at all. She would have met the good and wise masters of those ancient cities with her baby at her breast and her dragons at her back.

Mother of Dragons. Mother of Jeorgianna Mormont.

Her pride in titles died the night the dead came to Winterfell, but Daenerys is still pleased by her favorite ones. These are the two she’ll keep, even after she gives up the rest for good.

The Mother blesses her for this, knowing that she chose her favorite daughter well.

“Distraction or not, if the freemen from Dragon’s Bay don’t arrive in time, we might as well just slit our own throats now,” Jon adds, glumly.

“That’s a coward’s way out,” Brienne speaks up, with a sharp edge in her cultured voice. She’s ready to face these monsters now. She’s been ready for weeks, willing to wait on Daenerys’s recovery but only just.

The Warrior’s patience grows thin. The tall battle-maid is ready for a fight, her sorrow at Winterfell having been replaced by anger and a quest for vengeance.

Jon nods at her, but doesn’t lose his grim frown.

Melisandre ponders silently from her corner chair. Sansa and the Hound exchange a weighty glance at the mention of the “Mud Gate,” thinking back on a night of fire from years ago. A rag doll, a forced song, an almost kiss—though Daenerys would know nothing about any of it.

But she plays witness to where that long ago night leads, nonetheless. Sansa squeezes Sandor’s palm just slightly, once again, the caress hidden from the sight of the others.

“Daario’s last message said the ships should follow his message by a fortnight,” Missandei reminds them, with a hopeful note in her light voice. She confirms, “We expect news of their sighting in Massey’s Hook any day.”

This was true. Or, at least, the letter was true enough, if not the unexpectedly good news that accompanied it. Daenerys had read the letter herself, when the missive first arrived nearly two weeks ago. It was Daario Naharis’s handwriting all right. His cocky tone, as well, even when addressed to Missandei. Daenerys had rolled her eyes on the second-to-last line, as she passed the note into Jorah’s hands so he could read it too:

And I know how your queen likes her ships…

Weeks and weeks ago, when they knew the Starks were coming to Dragonstone, Missandei sent a far-flung raven to the east. She sent it on a wish and a prayer, like a skipped stone across the sea, a call beyond the Free Cities, begging their former allies for assistance in their darkest hour.

She told no one that she sent it, steeling herself for no reply at all, knowing that the freemen in Dragon’s Bay owed them no favors. And like Jorah and Daenerys, she expected that Daario Naharis had moved on to other pursuits and conquests a long time ago.

But very soon after Jeorgianna’s birth, Missandei received the first reply, which she promptly shared. And then another that followed, promising soldiers and ships and whatever aid Dragon’s Bay might be able to spare.

Daario Naharis surprised them all. He’d stayed in the Great Pyramid, after all, and apparently, Meereen thrived under his governance.

You can tell Ser Jorah that I’ve finally learned some discipline.

Daenerys watched Jorah’s lips twitch on the last line in the letter. Not quite a smirk, but hinting at one.

She still wonders how Daario would know that Jorah would be with her, here on Dragonstone. He was with them at Vaes Dothrak. With the greyscale spreading in Jorah’s veins, he knew that Jorah’s survival was an unlikely thing, despite Daenerys’s tearful pleas. Later, as they rode back to Meereen, he’d told her it was a death sentence and she should mourn her Mormont knight sooner rather than later.

There’s no use holding onto him so tightly, he’d warned her, but she’d given up listening to the sellsword by that time, knowing she would be leaving him in Essos from the moment Jorah pulled away from her on that dusty mountainside.

And yet, Daario’s words were so sure, written with such confidence.

He assumes that Jorah found the cure. He knows that Jorah returned to her side, against all odds. She wonders if he’ll be surprised to learn that she’s married her knight and currently holds his child in her arms.

Not in the least, Your Grace, Daario will tell her one day, many years later, when his chestnut-brown hair has begun to go grey, bending low to kiss her hand with flair—for old time’s sake, he’ll wink—before he returns to his Great Pyramid across the sea.

Jorah read the first part of that letter again—the promise of ships and men for their siege on the capital—before passing the note back to her.

They were alone, in their bedchamber, so he cautioned her freely and without reserve, with a sigh escaping his lips just ahead of the pained words, “I still don’t want you going anywhere near King’s Landing, even with the help from Essos.”

“I know you don’t,” she’d answered him, while gathering Jeorgianna up from her cradle. She held her high for a moment, smiling up at the baby widely, before pressing a kiss against her little cheek. Jeorgianna was just learning to smile and her eyes lit up often, at her mother’s touch and her father’s voice.

Daenerys balanced the baby in her arms while casting a glance back at Jorah, her heart soft for his protective spirit. They said no more about it, as the time had not yet come to make any decisions anyway.

He couldn’t forbid her. He’d never tell her what to do.

But he might as well be honest. She’d know he was lying if he said anything different. She knew his thoughts as if they were her own.

He would have them stay here, on Dragonstone, until Winter melted away of its own accord. He’d have them stay out of this fight completely. And it wasn’t for lack of bravery or skill or duty. His wife and daughter’s safety mattered more to him than anything else in the world. That’s all he would ever care about. He would give up everything—all of Westeros and Essos combined, his own life—so long as what was left would be the two of them. Safe and sound.

This is Jorah’s way. This would always be his way. And Daenerys loves him all the more for it.

But this Winter isn’t going away. Not without some help. And they are caught up in it, both of them, whether they want to be or not.

For Daenerys’s part, she hasn’t yet decided whether or not this plan is worth pursuing. But she knows they have little choice in the matter. The Night King commits blasphemy just across the water, keeping his icy city filled with dead men and women who should be allowed to rest peacefully in their graves. The news from the mainland isn’t getting any better. There are more joining the numbers of the dead every day, not from war or massacre this time, but from storm and loneliness and freezing cold and starvation.

Winter would never end. It would take and take until there was nothing left. Unless they tried something…

And the Night King wants Jon. He made that clear. If they don’t answer those summons soon, the dead will march north again. Weeks ago, they’d sent a raven to King’s Landing giving Qyburn flimsy excuses for Jon’s continued delay, but it wouldn’t last.

Death is anything but patient…, Daenerys muses to herself, while catching sight of something spreading far out on the frothy waters. Her grip on Jeorgianna remains steady but her expression falls slightly. She sees something crawling across the horizon with speed.

A haze? A cloud?

No, it’s too large and fast-moving and it sits up on the waters to the south, turning the black-and-silver water to snow-white, taming the untamable waves like…

“Jorah?” she calls to him, softly but with insistence.

Her tone is a sobering one and silences the others swiftly, their discussions falling dead away. She doesn’t mean to raise alarm but she can hardly understand what she’s seeing. Her eyes narrow as she peers out across the sea.

As Jorah joins her at the window, she’s glad to feel his presence beside her. Despite her lingering sense that all will be well—her dreams don’t lie, she holds fast to this knowledge and refuses to give second-thought to any doubts—there’s something unsettling about what she sees. And whenever she’s unsettled, she reaches for Jorah. As she does now, her free hand reaching out and finding his waiting.

She looks over and finds him staring at the sea as well, the unnerved look in his blue eyes frightening her more than whatever it is that comes for them.

It doesn’t take long to find out.

A great sheet of ice spreads out across Blackwater Bay, frosting over the waters with the unnatural speed of a demon’s spell. And it holds, just as the ice will hold the weight of whatever creatures rush across its glacial sheet as soon as it reaches its final destination.

The ice freezes the sea over—it freezes it fast. A wave of white frost runs along a glass edge that doesn’t end until it hits their beaches, frost fingers digging into the frozen sand below, like grappling hooks against a castle that is marked for siege.

Dragonstone is an island no more.

Chapter Text

Winterfell is quiet these days, buried in snow and hunkered down by a long and unforgiving winter. The wars are over for this northern fortress. It is humble in defeat, too fearful it will go the way of other houses in the frosty north. Last Hearth is a stone-cold graveyard. Torrhen’s Square is an abandoned ruin. There’s been no word from Deepwood Motte or Bear Island since before the dead came.

Winterfell is alone.

And there’s little left to do here but just keep warm and survive until—gods be good—spring returns. Even if there’s no promise on that score. Gilly was named after a flower, but she wonders if she’ll ever see flowers again.

She doubts it.

The castle is still worse for the wear, but the snow hides its many wounds, charred stone and ashy ruins, covering its shameful defeat like a white cloth draped over a dead man. It’s not a very comforting thought, but accurate, nonetheless. The cold breezes that sweep over white moors betray nothing of the scarlet blood still staining the hard ground beneath.

Those still living remember. They know what happened out there. But an old Stark lord or lady, white-haired and wanderlust-weary, trudging up the snowy hill to home might not even guess what had happened in this place only a short while ago. They’d see candlelight in the window; they’d smell a wood-fire in the hearth.

And they would think all was well.

Honestly, Gilly wouldn’t be all that surprised to see one of those old Starks appear one of these nights, blown in by the same cold, cadaverous winds that have iced over the Wolfswood.

Gilly’s not afraid of ghosts. She grew up in the Haunted Forest. And she’s used to cursed houses. She expects a hollow knocking will echo down the halls one of these nights, followed by a wail of horror as the proud northern lords of old find their house has become a haven for raggle-taggle urchins, mostly wildlings, scraps of northern peasants and the odd southern squire.

This cannot be called the Stark holdfast any longer. Not until Sansa returns home.

For now, there isn’t a single Stark at Winterfell. How grieved Catelyn and Ned would be to hear it. But there’s no helping the absence and, despite Catelyn’s insistence to her eldest son that a Stark must always be at Winterfell, the past years have proven her words false—the ancient vow, if there was one, is long broken.

Osha snuck Rickon and Bran away under cover of darkness, saving her little lords from Theon Greyjoy’s doomed attempt to prove himself his father’s son. But she left the castle without a single Stark within its walls. And there were no Starks here when the Boltons first came either, with their ravenous dogs and their torturous crosses.

There are no Starks here now.

Gilly is mistress of this place. Or might as well be, as there are few others who are up to the task. It’s a dark and terrible season, meant to break a person’s will to live. But no one knows how to survive dark and terrible seasons quite like one of Craster’s daughters.

She keeps the refugees and survivors fed with stews that somehow go twice as far as they should. She keeps them warm by diligently tending fires and telling them to share living space so they might save on wood. She’s had the boys seal off great wings of the castle, as there are too few of them to need all that room. It’s cramped when she’s finished—at least for a lord’s house—but still a palace compared to Craster’s.

She stays in the kitchen most of the time. She keeps her son close by. She never gives order, she never barks commands. She barely speaks, just as she’s always done. But her wide eyes see much. She sees what needs to be done and she does it. Without complaint, without knowing if it will make a difference in the end.

She remembers a time when Sam almost convinced her that there might be more to life than the trudging through and plodding along. The suffering. The surviving.

She’s glad she didn’t let herself believe him. Mostly. That night he burst back into the guest room at Horn Hill and told her they’d be together always…she may have believed that for a little while. She blames the southern air. It was too balmy by half and it messed with her head.

The frigid gales have set her right again. There are no happy endings. There are no saviors. But there is survival.

The remaining Northmen are envious of her unbreakable resilience and they strive to find something like it in themselves, as it would be a sad day indeed when a little woman with a toddler balanced on her hip made it through winter without a word of complaint, and they all started bawling in corners like children.

Some of the other wildlings might have bristled at one of Craster’s daughters having any place of authority among them. For all Mance’s talk of freedom and equality, there’s always been as much prejudice above the Wall as below it.

Jon’s northerners still call the wildlings savages, but under their breath and with far less bite than years past. But Craster had been a savage even among his own kind. His daughters were stained by his sins.

But, for Gilly at least, Tormund Giantsbane set the others straight early, in those first days after the battle. The red-haired wildling had crawled his way out of the corpse field, with blood in his mouth and his skin washed as red as his hair. When he saw those dead men marching off to the south, he wanted to follow them and keep fighting. He tried to rouse Jon to battle, but Jon seemed not to hear him, his eyes vacant, his arms holding his dead brother to his chest.

Tormund went around to the others but found no one willing. There were too many wounded, too many dead. Gilly pushed the big man into a bath and told him it was all over.

Later, he’d see her with Jon Snow. He’d see how their little crow-king listened to her, if only because her words were simple things and cut through the haze of his misery as nothing else would, “You need to keep busy. You need to keep going. Otherwise, it’s all for nothing. Sam will have died for nothing.”

After that, Tormund told his brethren, in his breathy rasp, “You say a word against her, and you’ll answer to me.”

They didn’t. They still wouldn’t. Even now that Tormund’s gone too.

He left the week after Jon and Sansa went to Dragonstone. Just after that dark-haired girl and her raven came to Winterfell, showing up on their doorstep like the same snow-blown ghosts Gilly had been expecting.

But these two weren’t ghosts. They were alive. A girl with green eyes. A raven with black feathers.

She’s the same girl who had been with Bran and Rickon Stark at the Nightfort. Gilly didn’t remember her first name but she knew her family name was Reed.

Reed, like Leaf or Thorn or Briar. Gilly knows this because she remembers thinking it was very like the name of one of the Children of the Forest. And with that raven shadowing her steps like a totem, perched on her shoulder and eating kernels of wheat and corn out of her hand, she might as well be one.

The Reed girl was headed north and she stopped at Winterfell to rest and replenish her stores, should they have anything to spare. She was tight-lipped and stayed in their haunted halls only one night, as she was intent on continuing her quest, whatever it might be.

Tormund tried to reason her out of going north—“who goes north in this season but the mad?”—but must have changed his mind, for when she left, he went with her. And he took Jon's direwolf with him.

They haven’t come back and it’s been weeks and weeks.

With a scowl out the frosted window pane, Gilly wonders if they’re both frozen stiff in a snowdrift, just out there, over the ridge. She wonders if Jon and Sansa met a similar fate when they went south. They haven’t heard a word from them either.

She wonders if they’re all dead, north, east, west and south. She wonders if they are the last candle, burning down to a stubby wick. She wonders how long a person can live in a haunted castle and not become a ghost themselves.

“Cheer up, Gilly,” Podrick says in his light brogue.

The squire enters the kitchen without her notice. Little Sam, sitting on the floor and playing with a wooden top that one of the northmen carved for him, grins when he hears Pod’s voice. He likes Podrick’s friendly manner, he likes his mop of brown hair.

Gilly knows why. It reminds him of his father.

Pod deposits a large armful of kindling in the carriage beside the hearth, replenishing what she’s burned and then some. Gilly turns from the window at his voice, realizing that her expression must be more somber than usual. Pod’s grown accustomed to her more optimistic frowns and wouldn’t have said anything unless he thought her mind was contemplating darker thoughts.

But how much darker could her thoughts go? She could think on her sister’s sons and what happened to them after Craster left them in the forest. She could think on an endless winter and how she’ll rock her boy into a cold sleep as the last fire finally flickers and goes out.

“What’s there to be cheerful about?” she murmurs, but not with any extra glumness. Her words are matter-of-fact and she doesn’t need an answer. Pod gives her one anyway, as he’s a generous soul.

“Not much,” Pod concedes, but he smiles as he says it, spirit as undiminished as ever. How is that possible? Gilly shakes her head at him, almost as a caution. Even with all that’s happened, he’s as impossibly cheerful as…

Sam.

Sometimes, in the stillness of night, she swears she can hear his voice in her head, raw and desperate: Can you hear me, Gilly?

Gilly’s not afraid of ghosts, but she knows better than to answer them.

“Winter can’t get any worse,” Pod shrugs. He nods towards her south-facing window, the one she’s always looking out. He adds, “And I don’t see the sky falling down around us any more than it already has. We’d know if Jon and Sansa failed.”

“Maybe we wouldn’t. Maybe they’re as dead as the rest,” Gilly argues. “Maybe we’ll just sit up here and freeze to death and never know anything at all.”

“Maybe,” Pod answers her, somewhat gently. “But maybe we’ll make it through and maybe everything will be all right. I’m no fortune teller, Gilly. Are you?”

No, she’s not. But he’s a fool. Sam was a fool too.

She’s lying if she says she doesn’t want to hold onto a foolish man’s hope. So she doesn’t reply.

And Pod won’t wait for her answer. There’s too much to do. He gives her one last, encouraging smile—knowing a thing or two about dealing with strong women—before returning to the same tasks that get him through each day.

Make it through today, Gilly, her mother used to say. Leave tomorrow’s troubles alone. They’ll come when they come and not before.

On his way through, Pod drops a kindly hand down to muss with Little Sam’s hair. The boy grins at Pod's retreating back, before turning the smile on his mother. And despite everything, Gilly can't help but smile back.

Chapter Text

“Here…,” Meera drops a brace of hares in the snow at Tormund Giantbane’s feet. Their limp bodies slide a little on blue, glacial ice, common in the wide-mouthed caves of the far north.

White fur, long ears, lean muscles. Tormund knows from experience that these little things are almost impossible to catch in a thorny, winter-white thicket and his expression must betray his surprise at seeing fresh game. She shrugs, humble in her own talents, “For supper.”

The fur is still warm, the flesh warmer, with barely a spot of blood spoiling their snow-white coats. These kills are cleanly made. Meera wipes stains of scarlet off two arrowheads in crusty snow, before replacing them in her quiver. Then she sets the quiver and bow aside, balancing them against an icy boulder, at the edge of the cavern they’ve settled in for the night.

She brushes her wool mittens against each other briskly, to rid herself of hoary ice and frost that clings to everything up here, wool, hair, stone and skin.

Her black raven settles on a slate ledge above them, the sound of talons skittering, feathers puffed up against the drafts of cold air which skim across the cave entrance, spinning up tiny snow cyclones and blowing at their small campfire, making the coals glow hot and orange. Meera grabs one of the furs from their sledge and throws it on the snow and frost-covered stone. She sits cross-legged, tearing at a couple twigs she picks off the ground before tossing them into the flames.

Ghost is dozing nearby, his white chest rising and falling steadily, curled in the shadows just beyond the halo of firelight. His red eyes open at the girl’s return, ears pricked, alerted by the sound of footsteps. The natural cave amplifies any crunch of snow, scrape of stone or snap of fire.

As soon as Ghost recognizes Meera, he returns his furry chin to his furry forepaws and closes his eyes once again.

The direwolf is stingy with his energy up here, as they never know when they’ll need to make a run for it. Whether from winter storm, wild beasts or…other things hidden away in a vast landscape of frost forests, glacial caves and icy lakes.

There’s muted horror in these woods. And the further north they go, the quieter it gets.

The air itself seems unsettled here, tainted by everlasting winter and ancient magic. They spot few birds in the arctic air and fewer tracks in the snow, as any creature with a heartbeat seems to avoid this place like the plague.

Which makes the appearance of those hares at his feet all the more impressive. Tormund blinks at the hares and then at her. Meera went out to gather wood for that fire, same as him, but came back with the hares instead.

Where did this skinny little woman find them?

He shouldn’t be so surprised, he knows. He’s been travelling with her for weeks now, ever since Winterfell. Yet, he’s completely staggered by her. Before they left, Gilly told him that she’s a southern lady, a daughter of Lord Fuck-Or-Other from Grey-Something-Swamp, but Tormund can’t believe that’s right.

High-born girls don’t know how to do half the things that Meera Reed knows.

She’s a better tracker and huntress than anyone he’s ever met, north or south of the Wall, and a better shot with that bow of hers than Ygritte ever was.

Of course, he wouldn’t say that to Ygritte’s face if the firebrand were here with them. Tormund’s not stupid. Honestly, he hesitates to even think on the comparison, just in case her ghost is still hanging around the northern tundra, running her arrowheads against a whetstone, frowning at the weather and snarling at the crows. She’d been so fiery, jealous and better at holding a grudge than any of them.

Tormund can easily picture her here, sitting over on that rock, grumbling curses at the crannogman’s daughter, those wild eyes filled with enough fire that they might burn the southern girl to ash with a single look.

Except Meera Reed would likely sense the attack coming and duck out of the way just in time.

Meera reminds him of the Mormont women of Bear Island, but smaller and wiry and more partial to smiling. She’s sharp and clever, like a fox. Slippery as a mink running through marsh grass along the riverbank.

Still, Tormund thinks she’s far too skinny and small to survive up here by herself. Which is half the reason he decided to come with her.

The other half is curiosity and something like wonder, the kind he used to feel when he was a boy, standing at the Fist of the First Men, looking up at green and violet bands shimmering through a vast night sky.

For Meera Reed follows a path north, led by a raven, and that’s not a sign that a wildling can ignore.

There are too many stories, too many old tales. If someone told Tormund he was currently living through one of those old tales that future crones will spin on midwinter’s eve, he’d laugh and tell the old grans to fuck off with their nonsense.

Did the old ones feel the same in their time?

Meera’s pet raven alights down from his ledge to perch on her fur, pecking at the handful of corn she’s scattered for him.

The fire melts at the snow and frost clinging to Tormund’s beard. But it’ll refreeze as soon as they’re on their way again. He hasn’t felt his face since they headed out from the Stark castle but he’s still in good spirits, all things considered. It’s brisk in these northlands and this winter has turned as vicious and bloodthirsty as a Thenn bitch.

But he’d been cooped up in that tomb at Winterfell too long. With no word from Jon and the others, it felt like the stone of a crypt was being slowly shut on them all. And Tormund didn’t intend to be locked inside if he could help it.

When Meera came knocking, he thought she was crazy. Until he went to sleep that night and dreamed of a three-eyed raven and an icy iron throne and the winding river of blood between them.

And prophecies and phantom dreams aside, he can’t say he doesn’t enjoy roaming in the wild again, with no rafters above his head and fresh air filling his lungs.

Free men need wild air to breathe, Mance used to say.

Even if that air burns all the way down.

At least they’ve made it to woodlands again, even if it’s all haunted thicket and cold groves. The white wasteland of the Frozen Shore, with all those sharp, chilled winds rising off the churning sea made for unpleasant travelling. They spent days crossing a barren ice sheet, wrapped in furs, walking through winds that lashed like leather strips.

It was Tormund’s idea to go north by the Frozen Shore. Meera was nervous about crossing the water but Tormund told her that he’d made the crossing dozens of times. The Bay of Ice was no worse than climbing the damn Wall.

And going overland would take too long. The Frost Fangs are no kinder than the ice sheets and Tormund has a sneaky suspicion that some of the Thenns still abide up at the border of those cold-blooded mountains. He has no interest in crossing paths with those man-eaters in the dead of winter, cheerless as always and desperate for meat.

Fucking Thenns…

From Winterfell, they veered west instead of east, towards the Bay of Ice and Bear Island. The gamble paid off, as the heavier snowfalls had been kind enough to spare the lowlands around Deepwood Motte from waist-deep drifts that might have forced them to turn back.

Along the northern shore, they found a harbor and a boat, and even an old, weather-beaten fishermen to captain it, still alive, hunkered down and cursing himself for not going south when he had the chance. He helped them willingly, persuaded into it by the dragonglass blade that Tormund pressed against the man’s throat.

Meera didn’t like that one bit, Tormund could tell. She frowned and shook her head darkly when he told the fishermen that he’d make bootlaces out of his entrails if he didn’t get the sails up and break that ice on his hull before morning. But she said nothing, too intent on getting north.

She’s made that clear enough. She will go north, no matter what, no matter how, no matter the ending.

Resilient and skinny and likely mad. Tormund finds her fascinating.

The fisherman took them all the way to the vast ice sheets, crawling down so far into the Bay that they almost reach the northernmost shores of Bear Island. And from there, they trudged, through blinding wind and flurried snow that forced the black raven to take refuge in the folds of Meera’s fur coat, until they finally found blue skies again.

Blue skies and bitter cold.

The Lands of Always Winter are nothing if not bitter, bitter cold.

“We must be close now?” Tormund asks, as he reaches for a knife and gets to work skinning those rabbits. He’d eat them raw but suspects Meera would rather they be held to flame for a few minutes before sinking her teeth in.

Ygritte’s ghost would take satisfaction in this fact—Southern girls, swooning at the sight of blood, she’d have sneered smugly.

But the sneer wouldn’t have been fair, since Meera was the one who killed the hares they were about to eat.

The raven returns to his former perch with a flutter of wings. Meera removes her mittens, setting them on her knee, one on top of the other. She holds both palms towards the open flames, closing her eyes and breathing in and out at a slow, even pace. She’s probably tricking herself into believing she’s at home, curled in a cushioned chair beside her father’s warm hearth, instead of out here, trudging the wild lands.

“I hope so,” Meera answers, without opening her eyes. Without any promise on that score, one way or another.

She told him at the beginning that she’s following the raven. Haunted dreams and old whispers are her map and compass. She warned him off coming with her. And there’s certainly no chivalry above the Wall.

But Tormund’s lain with giants and bears and seen things that Cersei Lannister would have rolled her green eyes at, even up to the minute before the Night King threw her down from her grand tower.

“Kraa!” the raven makes a scratchy, throaty call from his ledge, and Tormund’s eyes drift up to black feathers and a sharp stare that might mean any number of things.

He hopes it means that their close. The ice caverns grow deeper here and the forests grow taller and thicker, with roots that are as old as the mountains, a dark tangle in a land where the sun doesn’t shine. Tormund finds each step north now comes with tingling dread and a heart-chilling desire to run the other way.

He knows Meera’s raven is no ordinary feathered beast. He knows that Meera Reed’s brother was a greenseer, and that if the brother’s dreams were washed by old magic, it’s likely the sister’s dreams are much the same.

He knows this winter stinks of magic, a magic of curses—those cold whispers that linger at the edge of a corpse field.

But if Meera Reed thinks she can help bring an end to it, he’s willing to go on a little faith. That’s all they have now. Faith…and a little fresh game.

He guts the little things, slipping a raw heart into his mouth. He sticks the meat through and roasts it over the fire, until its juices are dripping on stones and the smell of cooked meat fills the cave. He tosses her a piece before letting it cool, bouncing it in his hands. She catches her portion nimbly.

She tears off a piece and pops it in her mouth, grinning at the welcome taste.

“It’s good,” she says, her words muffled by the food in her mouth. But her tongue soon appears, as she takes a chunk out again, spitting it into her hand while adding, with a more sheepish smile, “Good, but hot.”

And Tormund grins back, thinking how Ygritte might have made friends with this highborn girl after all.

Their grins are very short-lived...

...as suddenly, a branch outside their ice cave snaps.

Chapter Text

“If I never dress for war again, it will be too soon,” Daenerys mutters over the feel of leather gauntlets, lashed and layered over the wool sleeves of her forearms. She curls her fingers into her palms, testing the movement of her hands.

She’s shaking her head grimly, not at the gauntlets but at the reason she wears them. Her expression is weary and weighty and reminds Missandei of those days in the Great Pyramid, when representatives from the old families came before Daenerys Stormborn in false modesty and shallow flattery—asking, always asking.

Those who have the most always want more. And, in Westeros these cold, cold days, who claims more than the King of Death?

But never satisfied, he now demands more. He demands a reckoning, wishing to crush those he’s already defeated under his icy heel, powdering them into snow dust, scattering their ashes on a frosted wind.

Daenerys never had much patience for those who would seek to take more than their fair share in Meereen. She has less patience now, having seen too much of grief and defeat. She’ll not be dragged back into them without a fight.

She fidgets under Missandei’s aiding hands, as Missandei tugs on the leather cuirass that Ser Jorah has forced Daenerys to wear. If Jorah has his way, her feet will not touch the ground of King’s Landing. But they learned their lesson last time. She’ll carry a dragonglass dagger affixed to her belt as well.

Just in case.

The two women work together, tightening the light armor by its cinches, pulling at the suede laces running along either side of the thin-but-strong, corset-like garment. Daenerys’s figure isn’t quite back to what it was before Jeorgianna’s birth but it’s close. She tests the movement of her waist as they tighten up the stays, needing to be flexible at all times, as she’s a dragonrider, not a warrior.

Still, this armor is not for show. It’s no breastplate dipped in gold, like the one they say Cersei Lannister wore during the siege of King’s Landing. Ser Jorah gave clear instructions to Gendry, whose leathercrafting skills are second to his smithing, but it fits Daenerys well, nonetheless. Missandei hopes she’ll have no need of it.

As she dresses, Daenerys’s hold goes slack too often, as her mind is distracted and her gaze is drifting again. Missandei glances up from where she’s bent at the other woman’s waist. She’s not surprised to find Daenerys looking across the room, towards the bassinet where Jeorgianna slumbers.

All morning, Daenerys has kept Jeorgianna close. She keeps picking her up and hugging her near, fussing with her little fingers and tiny toes, ghosting kisses across the baby’s temple and the top of her head. She won’t let the child out of her sight. She won’t resist going back for another kiss, even if her last was only minutes before.

Over the past hour, Missandei has watched Daenerys bring the baby against her breast at the slightest stirring, shutting her eyes in relief more than once at the feel of the babe’s small weight cradled against her. She knows that Daenerys is memorizing the feel of her child. The scent of her hair, the sound of her tiny breathing.

“Which coat do you want to wear, Your Grace?” Missandei asks, once she finishes the laces.

She’s moved to the large wardrobe on the far wall, opening cedar and rosewood doors to a collection of furs and wools that are threaded in Targaryen colors, various shades of violet and red, all those winter garments that Daenerys had commissioned from the tailors when she first landed here, wanting to make an impression on the smallfolk and the ancient houses alike.

To remind them that the dragon had returned to western shores. And that she would take back her father’s throne, no matter the cost, no matter the blood spilled.

It all seems like a lifetime ago.

Daenerys is back at Jeorgianna’s cradle, lightly running her forefinger down the sleeping babe’s slip of a wrist. Without raising her eyes from Jeorgianna’s restful form, she tells Missandei, “There’s a dark green one in the back, with a brown bear’s fur on the trim. I’ll wear that one.”

Missandei knows why she makes this choice. At Winterfell, Daenerys was failed by her family colors. So miserably. That white coat had been stained with Ser Jorah’s blood—when Missandei burned it, the coat was more red than white, sizzling on the still damp blood, going redder as the flames ate the fabric hungrily, sending up black smoke. She strongly suspects that Daenerys has grown to despise the colors of red and black.

Missandei prays that the colors of House Mormont serve her better.

She grabs the coat from the back of the wardrobe and brings it to Daenerys, helping her into it one sleeve at a time, before doing up the toggles on the front. This goes far beyond her duties as the Queen’s Hand. It is the chore of a humble handmaid, but Missandei doesn’t mind.

Daenerys doesn’t expect it, but she doesn’t resist Missandei’s assistance either, glad, as always, to have nearby.

With the coat on, they have no excuse to linger any longer. The castle has been filled with anxious, uneasy sounds for hours, all loud shouts and bustling activity. The upstairs chambers aren’t insulated from any of it, although it does well to muffle the tenser notes in worried voices. But the noise grows fainter now, even fading dead away, as so many of the others have already descended to the beaches below.

It’s nearly time to go. By the end of the hour, they’ll be in the air.

Missandei can see the white expanse of the iced-over sea from up here, out those frosted window panes. She can pick out two forms down on beach, slipping and sliding out beyond the shore to inspect the ice. A third figure waits on the beach, rotund, with his hands tucked into his long robes. Lord Varys watches Ser Davos and Gendry test the strange, unnatural ice. The blacksmith jumps on it a few times in a row, testing its tolerance for weight. Ser Davos appears to be taking a hatchet to it, testing the thickness of the sheet.

Oh, it’s thick enough. Missandei knows that, even from up here in the fortress. And she’s too far away to see Ser Davos’s face but she can imagine the scowl currently gracing his craggy, deeply-lined features well enough.

That ice is an omen and a death sentence.

The sea makes no sound, having gone silent, locked away in a glass coffin. The winds have died away too, as they were made bolder and fiercer by winter and the tempestuous waves in Blackwater Bay. Now, they have nothing but smooth, flat ice to whisper against. And they do whisper. They whisper over a bleak pledge that comes up from the south.

The dead are coming for you. The dead are coming to finish what they started.

But they’ll not wait on the Night King to come to them this time. Daenerys is set on this and the others agree with her. She was adamant from nearly the moment the ice dug its fingers into the shoreline. She is the undisputed mistress of this island. And she won’t entertain the dead on Dragonstone. She’ll not allow their presence here, if it’s the last thing she’ll do.

The Night King isn’t playing fair.

So in return, they won’t play by his rules. If he wants to come to Dragonstone, he better come quickly and use his stolen dragon to do it. For in very little time, they’ll be on their way to him. Flying as fast as they can, to head off whatever hordes he intends to send running across his damned wildice.

There’s no plan. There’s only old smuggler wisdom, which Ser Davos shared with a shrug, “You force a way through, no matter what. That’s all you can do.” There’s only Lord Tyrion’s faith in something he can’t understand, “I’d bow and scrape to the old grumpkins and snarks, if I thought they’d come help us now.”

There’s only Jon’s stubborn desire to make up for the fact that he lived while Arya and Bran lay dead in the snow. There’s only Ser Jorah and Daenerys’s fierce compulsion that whatever happens, it needs to happen far away from here.

Far, far away from their little girl.

This war will end in King’s Landing, where it was always meant to end. One way or another.

“He won’t expect you to come to him,” Missandei allows, as Daenerys gathers Jeorgianna up from her from the cradle.

She’s dressed for war, but somehow that makes her all the more maternal as she plucks the baby from soft blankets and plush pillows, waking her with calm, sweet kisses on either cheek.

Missandei continues, trying to convince them both that this will work. That all will be well, “And you still have two dragons. He only has one.”

Two dragons are better than one, Missandei clings to this thought, ignoring the other odds.

The ones that say seven against tens of thousands. Seven against Legion. Only seven against the ravenous hordes of death. How will they manage it?

Eight, Missandei’s optimistic nature refuses to be squelched, not heeding the darker thoughts. She saw Sandor Clegane go to the armory with Ser Jorah only an hour ago. The Hound will be joining the others on this doomed quest, having made it clear this morning when he said, “And fuck any gods who try to stop me.”

“Yes,” Daenerys answers her musings patiently, not taking much stock in odds at all.

While holding Jeorgianna, Daenerys becomes stronger, her posture straighter, her chin raised a little higher. Her eyes are sparking with fire and the looks she casts out that bedroom window, south across the water, are filled with menace. Missandei sees a mother bear with her cub, daring anyone who might try to snatch her away to take one step closer.

Just one. I dare you.

Missandei finds herself bolstered by the other woman’s fierce defiance. Here’s why she followed Daenerys across two continents. The world has always cowered in fear of dragons and for good reason. They are arrogant, impulsive, reckless, unpredictable and too willing to burn the world in an effort to protect their own. Even in the face of certain death, they don’t back down. Even to their doom.

But if anyone can accomplish the impossible, it’s Daenerys. She’s proven that, time and time again. Missandei would put her trust in no other.

But there are butterflies stirring in her stomach, nonetheless.

And not the sapphire blue ones that used to dance across the pretty petals and damp leaves of all those tropic flowers in Naath, alighting on white beaches, sipping on citrus fruit. No, these butterflies are all black and ragged, wings tattered, feet pinching, starving, a kaleidoscope of tiny monsters chewing her from the inside out.

She keeps imagining the horde rushing across the ice. There’s no crypt to hide away in this time. She’ll see them as a black spot on the horizon, growing larger and larger, running faster and faster. And she’ll not be able to do anything but watch as that spot spreads and grows, inevitably overwhelming them.

She hopes when the end comes, it will be quick. She hopes that she’ll be able to face death without fear. She hopes that Grey Worm will be waiting for her as she passes from one world to the next.

Daenerys would forbid these thoughts if she could hear them. She’s made peace with her own demise, but Missandei must live. For if Missandei doesn’t live, neither will Jeorgianna. And Daenerys won’t allow that.

She won’t allow herself to even think it.

“It’s always too cold in these corridors,” Daenerys grumbles, as soon as they’re in the hall. She regards the child in her arms with mild regret, likely thinking she should have let Jeorgianna stay in her cradle, snug beside the fireplace. But Missandei knows why she brings her down here.

If this is the last time she’ll see her daughter in this world, Daenerys will cling to her until the very last moment.

“She’s half bear,” Missandei reminds her, with a hint of smile. Besides, Daenerys has bundled the baby in a hooded tunic. Jeorgianna turns her face into her mother’s dark green wools, but that’s only because she snuggles against her mother at all hours, in any weather. Missandei allows, “And she doesn’t seem to mind the cold as much as you or I.”

“She doesn’t, does she?” Daenerys muses, with flooding affection, pulling the woolen hood down to play peek-a-boo with the tiny girl at her shoulder. Blue eyes peek out, sleepy but curious, looking at her mother, looking at Missandei, likely wondering what all the fuss is about this morning.

Daenerys suddenly stops walking.

It’s abrupt and unexpected. Missandei takes a step beyond before Daenerys has shifted the baby in her arms enough to reach out, using her free hand to hold Missandei back for a moment. They’ve reached the atrium outside the throne room of Dragonstone, a room that has been shut up since they returned from Winterfell all those months ago. The chamber’s too grand, a waste of firelight and heat, and there’s little use for thrones and opulent halls these days.

When Missandei meets Daenerys’s gaze, she watches those violet eyes wander towards the obsidian doors. Then to Jeorgianna, then back to Missandei. She sees pain that flickers, lingering behind the defiance. She sees the uncertainty that has her holding onto Jeorgianna so tightly. But there’s resolve too. Daenerys speaks plainly, “If we don’t come back…”

“You will…”

“But if we don’t…,” Daenerys stresses. She swallows back any tears. She’s too angry for tears, too focused on what she has to do. Yet, one escapes from beneath her eyelashes anyway. It slides down her cheek and lands on the fur-trimmed lapels of that dark green coat. “Don’t let her forget us. Don’t let her forget me. Please? I couldn’t bear it if she didn’t remember me. I can’t remember my own mother and if she—”

“I would never let her forget,” Missandei swears it immediately, in a strong timbre, her promise made unconditionally.

She knows that if they don’t come back, there’s very little chance that Dragonstone will be left unscathed, as the Night King will have his vengeance. But Missandei will tell Daenerys what she wants to hear. And she’ll keep to her oath until the bitter end, whenever that may be.

She promises, “She’ll know you as if you were by her side every day. She’ll remember that you loved her. She’ll love you always.”

Daenerys nods, nearly satisfied. And they continue on.

At the end of the hall, by the snow-dusted doors that will lead them down the icy, winding, stone staircases to the beaches below, they meet Ser Jorah, coming up from the armory with Sandor Clegane. The Hound greets both women curtly before continuing on, out those wind-swept doors with his axe balanced on his broad shoulder, allowing them a moment of private leave.

They are the last to descend to the frosty beach.

“Jorah, would you…?” Daenerys asks, softly.

She doesn’t need to finish the thought, as Jeorgianna is smoothly passed between them. The baby’s more awake than before. Her dimples appear and her tiny fingers curl up around the leather on her father’s armor, looking for a hold. She still doesn’t understand all the commotion, completely oblivious to an air that sparks with the same kind of tension that cut through Winterfell like a hot knife, too fast to know the injury that would follow.

As flesh was severed and blood started flowing, gushing out onto the moors like scarlet fountains.

Jorah fusses with the baby—lifting her up in his arms, smiling at her, making faces, “how pretty you are, my little lass”—Daenerys turns and walks into Missandei’s open arms. With a quiet sigh, she sinks into her friend’s embrace in a way that says she might like to stay there forever. They hold onto each other tight, for what feels like a great string of minutes knitted together.

Missandei doesn’t let her mind drift beyond this moment. She doesn’t want to think about the future. Not now, not while Daenerys is still here, alive and holding onto her. But still, there’s finality in this hug. The last one before…

No, she won’t think on it.

“I love you, Missandei,” Daenerys says, with raw, desperate emotion. “You have been my best counsel, my steady comfort. You are my good and steady Hand. But more than that, you’re my sister. Blood of my blood.”

“Zhey qoy Qoyi. I love you too, Daenerys,” Missandei says back, dropping the formal titles completely. This is no time for them. She’s trying to suppress the hitch in her voice vainly, as she tells her, “I thought I’d spend my whole life in chains. I never expected that I might live how I pleased and go where I wanted and say what I wished—and even after everything that’s happened, I still don’t regret any of it. Not a single day since I met you. I will never forget that day you came to Astapor. Never. Not as long as I live.”

“And may that be a long, long time,” Ser Jorah adds, as he’s shifted Jeorgianna in his grasp, freeing up one arm so his hand might come to rest on Missandei’s shoulder, lightly joining their close huddle.

“For you, as well,” Missandei’s eyes pass between them both, knowing there’s a sheen of tears brightening her eyes. She stops short of letting them fall, as tears would blur her sight and she needs to see their dear faces, she needs to remember everything.

Every word, every gesture, every expression.

Missandei can see they’ve both made their peace with what’s about to happen. They think it’s sure sacrifice that they’re headed for, all lambs to slaughter.

But these lambs are lions. No, that’s not right. They are dragons and bears. Missandei feels such pride as she regards her adopted family—how strong they are, how kind and good. She knows the flaws that mark them all, but she sees nothing of their past mistakes now. She sees only a man who has been a brother to her and a woman who has been her truest sister, two people who have a capacity to love in a way that shakes the very foundation of winter.

The Night King should be shaking in his icy boots.

Daenerys keeps hold of Missandei’s hand even after they part, even after she’s joined Jorah, to continue saying their quiet goodbyes to the baby, nestled so close between them.

Jeorgianna doesn’t know why they make over her so. But she likes the attention. She babbles at them, making soft, baby sounds and reaching out with tiny fingers.

Missandei thinks Daenerys might be near to tears now, as her voice breaks a little on the words she whispers at the wispy silver-blonde hairs, her lips granting half a dozen more kisses as she leans up, hands gripping Jorah’s forearm, drifting to Jeorgianna, as she coos to her baby, “We’ll be back soon, Jeorgianna. We’ll be back, I swear it.”

“By the Old Gods and the New,” Jorah adds the old promise, bending down to add his own kiss to their child.

They hover there for many minutes, until Jorah says the words they’ve all been dreading, with such reluctance that Missandei’s not sure how he manages it.

He breathes, “We have to go, Daenerys.”

“I know,” she murmurs, but her hand still caresses Jeorgianna’s cheeks, pressing her kisses against those tiny fingers, suddenly unwilling to move from where she stands.

Missandei takes up her free hand again, gently squeezing it once.

The final set of kisses and hugs are laced with words of love and affection. Missandei holds back her tears with effort. But upstairs, she’d promised Daenerys that she wouldn’t start weeping. They won’t shed tears now. They’ve all agreed to it. Jeorgianna’s last memory of her mother and father—should this be the last—will not be a sad one.

As Jorah hands the baby over into Missandei’s arms, she feels the tall knight’s hesitation in letting go.

She looks up to find blue eyes that are equal parts pain and resolve, mirroring the same mix of emotions that she’s seen in Daenerys’s expression all morning. He asks, with a husky note, “Take care of her. Please, Missandei.”

“I will, Ser Jorah,” Missandei vows. Jeorgianna settles in Missandei’s arms without any fussing, as used to Missandei’s arms nearly as well as her parents.

“We’ll be back,” Daenerys says it once more, nodding briskly, needing to say it again. Another kiss, another lingering caress. She tries to leave twice before her feet will follow. When she says that promise, in that voice—the voice of the dragon—Missandei almost believes her.

If I look back, I’m lost…

Daenerys has admitted this fear to Missandei over the years many times. She told her once that it’s become a superstition that she feels loathe to break.

But more lately, she’s told her that Jorah always looks back, so maybe she can too.

And she does, just this once. Unable to stop herself.

As Ser Jorah and Daenerys leave them, pushing open those frosty doors that will lead them down to the beaches, to Rhaegal and Drogon and the rest of those few—those brave few who will finish what was started at Winterfell or die trying—Daenerys looks back.

She’s holding onto Jorah’s arm tightly but she looks back.

Her hand rises in a small, faltering wave—an unconscious reach across space that’s already too distant. Missandei smiles through tears, still forcing them away, not wanting to have her last memory of Daenerys be a sad one either. Daenerys’s sorrow increases with every step taken, but she somehow manages to return that brave smile.

It’s pretense on both sides but that’s all hope ever is.

Keeping Jeorgianna close, Missandei clings to that hope and murmurs her own promise, one she’s decided to believe. For what good will it do to believe otherwise?

They’ve had enough of grief. They’re allowed to hope. They’re allowed to have faith.

“They’ll come back, Jeorgianna,” she whispers, stubbornly. “I don’t know how, but they’ll come back.”

Chapter Text

“Come! We have to hurry!”

Leaf leads the man over muddy swamp and moldy tundra, all damp grass and pockmarked puddles. The ground is crusted with remnants of winter’s ice but soft-bellied beneath, breathing deep, with crawling insects and shoots of sedge pushing out of black and brown earth, tangled with roots and mulch.

An odd mist hangs in the air, cold and humid both, as if winter is being staved off unnaturally, as if spring is being forced upon the land too soon. A war of seasons, as yet unresolved.

And everything hums with magic.

This is an age of deep magic, spells staining the countryside, curses spoiling the land.

The weather looks violently changeable. Sparks of lightning ring the violet horizon without thunder. The clouds play at vibrant, eerie colors they shouldn’t know by name. The animals are scarce, in hiding, too afraid of the strange silence, the lack of wind, the blood-stained waters.

A red fox darts between moss-covered rocks. But it might just be a shadow, for all that.

It begins to rain, but then stops again. The man is moody, miserable and wet. He thinks nothing could be colder than the rains that belong to a season eternally stuck between winter and spring.

He should seek cover. He’s not made for open country. But he follows Leaf, stubbornly.

He scrambles to keep up with her, stumbling on uneven ground, as her pace has quickened since they left the forest. The Child’s webbed feet offer a better grip on the lowlands than ragged boots caked with mud. And his boots have seen better days.

He hasn’t been home in many years.

He doesn’t know what home means anymore. It’s made his heart cold, as cold as the rain that pelts down on them, a passing shower, gone as quickly as it began.

Leaf isn’t bothered by the rain. Her people are of swamp and forest both. She makes little sound over the steppes, except to stop and say quickly, in the old tongue, urging him forward, “Hurry!”

The king is in his castle. He sits on a frosted throne, in the iced tower of his frozen city.

When Cersei Lannister received the Night King, the throne room had gone cold as a grave, cold enough to freeze her palms to the iron swords. But it’s been many months since the Lannister queen was thrown from her window and it’s far colder now.

In deep winter, the Iron Throne has turned a ghostly white, its metal edges brittle with frost crystals. Those crystals add length to the iron spikes, creating a menacing crown above the Night King’s horned head. Snow sweeps across the throne steps, blown in through broken glass, a great drift of it piled up beneath the open window, like the sands of a shattered hourglass.

This is appropriate, as time appears to have no meaning here. Why else does the Night King linger on his throne when he should be heading out with his army across the ice?

But he’s in no rush. Time waits for him. The hours bow to his will.

Hoary rime and ice paint the chamber from marble floor to vaulted rafters. White Walkers and wights stand eerily nearby, hovering in this ice castle, silent in the presence of their king, as ever, waiting for his command.

The Night King’s fingernails slowly tap across the iron of his throne and the little sound nevertheless echoes loudly in a chamber that is otherwise dead silent.

Pale, winter sunlight is casting the throne room in icy blue-violet.

Outside, the tower blinks in a chilled, silver brightness, as the sun reflects off a city cast in verglas, ice reaching down from the highest towers in spiked crystals that are as thick as elephants at their hilt. The roof tiles glint and glimmer, the turrets and pinnacles shine like Valyrian steel.

Viserion is perched at the very top of the highest tower, sharp talons gripping ice, his tattered wings folded and frosted, golden scales glinting only silver in weak and wispy sunlight.

It’s a cold, menacing sight—all of King’s Landing encased in ice and dusted with snow.

The Night King would prefer total darkness in his city. Every errant strand of sunlight grants him a moment of simmering rage, as he would love to stamp it all out and wrestle that sun back beneath the horizon.

He would have the sun bow to his will, along with the rest of them. He’s tempted to do it, even though he knows the sun would rage and rattle its shackles worse than the little she-bear.

Once upon a time, he defied the morning to shine.

In the Night, he brought the sun to heel. It was a darkness that Westeros will never forget, still shivering on the memory. Even the moon and stars were snuffed out by his storms, his horde eating their fill of the living in pockets of pitch-black.

But it was a waste of magic. He realized this too late. And he found himself weakened when the First Men came for him, with those wretched Children filling the ranks beside them, all wielding dragonglass, fighting side by side as if they were sworn to each other like brothers and sisters.

As if they hadn’t spent hundreds and hundreds of years slaughtering each other, poisoning the land with their bloodshed, famine and terror.

And they said he was the plague upon them?

The First Men and the Children of the Forest—to this day, the Night King spits on the names of both.

The river in the forest glen behind them is scarlet-colored.

When the man slips in his haste, knee falling to mossy bogland, his hand stretches out to find a solid hold but sinks into a puddle of moss and water that is likewise tinged in pink.

It’s a reminder of what happened in the forest. It’s a reminder of the morning’s bloody business, where men dressed in bronze armor are currently standing over four of Leaf’s kind. All slain, all dead on the ground.

A foreign priest in red robes is with them, and a swamp witch too, with a face that isn’t her own, both hovering over the dead Children. They kneel on brown leaves that are slick with blood and dew. There’s a knife in the priest’s hand, but the witch forgoes metal, using her long, sharp fingernails to pierce flesh instead, too intent on carving out the hearts and organs before they go cold.

The witch takes a bite of the warm heart for herself, too tempted by the pulsing magic within. The soldiers glare at her, receiving a blood-stained smirk in reply. Generous, she holds the flesh out for them to taste but they look away in disgust. And in shame.

They say nothing against it, as they are not the ones calling out orders here. The First Men have been forced into alliances that they’ll not be able to take back. Not until this over.

So have the Children, making friends with outcasts and broken men.

Like the man who follows Leaf. He helped her escape the slaughter, having known they were coming and warning her to take cover just in time.

He’s so often in the right place at the right time. He wonders if the Children ever notice.

No, he thinks not.

They are no wiser than the soldiers, whose minds are as dense and dull as their worn armor. With the information he fed them, they’d gained a toehold in the forest but they’ll lose two dozen of their numbers tonight, at their victory feast, as soon as he sows his usual seeds of chaos and hate among the grieving children.

His heart is so cold it burns, but he isn’t made of stone and ice. Not yet. He still flinched on the slaughter in the woods, his stomach lurching at the gore that followed.

On the soldiers’ death blows, the screams of those little creatures had echoed sharply, the pitch fading in a haunting way that seems to reverberate still, woven in the mist, whispered on the dead breeze, even as the man crawls and scrambles across the boggy lowlands, now miles away.

Running, running…

He’s been running his whole life. He swears to himself, one day he won’t run.

One day, they’ll all run from him.

At Winterfell, he didn’t run.

His armies did, rushing forward in a mad fever. But he waited on the ridge over the moors with his generals, calmly listening to the sounds of horror in the night. He felt nothing in his gut at the carnage. His expression was impassive, save when the wights snuffed out those flaming swords.

He allowed himself the hint of a smile then. Not for the victory that was sure to follow. Not for the storm that he soon conjured with little effort, throwing fits of snow in that brazen dragon girl’s face.

But he always smiled at swallowing darkness.

The battle was a foregone thing, even before they reached the castle. He was here for one reason, and that reason waited in the godswood. He could smell the Three-Eyed Raven from hundreds of miles away, even above the Wall, as his mark on Bran Stark’s forearm went deep, down to the marrow in the bone.

The night was young so he took his time, thinking he might add to his numbers and gain a second dragon for his trouble. This was not to be, as the Targaryen woman was careful this time and those fire creatures were as wily as ever, too cautious around their blue-eyed brother.

He might have killed the Stark bastard in the melee. This is his only regret.

But he didn’t know that boy’s secret at the time. He didn’t know him as anything but the tiresome little crow who came to Hardhome.

None of his dead men carried the truth with them, and, for all his powers, he’s never been able to rifle through the thoughts of the living. Had he known…but he couldn’t. Not until Sam Tarly was added to their undead ranks. In sifting through the memories of Qyburn’s favorite assistant, the Night King was finally forced to admit the first regret in this long campaign.

He needs to kill him. There’s a prophecy. There’s a curse upon the Night King’s head, spoken to him long ago by a woman with raven-colored hair, who wore scarlet robes and a lacquered mask.

He should have killed her too, and ended that prophecy before it fell from her lips. But she came to him in a dream and slipped away too easily, cloaked in smoke and shadow.

It doesn’t matter. He’ll kill Jon Snow soon.

The Night King has been too successful this time. It’s made him proud and jealous in his victory. Why else would he sit on a throne that should mean nothing to him? Why else would he suppress the nagging feeling that his magic weakens even as his victories grow?

That little Mormont girl in the cage shouldn’t be able to fight against the spell. She shouldn’t be able to rattle those chains so loudly. Yet, she does. She does so again and again. Even now, managing fiery words that break the silence, “Let me out! Let me out! Fuck you. Are you scared of a little girl?”

But he ignores her. It’s an anomaly, he’s decided. A quirk of her stubborn blood, that mixes with the old magic and undermines it somehow.

Why now and not before?

His rash confidence doesn’t allow him to think too deeply on the question and he trusts that Qyburn will sort it out. If he doesn’t, he’ll add another dead man to his army.

In the meantime, he needs only focus on the task at hand. He’s sent six Unsullied to kill all they find on Dragonstone and drag the bastard prince back to him, alive.

There’s arrogance in this too.

He wants to see fear flicker in that boy’s eyes before he kills him. Just as he watched the Three-Eyed Raven flinch in the godswood at Winterfell. He nearly feels something on the rush of snuffing out these threats to his reign.

Too bad he’ll not be able to kill the boy before one of the weirwood trees. King’s Landing forsook the old gods long ago. But he’d like to see the eyes of a heart tree run red as he does it, as it gives him great pleasure to see the old ones weep in frustration, with blood stinging their unseeing eyes.

The trickster raven had lived in a tree for a long, long time. He should have heeded the warning that the weirwoods wear in their white faces, so plainly.

The Night King’s vengeance is a lasting kind.

Leaf disappears behind mossy stone. Her last glance back at him is an odd one, her expression going hard and stern enough that he slows his steps.

Have they reached their destination?

The man is breathing heavily. His nerves begin to fray a little as he looks around, unfamiliar with the place the Child has brought him.

He’s in a grove of stone pillars, set up unnaturally like grave markers or door frames to other worlds. He’s almost loath to walk between any of them, worried he might slip and tumble down into somewhere he’s not supposed to be.

Lost to the known universe, trapped in the netherworld, too far away for anyone to hear his screams.

And that look on her face…

Do they know? Do they suspect something foul?

He’s been so careful. He’s never given himself away. Not to either side. His cold heart has served him well in this. And he has a mind that can’t be easily read by those who might try. Hate fills up all the empty places, making it a thick, cinder wall that they might run over a thousand times without finding a door. No locks or keys either.

Besides, there’s nothing in what happened back in the woods that might be traced back to him.

But what is this place? The Children have never brought him here before.

He lays his hand on the old moss as he passes the first pillar, cautiously, feeling the softness of damp growth. Half a dozen Children are huddled together nearby, with Leaf crouching down to join their secret whispers.

They look at the red-leaved tree at the center of their stones, they look at him.

They look at the sharp fragment of dragonglass that Leaf has pulled from her pocket.

In the sunset years of his long and storied life, Archmaester Ebrose will give up his surgical tools in favor of a raised dais and a teeming auditorium, as it will become tradition for him to teach an annual class to novices, postulants and honored visitors to the Citadel alike, as a sort of inauguration at the beginning of each calendar year.

New traditions for a new world.

Many of the experienced apprentices and distinguished maesters sit in on the short lecture as well, as Ebrose is a popular speaker later in life, having seen things firsthand that only a handful of men and women in Westeros can claim.

Two decades have passed, and the young ones barely remember the Great War.

They’re fascinated by the fantastical tales which will continue to resonate for generations to come. Tales to be spun by old nans a hundred years from now. But they are spring-born children and can hardly believe the stories, even now.

If not for the dragons, perhaps they’d all dismiss it as the conjured nightmares of a long, bitter winter. But Daenerys Targaryen’s first children still fly the skies of this country often, soaring way up in the blue rafters, and usually with her younger, fair-haired children astride their scaly backs.

Even most of those who lived through it—the ones who came back—have black spots on their memories where those lost months and, for many, even years should be.

Over the years, Samwell Tarly has methodically collected the survivors’ accounts, including his own. But even years later, there are many who don’t want to discuss it at all. The wildlings who were under the spell the longest are tight-lipped and still suspicious of southerners.

Some things never change.

But there’s one dark-haired spearwife who’s more willing than her brethren. She’s told Sam her story and admits that her memories from that time are bookended by Hardhome and King’s Landing, with near nothing in between.

“Other than Jon Snow,” Karsi states firmly, with a somber nod, as Jon was there when she was slain and he was there when she woke up again.

Jon’s speech at Hardhome was still ringing in her ears when she found herself in King’s Landing, struggling to remember her own name. But she remembered Jon Snow. And she saw him, curly-haired and grievously wounded, laid out on his back, his limp body cradled by a woman with red hair and tears in her grey-blue eyes.

Year after year, Archmaester Ebrose always begins with a moment of silence for the sacrifice of those forever gone.

The windows to the lecture hall are all thrown wide open to the sounds of cooing pigeons on the rooftops and the far-off bustle of summer streets. It’s a pleasant, mild day in Oldtown. All gentle breezes and warm sunshine. Early summer is here to stay.

Late as ever, Samwell Tarly squeezes into the overflowing entrance of the lecture hall—“pardon, yes, pardon us please”—leading a young friend further in, so they might better hear the old archmaester’s speech.

The boy who follows him in has travelled to Oldtown on errands for his mother and father, but Sam tells him he should tarry and hear the archmaester before he goes, as he knows he’ll enjoy it more than most.

The boy is young but has an eager, curious mind. Always has, always will. He grows like a weed these days, ginger-blond hair and blue eyes easily giving him away as Ser Jorah Mormont’s son even to strangers.

They find two vacant spots in the back row—or rather, those seats are quickly made vacant once those sitting there see who Sam has brought with him. The wide-eyed novices dip their heads as if they’re in the presence of royalty, which is nearly true. The boy’s mother was a queen once.

Sam thanks them with a cheery, affable smile, before leaning over to whisper to Aemon, “This next part always riles him up. You’ll see.”

And so it does, for Archmaester Ebrose has found a renewed passion at the end of his life for simple truths and the resilience of humanity. It makes for a rousing, inspiring speech that lifts the gloomiest spirits.

He paces the raised dais down at the center of the lecture hall slowly, his wrinkled hands casually clasped behind his back, holding a short pointer that twitches as he walks. But there are few demonstrations in this lecture, only grand and thrilling stories of things near past.

The Night King sitting in his ice castle, stewing on ancient grudges.

Two dragons burning a swath of fire across wildice.

The Seven descending down to the king’s city in blinding, white sunlight.

A Northern secret pulled from the trees.

The Prince Who Was Promised dragged before the King of Death.

Ebrose lets the story speak for itself, before turning to the crux of his oration, a sure knowledge that has come to him at the end of his life. Something solid, something beautiful, that he now holds onto and cherishes, and shares with the younger generation, hoping they’ll keep the lesson learned in trust, for as long as they’re able.

He reminds them, “The Night King was one of us, once. We must always remember that. The man who came before the monster may have been weak and foolish, or maybe he was proud and strong? Maybe he was good once, or thought his cause righteous, as so many of us do. We’ll never know for sure. I doubt he knew himself by the end, as the man was long dead, and only the creature remained—a creature of pure, reckless hate.”

“And hate is powerful, there’s no denying that,” Ebrose continues, his voice turning regretful. “It is wrath grown wild and justice turned rancid. A barren winter without the dream of spring, holding to itself stubbornly, attempting to keep the rest caged for eternity—generosity, mercy, charity, life—in the hope that hate alone will endure.”

“But that’s why hate always fails. Isn’t that true, Archmaester?” Aemon Mormont speaks up from the back of the lecture hall, his young voice already holding a strong timbre not unlike his famous father.

He speaks impulsively, casually, before Sam can let him know that this isn’t traditionally a question-and-answer sort of forum. Not that Aemon would abide his warnings anyway.

He is a courteous and respectful young man, but has little patience for petty formalities. A trait inherited from both his parents in equal measures.

Ebrose’s hearing is still sharp for his age, and he searches the crowd for the source of the interruption. When he sees who the speaker is, his naturally flinty expression softens greatly, in a way that it never does for anyone else.

Daenerys Targaryen’s children are forgiven everything by Archmaester Ebrose, much to the chagrin of his students, who would love to have such impunity. The old man never fails to smile when those children deign to visit Oldtown.

Just so long as they don’t try to coax him onto one of their mother’s dragons. He has no interest in flying on the back of one of those beasts ever again. Not even if he lives to be two hundred years old.

“Yes, Aemon,” Ebrose confirms with a short nod and then a lift of his shoulders. “Hate takes hold and may even keep us captive for a little while. But it will never win…”

His eyes cast a wide net over the gathered audience, a gentle affection stirred in his expression, at the many, living faces that stare back at him. His words are simple but stunning things, even to ears that have heard them spoken many times before,

“No, my friends. Not so long as love exists.”

The man never really knew love, and what little he remembers, he’s forgotten.

They burned his house, he remembers that. Fire and blood, screams and charred ashes. Was it one of the Children’s fireballs? Or one of the soldier’s torches?

He was never certain. Which made it far easier to watch them both bleed afterwards.

They strip him of his shirt. They shackle him to the tree. He struggles but his feet slip in mud, his eyes widen in the horror of what they intend to do.

“I’m sorry! They made me do it!” he insists, falsely, before they gag him, wanting to hear no more of his lies.

They must know. They must have found out somehow. The trees! The trees must have whispered it to them, he’s sure of it. Their eyes see too much. They meddle too often. And now he will pay for his treachery. He’ll pay a thousand times over.

Leaf rises from the huddle and approaches him slowly, her expression having gone stern as the stones around them.

When she pushes the dragonglass into his chest, he cries out, his screams muffled by the cloth in his mouth, his bound fingers scratching and digging into white bark angrily. And he feels a burning heat and then a scalding cold.

He feels loathing in his soul, for everyone and everything.

And then he feels nothing at all.

Viserion’s haggard screech serves as a crude sentry’s watch.

The Night King’s head turns sharply at the sudden sound. He isn’t expecting visitors. He seeks his dragon’s eye, and sees great wings in the distance, coming closer. His finger drumming ends, as he drags one nail across that iced iron.

The living have returned to King’s Landing.

Chapter Text

The sea wind howls off the coast of Westeros.

It screams easterly, pushing back against the usual trade winds, bending them in unnatural ways, breaking old mariners’ deeply-ingrained wisdom, forcing them to abandon their most certain routes. The weather wants no strangers setting foot on Westeros these days. That’s clear.

But is it at the behest of the horned monster who currently sits on the icy throne in King’s Landing? Or is it the wind’s own warning?

It’s hard to tell whose side the elements are on, as they have been used by gods and men too long, through pleas and prayers and powers of darkness, ever caged and caught, ever wily and breaking free, only to be caught again, and then escape once more.

The wind is no constant, well-behaved slave. Too slippery, too defiant.

Much like a dragon. Much like men and women, for that matter. Slavery is no natural thing.

The freemen of Dragon’s Bay could swap stories with the western winds, if only it allowed them to approach, if only it allowed them to reach the ice gates of Blackwater Bay, instead of churning up whirlpools and winter storms to keep them at a short, yet impassable distance.

But it won’t. Those aboard the ships from Essos are bundled up against the cold weather, eyes peeled in salted snow, rubbing hands together, scraping accumulated ice off their hulls and rigging, even as they point across the narrow expanse that separates them from their cursed destination.

They marvel to each other over the white sheet of ice they see in the distance. Some of the sailors have seen the sea frozen over, but never at these latitudes. Westeros is a white wasteland from this vantage point. And it’s a ghastly, eerie sight.

They’ll not be able to reach King’s Landing in time to bolster the others. The wind holds them back, like a parent holding a child from rushing into danger.

They can only send out tense whispers across the waters, and serve as a reminder of things that happened in the East not so long ago. Impossible things.

It wasn’t so long ago that those men and women threw off their chains to take back what belonged to them. Their dignity, their hopes, their own names.

Perhaps it can be done again?

Their eyes squint over snow-tossed waves. In the distance, they see figures running on the ice and dragon wings in the air.

“Torgo Nudho hokas bezy. Sa me broji beri. Ji broji ez bezo sene stas quimbroto. Kuny iles ji broji meles esko mazedhas derari va buzdar. Y Torgo Nudho sa ji broji ez bezy eji tovi Daenerys Jelmazmo ji teptas ji derve.”

'Grey Worm' gives this one pride. It is a lucky name...

Grey Worm has no memory of the proud speech he made to Daenerys Stormborn in Astapor. He has no memory of his own name. Memories don’t keep with the Night King’s dead men. Only actions. Only commands.

March, stand, linger, kill.

He knows these commands by heart, having learned them long before he joined the ranks of the dead. He follows them with precision and more talent than most, just as he did for years across the Narrow Sea.

His excellence as a soldier in life has not been diminished by the shades of death. The Unsullied were not sought after by eastern despots and western monarchs without reason. And their Commander had always been worth ten of the rest.

He was nearly unstoppable while he was living. He’ll not be stopped now that he’s dead.

This is why the Night King sends Grey Worm to Dragonstone with only five of his fellow soldiers. He trusts that Grey Worm will not fail in such an easy command.

Run!

He’s running now. His feet are moving faster than he’s ever run in his life, yet he never grows tired. His fist clutches a spear that is cold enough to leave hoary patches of frostbite on his dark skin, if his flesh was still warm to the touch. But it’s not.

It’s as cold as the bottom of the northernmost sea, scooped up from a place of ancient, pitch darkness. As cold as the wispy clouds hanging above them, strange things made of ice fog and winter sunlight, all pale, sharp and biting.

The weak sun still glints off the ice, turning everything silver and mirror-like.

Grey Worm and his armored brothers—no brothers, only Unsullied—rush across the ice sheet between King’s Landing and Dragonstone, to climb the black fortress on the other side of the Bay. He doesn’t know why he does this thing. He doesn’t know what it will mean if he accomplishes the task set before him. He only knows one thing. That he must run.

The the Night King’s orders screaming in his head, drowning everything else out.

Run, run, run…!

He runs without choice, manic, faster and faster. He obeys with abandon. It’s a flick of the Harpy’s Fingers, a feeling put down in his bones long before he knew the Night King existed. Grey Worm remembers…

When they were boys, the masters would blindfold them and leave them in pits for days and days. They were not to move, not an inch to the left or right. Not even when water was poured on their heads, or when they heard the slippery hiss of an asp as it curled around their ankles.

There is no Grey Worm. Only Unsullied.

No, that’s not right. Not Unsullied. Even if it feels just the same.

Because there is no Grey Worm. There is only running and rushing and a cold spear in his dead hand.

…and dragons?

Whoosh!

Those wispy clouds are lower in the sky than they pretend, hiding wings behind them.

Grey Worm’s manic running stops abruptly, as he instinctively ducks under the blast of a frosty tailwind. The black dragon swoops down steeply from vast skies to bowl him over, its tail snapping fiercely and sending two of the other undead Unsullied rolling across the ice, bones clattering, spears and helmets skidding away.

The black dragon screeches loudly and angrily, baring his massive fangs while treading air, red eyes matching the same fire in the violet eyes of the woman who sits astride his back, perched in front of the others, speaking commands in Valyrian that Grey Worm knows but can’t understand.

Not with the incessant screaming in his head: Run, run, run! The impulse returns even as he keeps his head ducked, the success of the mission outweighing the compulsion that seizes the others to run towards a heedless escape.

I was never the biggest, never the strongest. But I was bravest.

The green dragon comes just behind his brother, opening his mouth to cut a swath of fire across the ice in front of Grey Worm, burning a hole in the sea, opening a river of black and raging seawater. The unnatural ice resists, great chunks of it breaking and cracking along the line of dragon fire, resilient icebergs bobbing in the restless waters.

The ice shifts beneath Grey Worm’s feet as cracks appear, but he remains unmoving, ducked beneath his helmet, spear raised stubbornly. His head is bent against an assault of fire that comes too close.

He doesn’t flinch. Not even as the strands of fire threaten to curl around his ankles, like an asp in those dark, long-ago pits.

Another one of the dead soldiers is too close to the water when he’s set aflame, screaming out death howls, twisting in wreaths of fire before falling into the open sea, to be lost in shifting ice.

The dragon dips down to carry off another, reaching out sharp talons and snatching the undead man in one well-aimed grab. He carries him fifty feet into the sky before dropping that dead man from a height that breaks him apart, sending out more loud cracks and groans in the ice, in all directions.

“Grey Worm!”

There’s a note of terrible regret in Ser Jorah’s voice as the swath of fire that’s let loose from Rhaegal’s throat swallows up the last two Unsullied in an inferno, and the recognition of the man on the ice below comes far too late to stop it.

Not that Ser Jorah would have been able to save him should he have known. There is no Grey Worm here.

Only a dead man, rabid and ready to rip out the veins and organs of those he once loved. With his bare hands, if it comes to that.

Both dragons fly off too soon, intent on King’s Landing, thinking the fire has done its work. Thinking the war party is no more. The fire licks at ice, smolders dead flesh to cinder, before steaming away in fog and silver mist.

The sea tosses a bit with open wounds, but the ice holds steady.

And when the flames burn away, Grey Worm remains, feeling no heat and no cold, his head ducked from the ball of fire until he’s certain the flames have cleared, bronze armor protecting his dead flesh from catching fire.

He stands as soon as the dragons are out of sight, his comrades scattered and unmoving, his way forward cut off jaggedly, by a break in ice that extends too far now to cross.

And if he was still Unsullied, he might think twice about continuing on. Down deep in his soul, Grey Worm always thought twice about what he was told to do, even as the masters said such a thing could not be possible.

The Unsullied are not men. Death means nothing to them.

But he doesn’t think twice now. He doesn’t think at all.

Not on why the dragons might be headed to King’s Landing, not on Ser Jorah’s desperate call of a name that lands on his ears without recognition.

If there’s hesitation, it’s only the slip of ice wet with seawater.

As he pushes himself off his hands and knees with grunting menace, his eyes drift east of Dragonstone, past a line of eastern ships bobbing as specks on the horizon, following a line of sight that, if continued, might lead him straight to an island of blue butterflies and white beaches…

The ice beneath his feet breaks, and he plunges straight down into freezing water.

“We will go home someday,” He promises her, as they walk quickly, side by side, out into the winter night. Their paths will split in minutes, only. She to the crypt, he to the battlefield.

While there’s still time, he promises, in his short-spoken way, “We will.”

Flicker of torchlight, whisper of kiss, battle horns in the distance.

Taste of salt. Salt in the land, salt on the ice. The bitter salt of Missandei’s tears on his lips. She swallows back the worst of it as they pull back, saying only, “I’m home now. Don’t make me leave it.”

“Home is far away,” he argues, his brow furrowing, wondering what she could mean.

The frosty air must be twisting the words on her sweet tongue, as the Winterfell courtyard is cold and bitter and will drink its fill of blood tonight. This terrible place is not home. But Missandei’s tongue knows her languages too well. She always chooses her words carefully. And she’s shaking her head, her expression pained and miserable.

“Home is wherever we are, Torgo Nudho,” she argues back, holding onto him for a moment more. Foreheads brushing, she whispers, “So long as we’re together…”

He surfaces without the need for breath, breaking the water line, grabbing hold of the ledge with hisses and howls. What strange, strange thoughts to be found beneath the water.

Precious thoughts. Doomed thoughts. Thoughts that don’t stick in the brain of a dead man.

They disappear as quickly as they come, and Grey Worm’s fierce gaze snaps around, back to Dragonstone. Grey Worm finds bobs of floating ice to jump across.

He’s up and scrambling and rushing manically once more. He won’t be stopped. He slips, he regains his footing. He grasps at the other side of the crossing with torn fingers and that icy spear, pulling himself up, rolling to his feet with a will to continue that goes beyond anything but raw need.

Run, run, run!

He saw Jon Snow on the green dragon, riding just behind Ser Jorah, but without thoughts of his own, he doesn’t comprehend. He doesn’t know that his mission has already failed.

And now distracted, the Night King fails to call him back to King’s Landing.

So Grey Worm is still running, urged on by the screaming voice in his head, knowing only that it won’t go away until he reaches Dragonstone and kills all who remain there.

Chapter Text

When that branch snaps, it cuts the eerie silence.

“Kraa!” Bran’s raucous shriek cuts it more, fluttering his black wings and calling out a crude warning for Meera. But she doesn’t need it and neither does Tormund, as they heard the sound too, both turning towards the cave entrance at the same time.

Ghost’s red eyes snap open, a low growl growing in the back of his throat. It’s a deep, rumbling snarl that continues, as the white hair on the direwolf’s back stands up on end. Ghost lifts himself up on padded paws, crouched now, his claws scratching against stone.

The forests of the far North are too quiet. No branch breaks by accident up here.

And the echo that follows is so piercing, the hollow ring of wood in a hush-dead forest, as if someone picked a bone off the ground and snapped it in two.

“Who’s there?” Tormund speaks up, his voice going raw and savage. He rasps like a bear risen up on its haunches. With Jon’s wolf crouched beside him, his wildling menace is increased by degrees.

But his tone isn’t devoid of fear, for only a fool would be fearless in the birthplace of dead men.

He’s only got that little hunting knife so he snatches a half-burned piece of wood from the campfire as well, now double-fisted. The makeshift torch is a blunt weapon to be sure, but the flame is strong and bright on the burning end and that should be enough to scare off any wild animals…if that’s what comes for them.

Meera says nothing at all but reaches for her bow quickly.

She notches the arrow and raises it high, the feather fletching brushing against her cold cheek as they wait, eyes unblinking and muscles tense, waiting for the stranger to show itself. Bran flies down to perch near her, squawking no more, but fidgety, flighty, ready to scratch out the eyes of whatever terrible creature lingers outside their refuge.

Perhaps it was just a passing—

“Have no fear.” The raggedy, but unmistakably Northern voice appears before its owner. A man’s shadow paints the snow, even though there’s no sun up here to cast shadows. No moon either, just scraps of clouds colored like the kelp of deep waters gone rancid.

And there’s even fewer men in these parts than shadows.

But Meera’s bow arm goes slack and the arrowhead dips down towards the snow, as this is a voice she’s heard before. In fact, it soon calls her by name. “I mean you no harm, Meera Reed.”

Bran knows the voice too, and far better than Meera, for it’s a voice he’s known since before he can remember. Trading words with his father as they clink tankards of mead across a feast table, teasing Robb and Jon on their sword play in the courtyard, mussing Bran’s mop of brown hair before he takes to his horse to ride off north again, “Be careful with all that climbing, Bran. You’ll break your mother’s heart if you fall.”

Uncle Benjen!

The raven’s syrinx strikes merry little clicks, while the boy who lives inside that feathered beast jumps up and down, in joy and relief. He’d seen a vision in the Three-Eyed Raven’s mind, and it’s what’s guided him back above the Wall, leading Meera hundreds and hundreds of miles from her home.

After all he’s seen and after all that’s happened, Bran is willing to risk much on fragments of dreams and scraps of visions. He’s a raven and he’ll remain one for his entire life, unnaturally long though it will be. There will be many who tell tales of Meera Reed, the elusive swamp girl, and the black raven that travels with her, sometimes perched on her shoulder nibbling corn, sometimes flying the blue skies above her head, even a score of years later.

But Bran doesn’t know the future. Not for certain. No one does. And there have been times over these last few months when he worries that he’s led Meera on a wild chase that will end with both of them frozen in the snow.

His uncle’s appearance is kismet. And a welcome tonic for all those lingering doubts. For it confirms that he was right to come up here, and that he’s led Meera to exactly where she needs to be.

Ghost’s low growl fades away, taking cues from the near-chortling raven.

Tormund does the same, after a long look at Meera. He notices the change in her stance, how she relaxes a little, and the way her bow comes down. He’s less willing to trust this stranger. He keeps that flaming piece of kindling still held at the ready, his teeth bared and his muscles tensed, ready to fight whatever comes.

But seeing her movements, he must think twice. Yet, he’s unsure, wondering what kind of friend they could possibly find in the most desolate and damned of the northern reaches.

“You know this man?” the wildling asks Meera, completely flummoxed.

Bran is bobbing his raven neck while Meera nods, then shakes her head firmly, amending, “But he’s no man.”

“Aye, she’s right,” Benjen agrees, coming into view at last.

His brogue is hoarse with winter, his icy skin as pale as ever, tinted a shadow-blue like snowfall at dawn. He has far more unhealed wounds on his neck and face than the last time they saw him. The cuts are deep, the scars jagged. He looks like he was torn to shreds by fingernails, much as Hodor must have looked after the dead finished with him.

But Hodor was alive when the dead swarmed him. Benjen’s veins have long been laced with a strange half-death.

“A fucking cro—?” Tormund muses, seeing the black cloak first, and the oddness of flesh second. Upon a closer look, his words fall away and he swallows hard, knowing this is no wandering ranger of the Night’s Watch. Not any longer.

“It’s Benjen Stark,” Meera says. Her eyes are locked with the man, tattered and frayed beyond mending, in both clothes and body. She breathes evenly, her eyes flickering with mixed feelings, wanting to believe he’s a friend, while suspicious that he’ll only reveal himself another foe.

Tormund’s lowered his knife, but only by an inch. He tells the man, “Jon Snow told us that you died when the dead took the Targaryen woman’s dragon. He said you were outnumbered and there was nowhere to run…”

“I didn’t run,” Benjen confirms, his eyes still on Meera, even as he answers the wildling, “But you can’t kill what’s already dead.”

Benjen takes a slow, cautious step inside the cave, ever knowing that they’ll mistrust his presence here. Bran remembers hearing stories from his father, tales of his uncles as young men—Brandon, reckless and passionate, Benjen, quiet and observant. One to an early grave, one to the Watch.

Ned used to say there was no one like Benjen when it came to breaking in the new horses at Winterfell, always mindful of a skittish spirit. He uses those old skills now.

Benjen reaches out his cold, cold hand so slowly, approaching the flame that Tormund still holds outstretched, as a warning. The orange flames lick at the wood but they recoil from Benjen’s touch, bending backwards in an unnatural, uncanny way that causes Tormund to drop the torch into the snow, for fear the flames will run up his ginger arm.

The torch dies with a hiss, smoldering up with wisps of smoke that dispel quickly in the chilly air. The campfire shivers as Benjen takes another step closer, sensing a pure creature of winter.

Bran’s raven-eye is trained on his uncle, watching him with interest. Tormund still holds his ground, but steals many glances at Meera. His admiration grows as her courage appears boundless. That look in her eyes is filled with more curiosity than anything else. She’s seen stranger things than Benjen Stark.

Over her lifetime, she’ll see stranger things still.

Benjen’s gaze flickers to the raven. Cold as the blood that flows through his ruined veins, and torn as his flesh may be, his mouth still softens at the sight of those black feathers, instinctively knowing who it is who travels with the Reed girl.

His uncle stretches out his arm and Bran goes to him without question.

Aye, you broke your mother’s heart, Brandon…but don't we all in the end.

They are a long way from Winterfell. The warm embrace of his uncle’s arms, the familiar smell of cedar, smoke and evergreens that used to cling to him, have all been exchanged for the raw scent of winter, skittering talons and a hoarse caw where Bran’s voice box should be.

Bran wishes he could go back in time and tell Old Nan that he’s sorry he didn’t believe her. For the Starks will forevermore be tangled up in tales that he would have sighed over and rolled his eyes at when he was still a little boy.

A man caught between the land of life and shadow. A boy trapped in the body of a raven.

His uncle’s cold lips turn into something that looks a little like a smile, sad as it may be. He scratches the feathers under Bran’s beak, his forefinger tracing along his curved neck, “Your father would have something to say about all this, wouldn’t he, hmm?”

Benjen’s attention turns back to Meera soon enough, his gaze gone piercing. He looks between her and her wildling companion, tilting his head back out the cave again.

“Come,” he urges them. “We’re running out of time.”

Chapter Text

When she left King’s Landing all those years ago, with the toll of bells ringing out over the foggy harbor and Joffrey’s poison-choked gasps still only a few hours old, she promised herself that she’d never go back.

Even if they found her and tried to drag her back by the hair, she wouldn’t go quietly. She’d claw at them with her fingernails, she’d bite and spit and dig in her heels. She’d be a true daughter of Ned and Catelyn Stark this time, fierce as Arya and the boys.

For nothing could be worse than what happened to her in this damned city.

Nothing, she thought, too blind and stupid and still too much a little girl, even then. Even after everything that had happened, she still failed to understand her own fate. Not knowing that she had yet to taste Littlefinger’s clammy kisses, Aunt Lysa’s spite, and Ramsay’s…

She’s changed. But so has King’s Landing…

Lady Olenna’s garden court is an ice box, frost ivy caging the once-green trellises, the pink and yellow roses all wilted and buried deep under snow drifts. The White Keep, for it can’t be called Red any longer, glints and creaks, encased in ice. The streets below are all hushed up, emptied of the more boisterous sounds of the living. No bakers with their fresh loaves, no washerwomen with their baskets.

Old echoes remain. In Sansa’s head, if nowhere else.

Margaery’s tinkling laughter mixes with Cersei’s smug barbs, Tywin’s booming speeches and the whispers of Varys’s little birds, all serenaded by the ringing of hollow bells and the metallic song of swords somewhere down at the pier. Her own words come back to her, with all the rest. A tearful plea, a desperate prayer—

As it please your Grace, I ask mercy for my father, Lord Eddard Stark…

It’s faint but she swears she hears them all still, everything that happened, all that passed within these city walls, echoing across snowy courtyards and cold ruins, sharp memories locked away and calling out for their own mercy, from behind walls and floors of ice.

Save us, Sansa. Save us!

Cersei’s absence should bring her joy, at least. But it doesn’t. She would choose Cersei now, and it brings her no pleasure to admit that, even to herself. But a mad queen of flesh-and-blood is to be preferred over a city of the dead-and-damned.

Countless wights shuffle through frosty corridors in a tense hush that frays her nerves. The dead don’t speak. They linger, they wait. Do they breathe? Sansa finds the air so cold that it hurts her lungs, as if she’s been running for a long time and can’t get a good breath.

She’s used to running in King’s Landing. She ran when the Lannisters came to her father’s quarters, slaughtering Jory Cassel and Septa Mordane, collecting their heads in a burlap sack to take them back to Joffrey. She ran from the crushing crowds when the smallfolk later turned on their king, and those men chased her through the streets, grasping at her skirt.

She can still hear the jeers and cackling taunts as they followed her into the alleyway. She smells them, even years later, stinking of rotten teeth and sour mead. Pulling at her hair, tearing at her gown. Their weight as they pinned her down, the hot breath and damp spittle against her cheek as she turned her face away from a man’s crass tongue which said he longed to lick her from navel to…

Sandor saved her that day. Now, he saves her from old memories. He takes Sansa’s hand and pulls her through an iced archway, both of them moving on quiet, careful footsteps. He whispers near her ear, “Stay close.”

They are dodging the wights, attempting to climb the stairs to the Throne Room without being seen. There are too many of the undead to fight—they’ll be overwhelmed in moments only. And they may be the only ones left. Or close to it. Gendry has made his way to the opposite side of the ice-shackled courtyard, prying open the servants’ entrance behind iced vines. The blacksmith gives them a long look and a short nod before disappearing within.

They’ve decided to split up and double their chances. They’ll need as many chances as they can get.

The haunting screech of dragons echoes above the cold city. In a rush, light snow flurries rise from the courtyard and swirl around them, as Viserion and Rhaegal, both riderless, suddenly fly overhead, giving chase to one another, just as they did at Winterfell. After they fly on, Sansa counts too many seconds strung together, worry carving up her face when Daenerys and Drogon don’t follow close behind.

But perhaps she’s still in the ruins of the Sept of Baelor, clearing out the wights and the White Walkers who attempted to trap them where they landed.

Where it happened.

Sansa wasn’t sure what to expect. When Tyrion said the gods had chosen them, she didn’t believe him. When he said that they would choose their moment to intercede, she didn’t know what that meant. She still doesn’t.

Even if she has to admit that something is happening in this city. Something beyond her comprehension.

What happened in the ruins wasn’t natural but it wasn’t victory either. And too short-lived. A blinding light descending from the heavens, snatched back when black-violet clouds came from hell to choke it out.

The Light.

The Light of the Seven.

How many times has she heard that turn of phrase? She thought it was a verse in songs and stories. At worse, she thought it was nonsense. At best, she thought it was myth.

The Night King sent Qyburn and a host of his White Walkers down to meet them, with a white flag raised and affixed to a spear, red-brown flecks of icy blood still clinging to its blade. All but Daenerys dismounted the dragons, swords drawn and unsure. The wights remained motionless throughout the city, as it seemed the Night King wanted a summit meeting with those who dared enter his city uninvited. But what negotiation could be had with Death?

You think you’re laying traps, but he’s the one that lays the trap.

She used those words before, speaking of Ramsay and Winterfell, and they were true then. They’re truer now.

But both times, Jon—

Why do my brothers always have to be the hero? Sansa feels a few stupid tears sting at her eyes, biting with frost and threatening to freeze before they fall.

“Now,” Sandor tells her to move, his eyes watching, his ears listening. The wights on the terrace above have moved out of earshot. He presses her on, a guiding hand at the small of her back, as soon as he sees their chance, “Quickly.”

He’s so focused on getting them up to the Throne Room, but his head must be spinning too? Sansa knows he’s not the kind of man to give much notice to the supernatural, but there’s no ignoring what just happened.

She doesn’t know what happened to Daenerys. The silver-haired woman was still on Drogon when the Light came. And she has no idea what happened to the others on that side either, as the Light cut a swath between them, making it impossible to see—Ser Jorah and Jon, Brienne and Lady Melisandre.

She couldn’t see anything, though she heard Qyburn’s quavering voice cry out at the cusp of that blinding light, “We have him, my lord!”

But then the ground shook as if an earthquake was boiling up beneath their feet and the dragons were spooked, alighting from the rumbling ground. It didn’t last—neither the light, nor the grumbling of the land. The Night King’s conjured clouds gathered too quickly, black and violet and sparking like mad.

And with the Light gone, the earth went silent once more. The gods (if that’s who it was) were gone before they’d properly come at all.

You would abandon us so easily?

There was bitterness in her thoughts as the clouds seem to strangle the Light, then swallow it. But Sandor was dragging her away from the ruins by that time, with Gendry following close on their heels. They’d lose the cover of Light too soon and Sandor knew it. He went straight for the winding alleyways and old tunnels to the Keep, knowing that if they were on their own, they’d have to finish this themselves.

If the Night King would not come down from his tower, they will have to go up and drag him out of it.

It’s all madness and Sansa knows it. But she knew that before they left Dragonstone. Damnable hell, she knew it before they left Winterfell.

She squeezes the Hound’s hand a little tighter, because she’s afraid. And she’s sad and she’s angry too. She had to watch her father die in this city, and she was in this Keep when they told her Robb and her mother were gone too. If they reach the Throne Room just in time to watch the Night King slit Jon’s throat and then slit theirs too, she’s not sure she’ll be able to stand it.

She hates this place.

Someday, many years from now, there will be many northerners who travel down to King’s Landing as a sort of pilgrimage. The city will draw visitors from all over the kingdoms, just as it did before. But this time, it won’t be to see the kings of Westeros, but rather the sights left behind when the notion of kings had all gone to dust and ashes.

King’s Landing will become a city of myth and legend, rebuilt from ruin, in styles that originate in a collision of both East and West. The freemen of Essos may not have arrived in time to join them in this battle, but they’ll help rebuild afterwards and the capital will reflect a restoration under eastern hands.

And then there’s the weirwood tree…

White bark, red leaves, but a giant among its race. Men and women from the world over will come to see that weirwood tree. The old Red Keep and the massive red-leaved tree, wrapped together in a tangled mess of stone and bramble, bark and vine, towering over the city like something straight out of a fairy tale.

But Sansa won’t care. She was there when that tree took root in the city. The image will be burned into her memory for life. She doesn’t need to see it again. She’ll be an old woman, tall but grey-haired, her Stark stubbornness only gone more oak-like with age. Her children, her grandchildren and even her great-grandchildren will warn off visitors to Winterfell of even mentioning King’s Landing in passing, as Sansa’s temper will never be as hot as when that city’s name is brought up in conversation.

Damn King’s Landing to the deepest and darkest of all the fucking hells.

Over the years, Sansa will perfect a talent for cursing. There will be no question where she picks it up. Sandor will vainly try to hide the fond grin that passes his harsh features every time he hears such rough words fall from his lady’s sweet lips.

For now though, there’s no grinning.

The Hound is as grim as she’s ever seen him, not enjoying their return to King’s Landing any more than she is. As another wight sentry shuffles by with creaking bones and little grunts, he brings Sansa back out of sight quickly, holding her tight against him, holding her still. Her hands perch on his arms, both of them holding their breath. The wight drags a ruined foot up and down the length of the cold corridor but these creatures seem not to notice running on bone when they give chase to the living.

They wait until the creature rounds the corner at the end of the hall, before they dash across the narrow corridor, ducking beneath another archway, leading to another staircase, white and icy as the others, everything kissed by hoarfrost.

Even in its current state, they both know this castle too well, having spent more time here than was healthy for either of them. To be forced to return now feels unfair. Even if Tyrion is right, after all. Even if the gods are here.

“The Light—?” she whispers to him, unable to hold her tongue any longer. She watches her step on icy stairs. She turns back just slightly, as he follows her close, ready to defend from above or below, if need be. She asks him, “And the others…?”

But he shakes his head, unable to explain it any better, “I don’t know. I couldn’t see a damn thing.”

Sansa couldn’t either. But she felt it. Her skin tingled with it. It still does. Her heart hammers over it. There was power in that Light that went beyond anything she might express and it lingers, even after being cut off. She rubs her thumb over her fingertips and feels something there.

And the earth itself seemed to awaken with it. The Light appeared so suddenly, whirled to life, as if blown in from the heart of a star.

Yet, it didn’t last. It shattered as soon as it was cut off from its source. If that was their chance, they missed it.

Thunder rumbles in the skies above as two fronts, one made of Light and one made of Darkness, colliding. Perhaps those forces struggle and wrestle above the clouds still, somewhere far out of sight.

The shattered Light beneath remains, for they don’t walk in darkness, despite the oppressive cloud cover. They walk in a shadow not cast by the sun, with tiny flecks of light to be found hovering in the chilled air, on these snowy staircases, down in the streets, drifting up to the highest spires.

Like fireflies in the snow, all pulsing in the cold, cold winter.

Sansa doesn’t understand any of it and can only look on the lights and the dead men with some strange mix of fear and awe, glad that Sandor’s hand is guiding her forward, for she’s not sure what she might do if he wasn’t here. She’s no battle-maid and this doomed place is working a madness in her head that grows with every step closer to the Throne Room.

If she was by herself, she thinks she might just touch those fireflies, like a spindle waiting to prick her finger. Or she’d start weeping in a corner somewhere, drawing the attention of wights who would tear her to pieces in a few seconds.

At the top of the short staircase, Sandor stops her again.

This time it’s not for the sake of wights lingering beyond the door, but because he catches sight of her expression, which has gone south of hopeless.

She can’t help it. She’d steeled herself for battle but this is something else. They’re wandering through a house of horrors, and the closer they get to the center, the more fear snakes around her heart, caging it, squeezing tighter and tighter, until she can’t breathe.

She can’t breathe.

“Sansa, look at me,” he tells her. It takes her a moment to realize that he’s spoken at all, as here’s another echo. He said those words to her once before, in these same corridors, a long, long time ago.

Look at me!

His tone had not been so fond then, nor his touch so gentle. But she knows now that he wasn’t trying to frighten her the night the Blackwater burned, he was trying to make her understand. So that she would go with him, so that he might keep her safe.

He’d told her the world was built by killers that night. She remembers that too. Does he still believe it?

“We’re going to die, aren’t we?” she can’t help but say it out loud, even if she knows he can read the dire words in her face just as well.

His naturally sad eyes go even sadder now, as she brings her hand up to touch the burned side of his face, slowly, tracing lines that have become so familiar to her fingertips, she would know him blind. She would have traced his ruined features for the rest of her life, memorizing them, kissing them, claiming them as her own.

He doesn’t answer, as she expects. He won’t lie to her, so what can he say?

She continues, her words hushed but taking on the cadence of a confession, “I used to imagine how it might have been if I’d run away with you that night. I used to tell myself that it wouldn’t have mattered either way. That they would have tracked us down and dragged me back here, just the same. And Joffrey would have put your head on a spike and made me stare at it for hours, just like the others…”

Her eyes are pooling with tears now and she drops her gaze, her fingers sliding down from his face to take a firmer hold at his shoulders, her forehead coming to rest on the leather covering his breastplate. She closes her eyes, trying to hold onto this moment, as it’s perhaps the last one before the end.

She tells him, “Maybe we would have made it out. Maybe you would have taken me to Mother and Robb and then I would have died at the Twins anyway. Or maybe highwaymen would have killed us one night on the road, for the gold in your coin purse or the dress I wore or just because they were drunk and wanted something to do…”

His arms go around her waist as he gathers her near. Her hands slide around his neck to better hold onto an embrace that she will miss more than all the rest. With her cheek pressed against his chest, she feels him press a soft kiss against her red hair. She murmurs, “From the time I was a little girl, they all said I was marked for death. Too foolish, too naïve. Sansa Stark, the little lamb, off to market to be slaughtered. But in my stupid, proud way, I thought I’d prove them all wrong…”

The Hound doesn’t make her promises he can’t keep. Although she knows he’ll fight to the bitter end to keep her safe. She’s afraid that won’t be enough this time.

Still, he gives her what he has, a knowledge that’s come to him late but has been made all the stronger for it. His voice is rough but his words are soft, to better spite the horrors that surround them, “Killers be damned, girl. Me with all the rest. The world is built with love and don’t you ever forget it.”

Chapter Text

Qyburn rarely, if ever, feels regrets.

What does he have to regret? He’s never killed anyone. Not personally. In fact, he’s brought at least one man back to life, which is more than those respectable maesters at the Citadel can claim.

Well, perhaps not quite life, as it were. Not exactly. More like a sort of half-life. But it’s better than no life at all, isn’t it? Gregor Clegane has never told him otherwise.

Of course, the Mountain can’t really tell him anything at all.

But Qyburn remembers thinking something along those same lines at Harrenhal, as he himself was brought back to the land of the living by Robb Stark pressing a wineskin to his lips and that dark-eyed Volantene woman pressing a cloth to stem the bleeding at his throat.

In the days before the Starks arrived, he’d been less optimistic, lashed to a rack, with rotting corpses as bedfellows. The stench of blood and decay was powerful but he clung to life stubbornly, in no rush to meet the void.

For it must be a void that follows…yes?

Even after everything he’s seen, Qyburn’s fairly certain there’s no afterlife, which is probably a good thing. Despite his lack of regrets, he anticipates that he’ll be gagged and bound straight for hell if there’s anything waiting for them afterwards.

It’s just a feeling but there’s that old saying about lying down with dogs and taking on fleas. What, then, might await a man who spends his days serving the whims of dead men and monsters?

Qyburn grimaces rather miserably along the cold walk back from the Sept of Baelor to the White Keep. Down at the Sept, he’d called out to his lord that the boy had been captured, but it appears that the Night King will not be coming down to claim his prize. In his head, Qyburn hears the familiar summons and the added instruction—

Quickly.

The walk is shorter than Qyburn remembers.

When the High Sparrow forced Cersei to walk these streets, it seemed very long indeed. From the tower, Qyburn and Kevan Lannister had watched the disgraced queen as she walked naked through the streets, the two men cringing on every rotten fruit hurled at her shaved head and every sharp stone that bloodied her bare feet.

But without teeming mobs out for blood and vengeance, it doesn’t seem so long at all. And there’s no septa’s brass bell ringing out behind him, to mark every step.

Shame, shame, shame…

Perhaps those words should serenade this walk as well. It might be fitting, considering the betrayal of one living man against another. But Qyburn wouldn’t pay them any mind, just as he gives Jon Snow’s bitter, “You’d willingly deliver your own kind to the likes of him?” no notice, calmly directing the White Walkers who drag the boy along with them to gag him if he says another word.

The Night King’s Hand is far past redemption. Or second-guessing his role in this play.

Again, he has no regrets. Even if he can’t say he’s completely settled with what just happened at the Sept. Nor that his steps don’t hurry along back to his master at a rather brisker pace than even the hissing “quickly!” which rang in his ears might demand, just in case the Light decides to come back…

For a man who spends so much time with shadows and corpses, Qyburn wonders why a burst of light should unsettle him so much. He’d say it’s all delusions, irrational musings of addled minds, but what’s rational in King’s Landing these days?

Lingering unknowns have always bothered Qyburn. He’s not one to leave well enough alone. He considers…

When the Light came down from the heavens, it was difficult for any of them to see anything. Blinding in a way that summer sunlight could only aspire to. He’s not sure where it came from or what brought it on, as those who landed in the ruins of the Sept of Baelor seemed just as surprised by its sudden appearance.

The few White Walkers caught in its swath screamed in pain and backed away from the touch of those strange, supernatural rays, as the Light seemed to burn holes in their pale, pale skin, leaving smoking blisters behind.

The living were not injured by it but hadn’t expected it either. They seemed just as stunned, fumbling blindly in the confusion that followed.

Only the Mountain seemed to be wholly unaffected and he was able to enter the Light and snatch Jon Snow from his proud stance, knocking the Valyrian blade from his hand with force enough that the northern steel clattered among the rubble and ruins, singing out a mournful note on icy stone, cast far out of the boy’s reach.

As the Light persisted, the ground began to shake and shudder.

Their master must have been watching from his tower, as his clouds gathered quickly to block it out. He gathered those cinder clouds rashly, with speed that was unlike him.

Qyburn has faith in the Lord of Death but he wonders if the Night King was caught unaware, like the rest of them. Again, it’s just a feeling, but the maester suspects those clouds are merely a patch over a dam, which unsettles him further.

He’s not the only one unsettled. The dragons took to the air when the ground began to shake, spooked by it.

From within that Light, Qyburn heard a woman’s dismayed cry, “Jorah!” He soon saw why, as the clouds thickened and the skies went dark once more.

She must have fallen, as the black-winged beast lifted off, too fast, moving by instinct instead of command. With that cry, she tumbled from the dragon’s scaly back, failing to hold her grip. But the man below caught her in his strong arms easily, saving her from a graceless, and likely painful, fall into old ruins.

The maester knew them by sight, even though he’d met them just the once—at the Dragonpit Summit. But they are impossible to forget. The silver-haired queen and her steadfast knight—Daenerys Stormborn and Ser Jorah Mormont—the exiles from across the sea, finally come to call on King’s Landing properly, all these many, many years later.

Oh, Cersei Lannister would roll in her grave to know that the Targaryen girl now dares to enter her city so brazenly and uninvited.

Except this isn’t Cersei’s city any longer. And the Mad Queen doesn’t really have a grave to roll in. More like a pile of frost-gnawed bones at the base of the tower.

As the quake settled and the Light shattered away, Jorah Mormont reached down and retrieved Jon’s sword from the snow and rubble, while taking his lady’s wrist to move her behind him, as far from the wights and Walkers as he was able, even if the horde had yet to move closer, awaiting, as always, their lord’s command.

Daenerys and Ser Jorah both looked so weary of everything. Daenerys’s hand drifting up to grab hold of her knight, both watching the dragons take chase of their dead brother with grim expressions, remembering how this same scene played out before and likely wishing they were anywhere else.

Don’t we all?

But Qyburn doesn’t bother with them. Nor Brienne of Tarth, who draws her great sword beside them, a warrior ready for the fight of her life. Or the others on the opposite side, who have vanished, abandoning their companions so soon? He caught a glimpse of the Hound’s scarred face and Sansa Stark’s red, red hair on the walk down—he expects they aren’t particularly enjoying this homecoming so far.

Let them run, let them rot, let them fight, let them die. He neither judges them for trying, nor considers struggling against the inevitable to be very wise. But it’s none of his business really. His instructions are clear. He has what his master wants already.

It’s Jon Snow that his master desires. Only Jon Snow.

And…perhaps the old woman too? She stares at him with a cloudy gaze, unblinking, except when her eyes flicker to the bastard boy.

Not a bastard. The prince who was promised, Qyburn amends in his head and wonders if he just imagines the old woman mouthing those unspoken words at the same time.

Yes, he decides, better to bring the old crone along too, lest she has mischief planned.

Wasn’t she the one that killed Renly Baratheon with a shadow? He’d be willing to trade up a few body parts to learn that trick. But he doubts the Night King will give him time to pull all the Red Woman’s many secrets out of her.

And anyway, it doesn’t look like she has much time left, even if he did.

Lady Melisandre is incredibly feeble. Why did they bring her here? What role can she possibly play? She can’t resist when two of the Walkers seize her and drag her away from the others, a line of wights cutting off any sort of rescue.

They’re forced to carry her as she can’t manage the walk on her own, a whisper away from death, all bone-white hair, sunken features and gnarled fingers. The sea of wights part for Qyburn with a curt flick of his fingers, his black-robed silhouette leading his pale-skinned guards and their captives away from the Sept.

It’s all too easy, but Qyburn doesn’t have a metric for what should or shouldn’t be easy anymore. Or natural. Or right. He’s seen too much, he knows too much, he lives a life that no mortal man should lead, too convinced that the Night King has triumphed. For good.

And he’s happy (or at least not surprised) to be proved right in this. For whatever defense these fools planned on mounting is over before it ever truly began.

The Light is gone.

Or nearly. He can’t deny his eyes, noticing, with a growing tenseness, how the shattered Light follows them, tiny orbs which quietly scatter around the whole city, floating to spires, winding through quiet streets. A proper swarm of those lights ring the White Keep, rising through frosted windows and under iced archways, at a pace on par with Qyburn and his White Walkers.

It’s ominous, of course, but appears harmless enough.

Qyburn can’t help but inspect them a little closer, even as he is bid to return to their master without delay. His morbid curiosity wins out, as always. And he stops abruptly on the stairs to the Throne Room.

Roughly hauled up, Jon Snow spits a little blood from his mouth, from an altercation during the tussle with the sword, while Lady Melisandre continues to watch Qyburn. Something like curiosity laces the deep lines in her face, betraying none of her thoughts.

Not one.

Those fireflies of Light left behind seem to not know where they are, wandering, floating, lacking sight that Qyburn suspects might otherwise make them dangerous. He’s almost hypnotized by the floating lights, reaching out his hand to brush at the glow of luminescence and just…

A siren screech of dragons—as the beasts fly overhead, cold air blasting in their wake, and Qyburn snatches his hand back, remembering himself at the last moment. He pulls his black robes close at the new (and somehow colder, how is that possible?) chill on the wind and urges the Walkers to follow, with their prisoners in tow.

Bring him quickly, necromancer, repeats the ancient, accented voice in his head. Or dare not come at all.

Chapter Text

She swore she wouldn’t be caught unaware this time. She swore to Jorah that she wouldn’t take any chances. If the dead swarmed or the battle turned against them, she’d take to the air, no matter what happened below.

She’d do what she must. She wouldn’t look back.

He made her promise on the beach at Dragonstone, stopping her short before they reached the others, holding her back on the very spot in the surf where they’d spoken of farewells, before he left for Eastwatch, before the summit with Cersei Lannister, before White Harbor and Winterfell and all that happened after.

I meant what I said…

But now the surf is frozen, the sea is silent, and they are on their way to willingly tangle with dead men. Again.

“If Tyrion’s wrong and this doesn’t work, you will run…,” he commands, in a voice that he never uses with her. Or rarely.

Once, perhaps.

Standing together in the desert night, his yellow shirt fluttering, torch flames licked by night winds and wickedness, that Lhazereen witch still humming her eerie spells even the men bound her to Khal Drogo’s funeral pyre. Daenerys had been too caught up in death—fester, graveworms, blood price—her cheeks hollow and her eyes red-rimmed. Her arms aching for a baby that was buried in sand, a child that had never taken a breath, never cried.

She was mad with grief that only a raging fire would burn away.

The desert breeze stung, pricking at her skin like pins and needles and she failed to recognize that Jorah stood beside her—that he was still there, that he would never leave her. He forced her to face him, bringing her out of a stupor. His fingers pressed into her arm that night, with gentle desperation, leaving marks on her bare skin.

I won’t watch you burn.

He didn’t, he wouldn’t. He won’t watch her freeze or be murdered by dead men either.

He grips her arm again on the beach at Dragonstone, much the same as that night long ago, his worry bleeding into the force of his touch. And there’s a raw hoarseness in his voice that isn’t borne of cold weather alone, “You will fly Drogon straight back here and you will take Missandei and Jeorgianna as far from these shores as you can. As far east as East goes, Daenerys. Promise me this?”

“Jorah, that’s not what we—”

“I can’t…please, Khaleesi?” he looks so tired and so battle-weary then, his blue eyes brimming with pain, all unspoken, but pain she reads plainly nonetheless. “Just promise me.”

Jorah Mormont is one of the strongest and bravest warriors the world has ever seen. He survived years of exile and months wandering the Red Waste. He defeated Dothraki bloodriders, stiff-necked masters, stonemen and the best of the Meereenese fighting pits. Samwell Tarly flayed him alive to save him from a disease they all said was incurable. He’d faced the hordes of hell in the Long Night, taking more blows than any living man had a right to.

She knows he cares nothing for his own fate even still, having little fear that they fly willingly to the gates of hell again. At least no fear for himself.

Oh, but there’s fear in his eyes. And so much pain. It hurts her to see him like this. Almost as much as it hurts to walk away from their child. Even now, she’s tempted to run, rushing back up the winding stone staircase, pushing the heavy doors to Dragonstone open and pressing Jeorgianna to her breast.

This time, to never let go.

Winter winds off the icy sea flutter at his ginger-grey locks, his brow furrowed over deeply carved lines that betray his years, but he looks like a little boy then. A little boy afraid of the dark—a terrible darkness that too easily threatens to swallow up the ones he loves the most.

She wants to hold him close, wrap her arms around his neck, bury her head in his chest and tell him that there’s nothing to fear. She’s told him before, curled against him, whispering across shared pillows.

She’s seen their end and this isn’t it.

And whatever doubts might plague her mind on that score…well, she refuses them. She’ll not give them notice, for both their sake’s.

But she gives him what he wants on the beach. He’s given her everything and then some. It’s the least she can do.

“I promise,” she vows, hoping her eyes don’t give her away.

If he thinks she’ll leave him behind, he’s a foolish, foolish man.

I won’t watch you die either, Ser.

Yet, in one way, she means it. She has no intention of stranding herself on the ground again. King’s Landing will not be Winterfell. She learned her lesson on those bloody moors well enough.

As they fly into the city and perch down in the ruins, she keeps her eyes alert and her grip steady. She won’t make the same mistake twice, by the—

But then, the Light appears and the earth shakes and shudders as if it might tear itself apart! And in a way she’s never felt before in her life, not in the Free Cities or Slaver’s Bay or here, in the West. It’s the rumbling and quaking of frozen earth that spooks the dragons this time, in a way that she isn’t prepared for, caught too off guard by too many things happening at once.

She’s in freefall, reaching up for the edge of scales that slip and slide away under clumsy fingers. Drogon’s hide is frosted and her hands are too numb from the winter flight to manage a steady hold. Daenerys cries out, in frustration, in all those doubts that seem to tumble down with her, and she can only manage to call for him, instinctively, “Jorah!”

He catches her when she falls. The steady, familiar feel of his arms gathering her up gives her instant relief and she’s tempted to stay there, huddled against his chest, safe in his arms…

Until the Light vanishes, the ground goes silent and there are sounds of a struggle. The tussle between the Mountain and Jon ends too quickly, with Valyrian steel knocked away and striking stone. It happens so fast, too fast. The sea of wights part for the Night King’s black-robed maester and his ilk, as the captives are dragged off to the monster that lives in the White Keep.

Within minutes, they are left standing in frosted ruins, without dragons, ringed by thousands and thousands of staring, unmoving wights.

Daenerys is shaking her head. She can’t do this again.

She won’t. The scene is too familiar, too recently lived through. And it still makes her blood run cold to remember that night in Winterfell.

The memory of seeing Jorah fall freezes her lungs, burning…

Or maybe that’s just the air around this city, scented by hoar frost and cold breezes moaning through ghost alleyways, like the howl of a banshee trapped and chained in the demon-king’s ice castle.

Hell frozen over is still hell.

She knew what they risked in coming here. She agreed because she had no choice. But she won’t do it. She won’t watch him die. Not now, not like this. Later, she’ll find it curious that she didn’t think of her own death in that moment, which would have been just as certain should Jorah fall.

But she doesn’t, she thinks only of him. The father of her child, the man she loves the most in all the world.

She won’t do it.

You can deliver that message to the gods of the sky personally, Drogon, she thinks bitterly, as he flies off without a hitch in his glide, failing to notice his mother’s absence on his back. She would sigh at his neglect, if the cold air allowed a deeper breath. She would clench her fists, if she could feel her fingers.

Her first child has always been selfish, even for a dragon. That will never change. In Meereen, in Winterfell, now here, in King’s Landing too. Jeorgianna is only a baby, but Daenerys already knows that her daughter would never abandon her this way.

But then, Jeorgianna is half Jorah, so perhaps that makes all the difference.

For Jorah would never abandon her either. Even if it means laying down his life for hers, over and over again, always standing between her and death. He does the same now, setting her down with care, and only once she finds her footing, taking her wrist to keep her behind him, as he retrieves Longclaw from the stones.

Jon’s sword was Jorah’s first, Daenerys knows this. But it becomes strikingly apparent as she witnesses him pick it up, knowing its weight too well, deftly flipping the hilt as he finds an old, familiar grip.

The sword swings up in a graceful, easy manner, coming even with the eyeline of that wall of blue-eyed wights, ready to cut through their already flesh-torn ranks should they decide to charge. She should be paying more attention to the dead. But her eyes are on Jorah and his family’s sword.

The sight of that sword being reacquainted with its former owner might make Daenerys’s knees go weak, if they weren’t about to die.

There are so many! Legions upon legions. The Night King must have doubled his army’s number on the march south. Northerners, southerners, men and women from both east and west, loyal to Lannister, Stark or Targaryen—it no longer matters. They are all finally joined together in one, common purpose.

Death.

Jorah, Daenerys and Brienne—Where is Sansa? Where are the others? She doesn’t know—they are only three now. Three against tens of thousands. With one command from the White Keep, they will be overrun.

What is the Night King waiting for?

Brienne knows this silence won’t last and she knows they won’t survive the assault when it comes, but she has a stubborn streak too. The Warrior’s favorite will not face her demise with fear. “Fuck this. I’m not doing it again,” the tall woman grumbles, echoing Daenerys’s own thoughts. Brienne draws her Valyrian sword—Oathkeeper, cast in Ice, how appropriate—and dares the dead to move closer with a snarl.

Jorah just holds steady. He faces the army of the dead without saying a word. He remembers the lake above the Wall. He’ll not taunt them as the Hound did.

If the end is to come, it will come. But he’s not going to rush it. Without taking his eyes off the dead men, one weathered hand comes away from the sword’s hilt to reach back…

Without hesitation, Daenerys takes a step forward and slips her hand in his to hold on tight, drawing warmth from fingers that entwine with her own.

Time slows. Does the standoff last for hours? Or only minutes?

Daenerys remains just behind Jorah, standing close, his towering form giving her refuge, as if she’s hiding beneath the eaves of a stronghold, under which she might wait out this terrible storm. She doesn’t look at the dead, as she’s not that brave, nor the wandering lights, as she doesn’t understand them—not where they came from, nor why they linger.

Instead, she casts her eyes skyward, up into swirling mists of snow and shadow.

Drogon is a speck in the high thermals, a winged spot rising higher, set on some unknown destination. Below the silhouette of the black dragon, Viserion and Rhaegal give chase to one another angrily, skimming the underbelly of those cinder-violet storm clouds, while twisting and diving away from each other.

Flash of green scales, flash of silver-gold—tattered wings and deep scars. Viserion’s wounds haven’t healed since Winterfell. It breaks her heart to watch the two brothers fight, all snapping jaws and scratching talons, teeth and hide, both locked in a dance of death that was begun months ago in the North, but will end here.

Everything will end here, one way or another.

They say you see your life flash before your eyes at the end.

As she stands there, Daenerys thinks it must be true. Her vision blurs as she searches the sky for answers. She sees a lemon tree and a red door. Jorah’s blue eyes in the desert, a blush peach in his hand. In a garden in Qarth, baby dragons curled up and sleeping in a basket. Fire in Astapor, blood in Meereen. Salted sand beneath her fingers as she knelt down and pressed her palm flat on the Dragonstone beach.

…the same spot where Jorah took her hands and told her he loved her still, even after everything, sewing up all their old mistakes and misery with a simple, undeniable truth. With his hand clutched in her own again, she feels his thumb brush over her knuckles gently, silently repeating what she knows to be true.

There is no one in this world that I’ve loved so well as you…

She thinks on Jeorgianna, her baby’s pretty blue eyes shining up at her from the cradle, and her arms ache for her child. She knows Jorah is thinking on Jeorgianna too. She knows he’ll cut through half of these dead men before they finally subdue him, each slash of the blade of House Mormont made with an iron will that will do anything to keep their daughter safe.

And her too, if he can manage it. He fights, as always, for her.

Her eyes flicker down from the dragons and her spinning thoughts, returning to him. To Jorah. They are in the midst of a sea of dead men, awaiting the inevitable, but she’s suddenly consumed by her love for him.

Her own sweet bear. Brave and gruff, steadfast and gentle. Her lover, her husband, her best friend. If this is the end, she’s glad they’ll go together. She’s not sure she’d be able to stand it otherwise.

She notes his profile, watching him as he watches the dead. No grins or soft looks now, he is severe and wretched with misery. She wishes she could take her fingers and run them along all those worry lines, softening them with her fingertips, assuring him that all will be well.

No matter what happens, Jorah.

She doesn’t know what makes her speak then. She’s muttering over the words before she has a chance to second-guess them, tone dripping with a sudden fondness that really has no place on a battlefield.

She muses absently, “The Father’s face is stern and strong…”

Jorah hears her voice—the pin-drop silence that surrounds them is deafening. He turns back, sharply, the oddness of hearing the first line of a Westerosi nursery rhyme spoken, here and now, by her, causing those worry lines to abate, just a little, in favor of something else.

He regards her curiously. She just shrugs, while meeting his gaze and keeping it.

And suddenly—as it was in the Red Waste and Qarth, as it was in the fighting pits of Meereen, with screams of slaughter crying out around them—the world goes small, the rest dims, as they only have eyes for each other.

“Where did you learn that verse?” He will ask her this later, knowing that Daenerys had been raised hundreds of leagues from any sept or lord’s nursery, with frivolous things like rhymes and storybooks, a childhood luxury not afforded to a little girl in exile. Not even a princess.

“Those old books you gave me in Pentos,” she’ll answer, grinning over how some things just seem meant to be. Then her grin will deepen, as the troubles have passed and her hands are running through his fair-colored hair, less grey now, more red-and-gold in spring’s vibrant sunlight. She’ll remind him, “And you used to sing it to Jeorgianna in the night hours…”

It’s a throwaway line. Pure nonsense to any ears but those of children.

And perhaps the Lights…

“Ser Jorah...my lady?” Brienne relaxes her fierce stance, perplexed, her mouth going a little slack as she watches the nearest firefly lights descend and begin to cluster. They are drawn down to the narrow space between the living and the dead, brightening enough that the wights are forced to squint and cover their eyes…

…and take a faltering step back.

High above the city, in cinder skies, Drogon breaches the Night King’s storm clouds and starts beating his black wings furiously.

Chapter Text

The Father’s face is stern and strong,
he sits and judges right from wrong.
He weighs our lives, the short and long,
and loves the little children.

The Mother gives the gift of life,
and watches over every wife.
Her gentle smile ends all strife,
and she loves her little children.

The Warrior stands before the foe,
protecting us where e’er we go.
With sword and shield and spear and bow,
she guards the little children.

The Crone is very wise and old,
and sees our fates as they unfold.
She lifts her lamp of shining gold
to lead the little children.

The Smith, he labors day and night,
to put the world of men to right.
With hammer, plow, and fire bright,
he builds for little children.

The Maiden dances through the sky,
she lives in every lover’s sigh.
Her smiles teach the birds to fly
and gives dreams to little children.

The Seven Gods who made us all,
are listening if we should call.
So close your eyes, you shall not fall,
they see you, little children.

Just close your eyes, you shall not fall,
they see you, little Children.

The Song of the Seven is a just nursery rhyme.

A lullaby used to put children in Westeros to sleep for hundreds of years. The verses are pretty things but pure nonsense to those who’ve lost their faith or never had any to begin with.

But it’s no coincidence that Sansa Stark quoted the verse of the Warrior on the same night Lyanna Mormont’s eyes first flickered from blue to brown. Nor that the Night King’s magic has been growing weak and brittle, undermined every time Jorah uses that song to sing his daughter to sleep. Or that the shattered Light of the Seven gathers and clusters under Daenerys Stormborn’s impulsive words, growing brighter and stronger, glowing…

The hidden power in a lullaby’s words can only truly be known by children.

Only Children. The Children of the Forest who first gave it to men, to be used as a spell of protection in their darkest hours.

The same Children who served the Old Gods, but made peace with the New Ones too. Who witnessed the blood treaties that were made in the old days, and heard the promises sworn between men and gods, when the sun went dark and the land went fallow, and there was nothing but darkness and terror and screams in the night.

They remember what was promised between the Old Gods and the New—when they all realized that men might fail and then Death would naturally turn its ravenous eyes on them.

They made a pact, they made a blood oath.

They told men to seal all their vows the same, “By the Old Gods and the New.” To remember that oath. To keep faith with one another, even a thousand years later.

And now, the time has come to make good on the old treaties. The New Gods are calling out for the Old, at the last hour, shining their Light on the path, to show the Old Gods the way. But something’s wrong.

Someone has blinded the trees.

We see you, little Children! The Seven say, just before the Light shatters under the Night’s King’s blunt defenses.

But we can’t see you! They reply, miserably, rubbing blood and tears from eyes that sting and hurt and cannot see.

In the Land of Always Winter, there’s an echo under the ice mountains. Old Nan is spinning tales again. Or is that Maester Luwin’s voice, conjured up from beyond the grave?

There’s memory here. The old man’s sitting up on the mattress beside Bran Stark, wise eyes crinkling at the corners, kindly reminding the wide-eyed child who wants so much to believe in impossible things, like being able to walk again, “The dragons are gone, the giants are dead, and the Children of the Forest all forgotten.”

But that isn’t true at all, is it?

The giants are undead, with all the others, the dragons fly the skies above King’s Landing, dancing to a song of ice and fire.

And as for the Children of the Forest…

Leaf is dead. Leaf was the last. The Children are…

Forgotten. Not dead, just forgotten. Maester Luwin got that one right.

Forgotten lines of verse and forgotten lines of blood—the bloodlines that trace from the Children of the Forest to the small, wiry crannogmen who live in the shifting swamps around the Neck.

Straight to Meera Reed.

“Place your hand on that tree, girl, and tell us what you see,” Benjen Stark commands her, in a voice that no one alive would dare question. Not here, not now.

They are in the center of the Night King’s lair, dangerous even when the master is not at home.

They are down beneath trees that have grown too tall and caves that crawl too deep beneath the mountain, standing in a spiral of ice stones, beside a wretched and twisted weirwood tree, its bark cut up and marked by the imprint of great iron chains. The chains were removed only in recent years, to drag a dead dragon up from icy depths.

There are great chunks carved out of its sides, with blasphemous etchings up and down the bark in old languages lost to the world, all open sores in the white that bleed red. The tree is pierced through with an iron spear, dipped in frost and rusted in age.

This weirwood tree is a prisoner of war. One that was left behind, lost to darkness of a lasting and terrible kind.

“Careful, Meera,” Tormund cautions. He wouldn’t touch that tree with a ten foot pole and tells her so. Even Ghost gives the ruined tree a wide berth, staying near the wildling, white hair on his back and haunches standing straight up.

But Meera’s come too far to turn back now.

Bran flutters up into silver branches, perching and lending his touch to help focus hers. Meera kneels in the snow, placing her palm flat against stained bark. Her bare hands are so cold but warmed by the blood-like sap that continues to drip down the weirwood’s trunk from all its many wounds, a trickling flood of scarlet that soon leaves her hands bathed in red.

She shakes her head, feeling hot tears flood her eyes immediately, as the tree’s raw pain is hers as soon as she lays her hands on that bark, “I see…nothing.”

Chapter Text

“Did I ever tell you what Ned Stark said to me when I visited him in the dungeons of King’s Landing?”

Varys is bundled under thick, winter robes, his expensive silks and colorful damask long exchanged for rougher, plainer wools, his collar trimmed in black and grey fur. He’s picking at his fingernails, which is an odd thing to do when death is imminent.

But the eunuch has been waiting on death for quite a few years in a row now and he’s found it’s nearly impossible to remain in a constant state of horror.

It comes and goes in waves. Even for the less-than-courageous.

He’s sitting on a velvet-lined chaise in the same room where they’d spoken of battle plans not so long ago, all scrapped as soon as Daenerys Targaryen stopped her pacing by the window, calling their attention to the sight of wildice spreading across the sea like greyscale over a doomed man.

The irony of the reference isn’t lost on the Spider. But there’s no Samwell Tarly to fix this malady. Sam died at Winterfell, with the rest. And Varys was down at the beach before the others left, watching Ser Davos and Gendry test the ice.

It’s more than a meter thick. With an unnatural glossiness and chill that makes Varys’s nose wrinkle in distaste. He still hates magic. He’ll hate it until he leaves this world for good, which should be in the next few…hours, maybe?

They’re all going to die. Varys is convinced. He won’t run screaming from it, he has no hair to set on fire in protest. He’s willing to wait it out again, calmly, as he has no other choice. The time for escape is long over.

Varys can’t say he doesn’t regret not staying in the East when he had the chance. But he’s not at all convinced that this doom won’t reach Illyrio’s palace by the time it’s all over anyway.

It took the Dothraki thousands of years to cross the Narrow Sea. But based on the strength of that ice outside and the appetites of the one who laid it out over the sea, Varys expects the Night King’s cold gaze will turn East as soon as he’s finished with the West.

Tyrion is standing nearby, pacing slowly, with his stubby hands clasped behind his back, saying little, staring at obsidian walls. It’s unlike him to be so silent, even in dire times. Perhaps especially then.

How many of these tense vigils have they kept together now? Too many—the disasters and calamities never seem to stop lately. The world is currently dark and full of terror, as Lady Melisandre is so fond of saying.

I have to die in this strange country, just like you…she’d told Varys, out on the cliffs, when her hair was still scarlet-colored and the Isle of Dragonstone was still green.

She’s been wrong about some things, right about others. Varys knows it’s all a coin toss. A trick, a shadow on the wall. And he’ll never trust a sorceress, even a reformed one. Yet…

He shivers under his robes then, silently bemoaning the fact that he isn’t in Pentos, after all. It’s spilled milk and burning parts, nothing to be done about it now. But if they survive this, he’s headed due east, on the first ship he can find.

For now, he keeps his eyes on his fine nails, hoping Tyrion helps him fill the silence fairly soon. Ignoring death is a team effort, best done in company. Too much silence and Varys can almost swear he hears the distant sound of bells tolling out a funeral dirge.

And he hates bells as much as he hates magic.

“I was under the impression that he told you to fuck off,” Tyrion finally replies. There’s some bite in his words but he’s muttering them with less enthusiasm than Varys would have liked.

Tyrion’s incredibly somber these days—sober too. It’s better for the workings of his clever mind, but Varys is a little nostalgic for the drunken dwarf of years past.

Sober Tyrion will have to do. The few Dothraki who remain in this castle are all huddled around the fireplaces, shivering under six layers of northern furs and speaking to each other of bad omens and the Night Lands. The Unsullied were never much for talking, even in happier times, when it was mere mortal enemies they were dealing with.

Missandei is fully occupied with the Queen’s child and Ser Davos is up in the tower, as if he were in the crow’s nest on one of his ships, likely stewing over strange weather on the horizon, golden lights swallowed by violet-black storm clouds.

The skies in the southwest are born under witchcraft and conjuring and may be a sign that it’s already all over. Maybe, maybe not. They’re too far from King’s Landing to know for sure and will just have to wait.

“Not in so many words,” Varys counters, with delicacy. But he offers no more, wanting to drag this conversation out as long as possible. He’s in no hurry to return to silence. And he’s a patient man, willing to wait to get what he wants.

Whether that be the whispers of little birds or a sorcerer in a box.

“Well…?” Tyrion’s curiosity eventually wins out over his pensive mood. He’s not looking for distraction like Varys, but he won’t say no to it either.

“Lord Stark said he grew up with soldiers and that he learned how to die a long time ago,” the eunuch reveals, with his usual slipperiness, implying certain truths while pondering over others. He tips his head on Ned Stark’s odd notion, “Do you think that’s possible?”

“Do I think what’s possible?”

“That someone who is alive might know how to die?” Varys shrugs through another shiver, as he pushes back the cuticles on his two smallest fingers. “It’s not as if anyone living has done it before.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Tyrion allows, chewing on rumors. “If you recall, Beric Dondarrion had quite a bit of practice in that regard before Thoros of Myr’s untimely death.”

“Ah, yes. The drunken fire priest brings his travelling companion back to life five times…or was it six?” Varys nods, abandoning his fingernails in favor of his rings, spinning them around and studying the eastern designs with minor interest. “Yes, six…and on the seventh, he dies and stays dead. A curious thing…”

“Because his fire priest was dead,” Tyrion reminds his companion, not at all interested in “curious” things at present.

“A strange phenomenon just the same, wouldn’t you say, my lord?” Varys considers, finally sliding his hands back up into the sleeves of his long robes, hidden from view once again.

“You can add it to the list,” Tyrion waves a hand out the window and that massive ice sheet covering the sea. He sighs, “Why are you bringing this up?”

“I don’t know,” Varys admits, honestly, squirming a little in his seat. “Thoughts of death, I suppose.”

“Well, stop,” Tyrion requests, in bitter tones, mumbling. “Try a cheerier subject.”

“…at least we’re not in a crypt this time?” Varys mentions after a short pause, garnering a glower from Tyrion, an expression that he must have learned from Jorah Mormont.

He gives the dwarf a look, “But come, you haven’t answered my question…”

“Which question?”

“Can someone living know what it’s like to die? Other than Beric Dondarrion, I suppose. Who is now presumably dead for good and wouldn’t be able to tell us anyway, just to be clear,” Varys adds the caveat with a thin smile.

“I have absolutely no idea, Lord Varys,” Tyrion exhales, too unwilling to pursue the topic.

Yet, maybe he doesn’t want to slip into silence either. He’s not so unobservant that he doesn’t understand why Varys pushes the matter and adds, after another pause, “It sounds like a figure of speech to me.”

“Northerners do like their dire sayings. And they approach death with far less fear than the rest of us…,” Varys observes, with something almost like theory. But that theory is about to be proven, one way or another.

Tyrion gives a huff at his words, not seeing why it matters.

“The Northerners live closer to death than the rest of us.”

It isn’t Tyrion who speaks these words, but Ser Davos, entering the chamber with the same perpetual frown that seems to hover over all their features at all hours. And has done, for the better part of a couple years now.

He must have caught bits and pieces of their discussion as he descended the stairs. He has no morose tidings to bring, at least no new ones. He told them about the sky above King’s Landing already, saying that the light had gone, the clouds turning as black as the crows, bruised as a pile of moldy, rotten onions.

Missandei is lingering in the halls outside the chamber for she joins them at almost the same time, drawn in by Davos’s voice. She has the baby with her, swaying, holding Jeorgianna Mormont up against her shoulder and granting the tiny child as many smiles and kisses as she can muster, quietly promising her uncertain things, “Mama will be home soon, little one.”

Another coin toss, thinks Varys.

A weighted one, Tyrion would add, suddenly craving a drink. Heavy on defeat.

In the meantime, Davos answers the eunuch’s observations with practical knowledge, as is his way, “A winter storm, a bad harvest, feral wolves, hungry bears, a wildling raid—there’s little between the North and the grave.” His eyebrows twitch a little as he mentions, “But you’re wrong about Dondarrion…”

“Oh?” Tyrion wonders, his own eyes narrowing.

His tone may hold less immediate snark lately but it’s hard to teach a half-man new tricks. He asks flatly, “You’ve seen the Brotherhood prancing around the snow drifts of the Riverlands lately, have you?”

Ser Davos ignores the sarcasm.

“No, I mean about him being the only living man who knows what it’s like to die,” Davos replies. He shakes his head, hair salted by age, features salted by too many years on the sea…and sights not fit for mortal men. “He’s not the only one who’s come back.”

“What’s that supposed to me?” Tyrion asks, finding himself less entertained by cagey discourse as the minutes wear on. First Varys, now Davos.

Davos seems on the fence about saying more, but what good are secrets now?

He takes a breath, “There was a mutiny at Castle Black that ended with the Lord Commander dead in the snow…”

“Yes, we’ve all heard, Ser Davos,” Varys replies. “The Old Bear killed by his own crows, a terrible tragedy to be lamen—”

“No,” Davos answers, cutting the eunuch off before he was finished. “You don’t know. I’m not talking about Jeor Mormont—”

The baby in Missandei’s arms makes a happy cooing sound at that name, for it sounds a little like her own. Her tiny fist is in her mouth but wanders to Missandei’s breast, pushing herself up, looking for the voice that said it.

“—I’m talking about Jon Snow…”

Varys has some clever remark ready for Ser Davos but now he can’t remember it. If Tyrion’s eyes narrow any further, they’ll close completely. Lines appear on his forehead as he wonders what Davos means, turning to Missandei for answers. But she has none, her features just as perplexed, having not heard this story before either.

No one has. There are only three alive who know it. And one dead.

But that story will have to wait.

They’ll never be sure which one of them saw it first. But they’ll all agree that Daenerys Stormborn should consider installing some heavy drapes in this chamber, as the views from the westward-facing towers never bring anything but terrible news.

There’s a spot out on the ice, growing larger, coming closer. A lone soldier, spear at the level, running at an ungodly speed.

“Gods, that can’t be good…,” Tyrion mutters, while Varys suddenly regrets all that prior talk of death. The wave of horror has returned and is leaving a bad taste in his mouth. He grimaces as he rises from the chaise.

“Missandei, take Jeorgianna up to Shireen’s tower and bar the door,” Ser Davos is steady, but all their hearts are sinking at the sight of that lone soldier rushing towards them, the strange, loping gait that betrays he’s no living man.

And where there’s one, there’s bound to be others. They all brace themselves for what’s to come.

Except the baby, of course, who babbles a little in Missandei’s arms. Her blue eyes light up at the sound of her name, little gaze remaining fixed on Ser Davos until Missandei carries her out of sight and away to safety.

Chapter Text

And one day you walked through a graveyard and realized it was all for nothing, and set out on the path to righteousness.

–Book of the Stanger, Verse 25

Jon Snow knows nothing, he feels nothing.

He’s numb, and it’s not the weather in King’s Landing.

The chamber where Aerys Targaryen once burned men alive is currently colder than the bottom of the sea. But Jon wouldn’t feel warmth even in a summer heat storm. He’ll never feel warmth again. Not on this earth.

It’s all broken glass and ice crystals scattered about, and now those bizarre shards of lights, little flames without warmth, which float around, aimlessly, giving the impression that they’re all standing in the remnants of a shattered snow globe.

Jon doesn’t understand it. All these years later, and he still knows nothing.

The Night King knows something. He eyes the lights warily, showing a flicker of something ancient and bitter in that otherwise impassable expression. Jon wonders if maybe…

But when the horned devil steps off his stolen throne, he waves away one of the lights effortlessly, batting at it, flicking it from his path, feeling none of the blisters or pain that the White Walkers appear to, ending Jon’s last-chance hope that salvation might yet be at hand.

Oh, what’s it matter anyway?

He’s in a graveyard. What salvation can be found here?

The Mountain is rough, hauling him by the collar and tossing him to the frosted stones, throwing him at the feet of his master. Jon rolls, a creature of flesh and blood and pain—well now, he does feel something, after all—his shoulder striking the lowest step of the icy dais hard enough that he can’t help but cry out.

He sees the disgraced maester, Qyburn, cringe a little at his pain. Good. He hopes the man feels some shame. Not that it will last long.

This is the end. For all of them.

Jon groans wearily before he pushes himself up on hands gone red with cold, and a little blood too, from the skirmish outside. He brushes the snow off his knees, wincing at the cuts on his hands. He spits some more blood onto icy stones and dusted snow, not liking the taste of iron in his mouth. He’s tasted it before, at Castle Black, lying flat on his back beneath a wooden cross that read “Traitor.”

All the way from the ruins of the Sept of Baelor, he was fighting those White Walkers tooth and nail, struggling to get away, but now, he’s not sure why he bothered. It was always meant to end this way.

Gods, that boy of yours, Ned. Get him a woman or something—he’s moodier than a wolf under the full moon.

Robert Baratheon’s ghost haunts these halls. He’s out of sight but near enough, watching this play out from some place just beyond the veil, drink in hand, stag crown thrown off his head and tossed in a corner somewhere. It never fit him very well anyway. And the true dead have no use for crowns or thrones.

But this boy…

He isn’t yours, is he? Robert turns to Ned, with dawning realization, years and years too late.

Ned Stark says nothing, but his silence is deafening.

He’s standing with Robert, somber as the departed spirits they are. They are witnesses here and will stay until the end. Ned gives a slow shake of his head, confirming the secret that he took to his grave. He’d been so convinced that his friend would murder the child if only he’d known.

Yet Robert, for all his sins, wasn’t Tywin. He wasn’t heartless. And he certainly had no bloodlust for killing babes. Not until the Targaryen girl—but gods, he doesn’t know what he was thinking. Or why he didn’t listen to Ned. He blames secondhand madness, thinking it must have seeped into his bloodstream, after too many years with his arse planted on that damn iron chair.

If Ned had told him who that black-haired boy was all those years ago…well, he loved Lyanna Stark as much as he hated Rhaegar Targaryen. Would that have made a difference?

No one will ever know for sure. Robert himself couldn’t say, as the path not taken is now lost forever. He takes another drink and shrugs, beyond such things.

The ghosts linger, waiting, watching, speculating no more, as evil stirs in the graveyard.

The Night King takes his time descending the dais, while Jon’s eyes flicker around the Throne Room. So, this is where Sansa begged for their father’s life? This is where Littlefinger put a knife against their father’s throat.

He wasn’t your father, comes a silky voice in his head, another ghost.

But this one lives in his head, speaking to him daily now, intent on never letting him forget. It’s the voice of a serpent, the voice of a dragon.

Rhaegar Targaryen perhaps?

No matter how many times the voice says it, he flinches. He recoils. He wonders why the truth should sting so much. Every bastard boy from Deepwood Motte to Dorne would give their right hand to be told they were a Targaryen. The lost heir to the greatest dynasty to ever walk these halls. But he’ll never be able to do it. He’ll never be able to think of anyone but Ned Stark as his father.

And I’ll be your father forever, no matter what happens…Ned would tell him, if he could.

He was that boy’s father—the little orphan boy that he brought back to Winterfell, that he named, that he loved. He should have told Cat and maybe she would have loved him too. But he just wanted to spare him from the fate of the Targaryen children, the ones slaughtered by Tywin’s mad dog and the ones chased across the sea.

And he did. He saved the little boy’s life. But he couldn’t save him from this. It was written in the stars too long ago.

When the gods decided that death might come for them, they hid life among the dead, to preserve it, to keep it safe until the battle turned their way.

The Lord of Light chose Beric, but too early, the magic used up at Winterfell, the flame snuffed out for good.

The Old Gods chose Benjen Stark but the dying had gone too far when the Children found him, and the spell didn’t take as well as it should, leaving him half-man and half-wraith.

The Many-Faced God—so proud, so young, so reckless—chose No One at all.

The Seven chose Jon Snow. On a whim, and the prayer of a red priestess.

Melisandre is in the gallery of the dead, pulled up between the two White Walkers who carried her in, unable to remain on her feet without their supporting grasp. Her foggy eyes are wandering, finding Jon’s for only a moment.

“Lord Commander, you’ve seen far better days,” she says, in an eerie tone. For a moment, Jon wonders if she’s gone mad with the cold.

What could she mean? Why would she say something so…

Oh, but she’s not talking to him at all.

She’s looked away. She’s turned her head, looking past her captors, her cataract-plagued eyes snapping on the title as she addresses one of the dead men who stand nearby. A non-descript wight, short of stature and rather grim-faced, even for a dead man. He’s standing guard by an icy, rust-colored cage, with the same vacant stare as all the others.

But Jon knows him too, his heart clenching tight at the sight. It’s Edd Tollett, who was among the fallen at Winterfell. The last Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.

Dolorous Edd doesn’t recognize Lady Melisandre’s voice, his ears dead to such things. But the words catch Lyanna Mormont’s attention, bringing her off her knees to stand at the bars of her cage.

Jon is reeling as he recognizes the fierce little Mormont, and tries to understand why the dead would keep one of their own caged like this? But then he notices…

Her eyes keep flickering brown to blue, back to brown again. Her voice is raw and torn up from weeks of shouting and she can manage no more curses flung at the King of Death. But she puts both hands on the bars of her cage and rattles them menacingly, nonetheless.

She can fight it, even here in his presence? Jon shouldn’t be so surprised. She’s a Mormont after all. And Melisandre had her suspicions about the dead.

If Lyanna Mormont can fight it…

No, Jon is stubborn in his hopelessness. If he knew about my father, he would know the rest. Edd was there. Edd saw the Red Woman bring me back.

His glance goes back to Edd. The man is a true wight. He has none of Lyanna’s fire. None of her flickering spark of life trying to catch flame, stubbornly striking matches every time the Night King blows them out.

Edd doesn’t look up, he doesn’t stir. He is docile and complacent.

So, so complacent.

Edd slid into death with the same old nonchalance that took him from hard times to rotten times to times best left forgotten. The thousandth commander of the Night’s Watch was the one to see the Wall fall down. This didn’t surprise him. Of course the damn Wall would fall down when he was left in charge of the place.

And when he saw the wights rush over Winterfell that night like a dam levy breaking, pouring out in half-rotted flesh and dead men, he knew he wouldn’t be one of the lucky few who made it out alive.

Dolorous Edd was not a lucky man. Nor a particularly interesting one.

This proved fortuitous. As the Night King didn’t even bother rifling through his thoughts at his end. For what possible information could a peasant’s son who’d spent most of his life shoveling shit have that would interest the King of Death?

He doesn’t know…

Jon turns back to the Night King, with sudden knowledge that’s unlike him.

He hears Ygritte’s voice in his head, teasing him mercilessly, until the bitter end, Well, now you know one thing he doesn’t, Jon Snow. Why don’t you fucking use it?

Melisandre’s old lips twist and her eyes crinkle. Is the old crone smiling?

“You were to come alone, Jon Snow,” Qyburn is speaking the words his master feeds him. His expression is vaguely sympathetic, as always. But he scolds him too, allowing in a breathy wheeze, “You have condemned your friends with your recklessness.”

“They were dead already,” Jon mentions, but distractedly, swallowing hard on an idea that suddenly swirls through his head.

Kill them! Kill them all! Aerys Targaryen’s voice still echoes here, his voice dripping with flame.

Save them! Save them all! Comes the echo back, in many voices, all pulsing with light.

The Night King is staring at him, drawing an iced blade from his belt. The monster thinks to root out the last threat to his eternal reign. He would have Jon on his knees, begging for mercy. But Jon knows there’s no mercy here.

“Don’t you wish to bargain for your life?” Qyburn wonders. “It would be a mistake not to, my lord.”

“I’ve made more mistakes than I can count, Lord Qyburn,” Jon answers, ruefully, his gaze still locked with the Night King. He nods at the creature, speaking to him plainly, “But this will be my last one.”

And I’m not the only one making a mistake…

“So be it,” Qyburn says. “Now then, tell us, for all gods and men to hear. Are you the son of Rhaegar Targaryen? Are you the Prince Who Was Promised? Are you the one and true King of Westeros?”

If he thinks this is Jon Snow’s greatest secret, he hasn’t been paying attention.

The scars on Jon’s chest begin to ache in a way that excites and terrifies him at once. The knife marks from Alliser and Olly and the others had been deep, almost to bone, and he feels every one of them in that moment. He feels life pulsing within him, all that life that had bled out on the snow at Castle Black.

He’s charged with it. He’s charged with giving it back to those who need it.

But the Night King’s attention is shifting. Melisandre was too brazen in her words, and the monster’s gaze will come around to Edd Tollett too soon, searching, seeing…

Jon is breathing heavy, a mere second from making the last decision of his life. Yet, he hesitates, still too unsure of who he is and if this will work. The Stranger knows nothing of himself.

A beat of silence follows.

Until Lyanna Mormont manages to take a deep breath with lungs that shouldn’t be working. She gets it out in fits and starts, through a glower that would curdle the sea if it wasn’t already iced over. Her words are the same stubborn things she used on Stannis Baratheon years ago,

“We know…no king…but the King in the North—whose name is Stark.”

Before he can change his mind, Jon charges the Night King, running himself straight through on the creature’s sword.

Chapter Text

Meera’s choking back a whole bucketful of tears, with the screams of that weirwood tree crying out loudly in her head, almost as soon as her hands come to rest on its mangled bark.

They bite at us with iron! They carve us up with steel! They force secrets from us that we do not remember! We scream but no one can hear us! You pray but we cannot answer! We cannot see you! We cannot see you!

The noise is dizzying and raw and desperate, and she almost careens back on the force of the voice…or voices? She can’t tell if it’s one or many at once. Or if the screams are happening now or in the past, or somehow outside of time altogether.

The voices are laced in terrible pain and it makes her heart ache and her stomach turn as she can do nothing for them. She listens but can do nothing. She can’t help them, she doesn’t know where they are—they can’t see her and she can’t see them.

It’s all darkness and swirling storms of snow and ash. As if she’s running from the cave and she looks back and she knows they’re coming, but there’s nothing behind her and nothing in front of her. Nothing but a black tunnel that never ends.

Her fingers grip the old bark as if she’s holding onto a ledge, or Bran’s sled once more, heedless of splinters and the blood that flows through her fingers. No, it’s sap, not blood. But with that red color, who can tell the difference?

She’s stubborn and she tries to focus as hard as she can but there’s nothing there. Bran used to see visions when he laid his hands on the weirwood trees south of this place. But this tree has no visions.

Only voices. And the voices are frantic and don’t stop, they don’t even know she’s there.

We cannot see you!

And she still can’t see them. Or anything else in the terrible darkness. It’s as if she’s crawling under the mountain and comes out at a mass grave. And it’s all dirt and black mud and a hole in the ground. If she looks too long, she’s worried she’ll fall in and be swallowed up too. She’s perched on an edge that threatens to fail her.

She peers over, and her boot slips…

“Nothing…,” she manages, her voice breaking, her hands coming away from the bloodied tree bark just at the moment when she felt herself falling. The old anger and pain that swirls through her head remains, as echoes, flooding her eyes with tears, not all of them her own. She looks at her companions with hopelessness, “There’s nothing.”

These aren’t visions. They’re fears, and she knows it.

It should have been Jojen or Bran doing this. Jojen was the one who had greensight. He was the one who could walk in other people’s dreams. If only she’d protected her brother better. If only she’d been able to save Bran from the Three-Eyed Raven’s trap.

Her eyes flicker upwards at the thought, catching sight of Bran’s black feathers amongst red leaves, some wilted, some speckled with blight. His talons shift on branches that are gnarled and twisted in ways that should not be. This tree has seen far better days. All of them have.

Has she come all this way only to fail? Nothing could be worse than that.

Nothing can’t be worse than anything. Arya Stark’s young voice is echoing among the frosted trees, whispering against their tinseled bark. Nothing is just…nothing.

Bran makes a chittering sound in the back of his throat, but she shakes her head at the raven miserably, feeling hopeless and empty. She presses her fingers to her sticky palms, as they’ve suddenly gone so cold they sting. The bloody sap from the inner tree is warm but goes cold so fast that it’s already icing over.

But it’s the color, not the cold, that makes her hands shake.

Tormund has kept clear of the weirwood tree, wary of it, but comes forward when he sees the state of Meera’s hands, reaching down to cup snow from the ground, peeling off his gloves and warming it with his hands to then clean her palms of the mess. Afterwards, he holds her hands in his own to bring warmth back to her numb fingers.

An old pact between the First Men and the Children renews its strength under Tormund’s actions.

We swear it by earth and water. We swear it by bronze and iron. We swear it by ice and fire.

“Why can’t she see anything?” Tormund asks Benjen Stark, as the half-wraith waits nearby, with Ghost sitting on his haunches beside him, watching this all unfold. Uneasy with this place, Tormund demands, “Why did you bring us here if there’s nothing to be done?”

But it’s not for the dead to say what the living must discover on their own.

Meera squeezes Tormund’s hand with something like reassurance, before slipping her fingers from his. The screams are quieter now and she’s not one to give up. She sniffs once, blinking back hot tears that are going just as cold as her hands. She rises from her knees. With a steadying breath, her hands spread wide over the trunk of that tree once more, moving along its old ridges and planks.

The screams are still there, crying for justice, begging for mercy, but she expects them this time. And while her heart hurts no less and the tears return swiftly, rushing down her cheeks in a way that she can’t hold back, she’s not using her ears or her eyes this time. She closes her eyes, her fingers tracing the ruined bark almost tenderly.

“I won’t hurt you,” she says, very softly, giving the tree a vow that has served her well with the bogs and shifting willows in her father’s swamps. “I swear it by earth and water.”

Meera Reed, help our brother, please.

Aemon Targaryen’s quavering voice echoes in the demiworld, It’s hard to be so old, and harder still to be so blind.

Her eyes are still closed, her fingers traveling along the bark, traversing its cracks and fissures until she feels…bone?

Her fingers linger and feel. Yes, bone, not bark. But trees don’t have bones?

She opens her eyes instantly. Coming closer, she sees the edge of a bone spur, lodged deep in the trunk of the weirwood tree, right beside its bleeding eye, hidden in the ridges of bark that have grown around it, trying to mend the injury but unable to pull it out.

That bone spur doesn’t belong there. It’s almost as if someone’s pushed it in on purpose.

As if it’s…

Meera sniffs again, her tears drying up in favor of a dark scowl, as she digs around that bone with her fingernails. The bark is brittle and her fingers are clumsy with cold, but she’s careful, taking care not to dig at anything but the foreign thing that is lodged in the weirwood’s trunk.

It’s a sharp blade of bone, old, jagged and crudely sharpened, pushed deep with an intent to wound.

“Careful, Meera,” Benjen urges. Tormund is dumbstruck by all of this and can manage nothing at all.

The sap on her hands mingles with her own blood as she digs a little deeper and cuts herself on the sharp edge, but she’s not deterred, slowly and carefully working at the thorn, until she pulls out a large and sharp splinter of bone from that tree.

In King’s Landing, Jon Snow feels frosted metal pierce his flesh.

In the streets, the broken shards of Light shimmer wildly. In the skies, the black dragon beats his wings furiously.

And, at that moment, every weirwood tree in the Seven Kingdoms opens their bloody eyes for the first time in a thousand years.

Chapter Text

Several years later…

“Papa, why did that man call you Father?” Aemon asks, as Jorah reaches down and hooks his large hands beneath his son’s little arms, plucking the three-year-old boy from sunlit cobblestones, so he can carry him through the bustling streets of Lys.

It’s midday and the city’s congested, crowded with visitors from colder climates, traveling in from Westeros and the northernmost Free Cities, all those pilgrims and travelers who wish to find a respite from lingering frosts and the scent of snow.

Winter isn’t over yet.

But it will be soon. Crocus and sweet violets are peeking out around the windy cliffs at Dragonstone. King’s Landing hasn’t had a frost in a fortnight. And Lyanna Mormont sent a raven about a month ago saying that the road between Winterfell and Deepwood Motte has thawed enough that she’s finally taking the last of her Bear Islanders home.

Jorah shifts the little boy to one arm easily, giving Aemon a short bounce to lift him higher. Aemon grips his father’s arm loosely for balance, settling at a familiar perch. This frees up Jorah’s other hand so he can make sure to reach down and keep a hold on Jeorgianna’s slim shoulder.

She walks at his side, staying close, cautious in a crowd.

But this is Lys, where Valyrian blood is as common as canals and cockleshells in Braavos. The natives of this city all have silver-blonde hair and lilac-blue eyes, their coloring very like his firstborn. There are few with her Northern-style braids and none with her Mormont reserve, but Gods, if he lost Jeorgianna in the crowd, Daenerys would have his head.

“Stay close, Jeorgianna,” he reminds her and she nods immediately, without looking up at him, her attention wholly captivated by the flurry of activity surrounding them.

The mainland of Westeros suffers from a somberness that will last a generation but here, in summery Lys, there’s music and dancing, markets and street performers, balmy sea winds and fair weather. Such ordinary marvels, but ones that Jorah’s winter-born children have seen only rarely.

Like citrus fruit, colored and shaped like tears of Lysene sunshine.

Jeorgianna carries a drawstring bag of lemons in her hands, a half dozen recently bought from a fruit merchant who, upon recognizing his customer, dropped his green melon and bowed so low to the ground, Jorah was worried he might kiss it.

The merchant would not raise his eyes to meet Jorah’s gaze, refusing the offered coin and saying only, in the common tongue, “No, Father, please. Take as many as you like. It is a gift.”

Jorah left payment on the man’s cart just the same.

The lemons are for Daenerys, as she craves the flavor more than usual these days, and they are in Lys for only a fortnight more. Soon, they’ll return to Dragonstone, where such treats are in shorter supply.

Grey Worm will abstain—he has no taste for tart fruit. But Missandei will grin and take one with pleasure, her thumb running along the curve of yellow rind, as she takes the fruit from Jeorgianna’s hands with a fond smile, saying, “Krimvose, sweetheart.”

She’ll tug Jeorgianna closer to press a kiss against the top of her silver-blonde head, just as she did the night the little girl was born. And Jeorgianna will smile back and ask her aunt how to say “lemon” in one of her nineteen languages.

Missandei’s promised to teach her all of them.

“Except Dothraki,” Missandei has mentioned more than once, laughing. “I had enough trouble teaching your mother.”

Daenerys always rolls her eyes at this, but takes the good-natured chiding in stride, rather than bristling as she might have done not so long ago. She’s softened so much in these last years, finally free of the expectations and doomed destiny that had followed her around like a shadow since she was a child.

She tells Jorah it’s his love that’s freed her from those iron shackles, the ones that no one else could break, but he expects the children have more to do with it than him.

Motherhood suits her. It’s always suited her. But the smile that lights up her beautiful face now, whenever one of their two children sleepily says “Goodnight, Mama” is far more brilliant than any before. Not even the smile that graced her features in the teeming crowds of Meereen, when the Essosi carried her around on their shoulders with shouts of Mhysa falling like a song in Jorah’s ears, can ever compare.

Three children, Jorah amends in his head, only just getting used to the idea.

It’s for this reason that they’ve come to Lys, to meet up with Missandei and Grey Worm—who have just returned from the white beaches of Naath. They are here to reunite after too many months apart, to breathe in summer air, to sit and talk on sunlit balconies, to watch the children play in green gardens, to reminisce and celebrate news that Daenerys and Jorah have shared with no one else.

Not even the children, though they will know soon enough.

Jeorgianna and Aemon are to have a baby sister or brother. And Jorah is to be a father again. For the third time.

Fifteen years ago, he walked these same streets as a man in exile, disgraced, without honor, nursing a wounded heart and a fervent, desperate desire to somehow, someway make everything right again.

To go home. He just wanted to go home.

If a fortune teller had told him that the next time he’d walk the streets of Lys would be with his two small children, fetching summer fruit for his pregnant wife, he’d have laughed in their face.

And it would have been a bitter, cynical reply he might have given back: In what world?

In this one, he has to remind himself daily, scarcely believing it, even years later.

“They call him Father because of what happened in King’s Landing,” Jeorgianna answers Aemon first. Her silver-blonde braids bounce as she turns her head to look up at her brother with long-suffering patience. She suppresses a sigh as her eyes flicker up to Jorah, her manner always so like her mother he has to stifle a chuckle. She insists, “I’ve told him that a thousand times.”

“No, you haven’t,” Aemon states flatly.

“Yes, I have,” Jeorgianna counters back.

“A thousand times?” Jorah wonders, in a softer tone, amused by both of them.

“Well, at least half that anyway,” his daughter concedes.

“But is that why, Papa?” Aemon is clutching his father’s shirt a little tighter, needing a second opinion. Jorah nods but doesn’t answer until he’s steered Jeorgianna around a silk merchant’s hanging stand, lined with exotic fabrics that shimmer under sunlight.

“Yes, Aemon. Jeorgianna’s right,” he says, but doesn’t elaborate.

He won’t say more on the subject. It’s rare that Jorah says anything about King’s Landing at all. Even to his children. Bear Islanders have their own brand of pride but it has little to do with what needs to be done. He would never consider himself a humble man but Jorah will never sing his own praises, still unconvinced that he deserves any songs at all.

“But you aren’t really his father, are you?” Aemon asks, fairly certain but needing confirmation just the same. Jeorgianna covers her mouth on a guffaw before grinning up at her father, shaking her head at her little brother. Jorah struggles not to smirk too widely himself.

The fruit merchant was a man of at least seventy years. Perhaps more, with a snow-white head of hair and skin as wrinkled as a raisin left to dry in the southern sun.

Jorah’s years are not quite so long yet.

And he knows it’s impossible but there appears to be less grey in his beard than ten years ago. Perhaps fatherhood suits him as well as motherhood suits Daenerys? Or maybe Tyrion Lannister is right. The dwarf has a theory about those who stood in the Light of the Seven at King’s Landing. He says the theory will be proven one way or another with time.

“No, Aemon,” Jorah replies, with infinite warmth coloring his tone, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’m not.”

“Oh, good,” Aemon is more than satisfied with this, relieved even, with his hand coming up to lie flat on Jorah’s chest. He shakes his head stubbornly, tiny features laced with a severity that’s reminiscent of the grandfather he never met, “I wouldn’t like that.”

“No?” Jorah teases him just a little. He shifts Aemon in his grasp once more, so he can better take Jeorgianna’s hand through another swelling crowd.

She holds on tight and only pulls her hand away again after they’ve reached the other side of the throng. The crowd finally thins to the point where Jeorgianna can skip a few paces ahead without worry, twirling on the cobblestones, her bag of lemons swinging at her hip.

Jorah returns his free hand to Aemon, supporting his back, while hooking his powerful grasp under little legs with the other, dipping the giggling child backwards until he nearly hangs upside down, while asking, “You don’t want to share your Papa with anyone else?”

“No!” Aemon says, in between giggles and vain, squirming attempts to escape his father’s light tickles to his side and belly.

Jorah laughs as he finally brings the boy back upright.

“Not even with Jeorgianna?” he tips his head, his tone taking on a faux seriousness.

“Maaaybe I can share with Jeorgianna,” Aemon allows, while ringing his arm around Jorah’s neck for a hug. “But that’s it.”

Not quite, my son. Jorah might have said.

But he just grins for now, bringing that other hand around to cup Aemon’s back again, as tiny arms squeeze around his neck in a choke-hold he delights in. As Aemon’s grip loosens, he plants a kiss on the little boy’s forehead.

“Papa, look!” Jeorgianna calls their attention, as she’s stopped her skipping and now stands before another marvel in the middle of the square, a water fountain that’s at least five times her size.

Her voice is all wonder and curiosity but sparks in recognition too—as she’s found something almost familiar, even if far from home.

Jorah finds himself regarding the fountain in much the same way.

It must be new, for he certainly would have remembered this being here the last time he walked these streets. And it’s a strange sight to see in the Free Cities, as weirwood trees don’t grow in this part of the world.

But what happened in King’s Landing echoed far beyond the borders of Westeros. It’s a story known the world over, with news of their unlikely triumph traveling as far as the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai they say. It’s why Jorah will be called “Father” by strangers until his dying day.

Jeorgianna climbs up the side of the fountain base while Jorah brings Aemon near enough that his hand can reach out and feel the spray of cool water.

The fountain was built by a master artisan, sculpted into the image of a weirwood tree twisted around a great tower, cast in white marble with bronze leaves and fresh water pouring from its wide branches.

Around the stone base are scenes more commonly found in storybooks, dragons in the air, a horned monster on an iron throne, a dark-haired girl in snowy woods with her palms flat on the bark of a ruined tree.

“It’s so beautiful,” Jeorgianna stretches out across the moat of water to lay both her hands against the smooth, bone-white trunk, just like the girl in the marble etchings below.

Jorah absently wraps a supporting hand around Jeorgianna’s waist to make sure she doesn’t slip and topple into the fountain’s basin, drenching her clothes.

“Aye,” he says, understatedly.

“Is this like the tree in King’s Landing?” she wonders. And Aemon echoes his sister, squinting up through wide-spread, sun-soaked branches, “Is it as tall as this one?”

“Much, much taller,” Jorah replies, with a low huff at the inadequacy of that answer.

A tree grown as tall as the Red Keep is not something he could describe in mere words.

They’ll see it someday. Not an artist’s rendering but the real thing.

He expects their eyes will go as wide as his did on the very day that tree sprouted up from roots that went as deep as the Frost Fangs and spread as far as the Mander and the Trident combined, growing through the damp, rich earth that lies beneath mountain, forest and swamp, white trunk bathed in Light come down from the heavens, sprouting red leaves and…something else that the fountain-maker decided to leave out.

A monster with frosted skin, speared by root and twig, left hanging in its highest branches.

Chapter Text

In the far east, they see something.

“Come back to bed, my love,” purrs a Volantene beauty, her long dark hair spread on silk sheets, her brown eyes half-lidded as she stares at him, upside down, lounging on the canopied bed, eating figs and melon from a silver platter.

There’s a tear drop tattoo forever emblazoned on her cheek, but there are no slaves in Meereen any longer.

She’s here, in his bed, of her own volition. Daario Naharis doesn’t pay the women he sleeps with. The idea is still laughable to him, all these years later.

But he’s not laughing now.

“In a minute…,” the sellsword murmurs, bare-chested, under-dressed, his hand braced against the balcony arch, his eyes drawn westward from the heights of the Great Pyramid and towards a strange Light he sees flood the western horizon, ringing the night’s stars with a crown of gold.

In the west, they hear something.

Archmaester Ebrose is at his writing desk, transcribing his notes from Winterfell, filling in the gaps he missed, pondering on those raw feelings and impressions that last—she looked as if the whole world might collapse on her if he failed to live through the night—wearing an expression that’s at once preoccupied and grim.

Always so grim these days, as Oldtown is hushed in winter, hunkered down in their cold and silent streets, waiting on pins and needles for when the Night King finally grows weary of King’s Landing and finally turns his gaze on them, the second largest city in the Seven Kingdoms, a haven for the living.

For now.

If winter lasts much longer and the supply lines between the old cities are not reestablished soon, they’ll not have any living soldiers to meet that creature when he comes knocking on their gates. Just a city filled with snow-dusted books and ice-cold corpses, having laid themselves down to sleep and die, when the last of the food runs out and their fires go dark.

An hour ago, Ebrose thought he felt a faint rumbling under his feet. But in the minutes since, he’s dismissed it as the ramblings of his cold and addled mind.

He pulls at the folds of his maester’s robes, clasping the wool tighter, bundling up against winter drafts, holding his quill hand near the strong candles at his desk for a long minute, just to coax feeling back into his chilled fingers.

And that’s when it happens. That’s when the rumbling returns.

But this time…

Ebrose sets down his quill and rises, eyes drawn up to rattling fixtures, the shaking in the Citadel intense enough that his inkwell topples over onto his desk, as a few paintings fall off his walls, crashing to the floor. Has Daenerys returned with her dragons? The earth shakes as if one of those beasts has landed in the courtyard below.

Archmaester Ebrose hurries to his window, perhaps too excited that it might be so.

But no, this is more than the thud of a dragon. It lasts too long, its reach is spread too far.

Out his window, the archmaester can see the whole city moving on the rumblings of earth. Oldtown shakes and shudders, as if something large roars beneath them, grumbling, growing, in a massive quake that runs the length and breadth of the Seven Kingdoms.

In the north, Gilly sees nothing, hears nothing.

Winterfell is living through the shortest days of the season, where the sun fails to give them more than an hour or two of light every day. The north is buried in snow and ice, too beset by winter to see the Lights in the south or even feel the quake of earth, as roots travel too deep beneath the castle, avoiding the frost, choosing warmer, deeper soils to plunge through.

They hear only the crack of fire in their hearth and the hum of old songs in the halls—Podrick Payne tries to keep their spirits up—praying that the flames continue to burn until the weather breaks.

Nevertheless, Gilly looks up from her mending, very suddenly, her gaze drawn southward under the intuition of something far beyond her own knowledge.

There’s old magic at work. She knows it, she feels it. She grew up too close to the Haunted Forest not to recognize that something’s happened. Or is about to happen.

And not just anything. But something…good? Laced with hope? Is that possible?

“What’s wrong, Mama?” her son wonders.

Little Sam’s been playing on one of Catelyn Stark’s old braided rugs in front of the fire, lining up little wooden animals in a row, a pouch full of them, retrieved from a bedroom upstairs, little carved figurines that must have once belonged to Bran or Rickon, all grey wolves, brown stags and black bears.

But the little boy pauses in his play, as he sees his mother’s needle lies quiet in her lap. She’s running her thumb around the edge of that little thimble she always uses, her gaze faraway.

“Many things,” she answers, ruefully.

But she tips her mousy-brown head on a feeling that she just can’t shake. She’s tempted to tell Little Sam to go fetch Podrick so she can tell him that she was wrong to doubt him before.

She’d forgotten this feeling…a feeling she hasn’t felt since Sam was still alive.

But it’s back, as if someone just struck a match and lit a candle in someplace very dark. And Gilly finds herself nearly smiling—her cheeks don’t quite know how to hold that smile but they try anyway—as she continues, “But I think it’s all about to get better.”

Soon, Gillyflower. Very soon.

At Dragonstone, Jeorgianna cries.

Her little ears are still too tender and, like any baby, she’s afraid of loud noises. And there are loud noises aplenty drifting up from the chambers below.

“Shhh, Jeorgianna, shhh,” Missandei holds the baby close, bouncing her as she paces, rubbing her back, trying to calm the child, trying to force herself not to cry too, as the sounds only grow louder as they draw closer.

There are shouts of warning in the stairwell of Shireen's tower, doors being forced open and glass breaking, the sound of steel skidding on stone, as Ser Davos’s sword is knocked from his hand too soon.

Sorry for what you’re about to see.

The old smuggler never pretended to be a fighter, though he takes on Grey Worm—one of the best soldiers in the world even before the Night King claimed him and increased his strength and speed tenfold—with a courage that might put other men to shame.

But courage only goes so far. And Grey Worm bests him within minutes.

There’s a low grunt as Ser Davos takes a blow to the head, falling in a heap to the floor.

Tyrion jumps to take his place. But with a quick flick of Grey Worm’s spear butt, Tyrion and his hastily-grabbed short-sword are batted away too. An “oof” escapes the dwarf’s lips as he hits obsidian walls with force, feeling bones crack in his ribs as he too, collapses to the floor.

Lord Varys decides his best course of action is to withdraw, having little interest in joining Ser Davos or Tyrion in various poses of groaning injury. The Spider drops his gaze and shuffles backwards, bowing subserviently and letting Grey Worm through without a fight.

Tyrion will scold him mercilessly for this later, but the eunuch will remind him that all’s well that ends well.

Even if he couldn’t have possibly known that at the time.

Once he’s stepped out of the way, Grey Worm doesn’t give the eunuch a second look. Nor the other two, leaving them much the same as the Dothraki who first met the undead soldier in the hall, all now slumped, injured and groaning.

He’ll finish them off only after he’s completed his mission. For now, he’s too intent on a single purpose, a targeted kill.

Grey Worm twists his spear deftly in a grip that moves unnaturally, spinning the weapon behind his back with supernatural elegance and skill, before continuing on, hissing and snarling at Lord Varys, rabidly following the sounds of Jeorgianna’s cries, which fill up Dragonstone with the mournful wails of a baby crying for her mother.

Missandei’s comforting words can’t hold the infant’s cries back. She’s worried the lock on the door won’t hold for more than a handful of seconds. “It will be all right, Jeorgianna,” she coos to the little girl, through tears of her own.

Her heart clenches bleakly as she hears crashing, frantic footsteps race up the tower.

In King’s Landing, Jon Snow is dying.

The Night King’s expression is utterly satisfied as he twists the blade sharply before pulling it out, garnering a moan from the skewered boy.

“Jon!” that’s Sansa’s voice now, calling out desperately from the rear gallery, having emerged from the snowy remnants of the Small Council Chamber only a moment ago. The Hound is with her, drawing a sword against wights who swivel their undead heads in the direction of Lady Stark’s pained voice.

Jorah, Daenerys and Brienne arrive at nearly the same time, at the opposite side, running up the steps at the entrance to the Throne Room. Jorah’s expression is stern, playing at wariness and confusion, as he swore he just heard his dead cousin’s voice echoing out from this dark place.

We know…no king…but the King in the North—whose name is Stark.

At the sight of Jon, Daenerys puts a hand to her mouth. They’re too late. Brienne is still watching behind them, at the multitude of wights who have followed at a distance, held back just beyond the Lights, which begin to glow brighter and cluster closer together.

The Night King, his hubris knowing no bounds, takes too much time with the killing blow, pulling his blade from Jon’s body slowly, watching the boy fall to his knees before him, smiling at the sound of Sansa’s belated cries for mercy.

He flicks an icy hand, signaling his White Walkers to deal with their guests, now visible at either end of the Throne Room.

The Mountain moves to join those that move on Sansa and Sandor, for reasons that have nothing to do with the Night King’s request.

Qyburn, suddenly moved with vague regret—whether from Jon’s words, or Lyanna’s stubborn resilience, or the mere presence of other living men and women—reaches out and attempts to hold the helmeted man back by his wrist guard. He suggests, “Perhaps leave this to the others, friend?”

But the Mountain is neither Qyburn’s slave nor his friend.

And in this moment he proves it, impulsively grabbing the man by the collar of his black robes and flinging him against the nearest stone pillar with enough force that the old man hits the back of his head with a crack and falls to the frosted floor, stone dead.

Sandor sets his teeth and shakes his head at this, knowing his brother killed the man merely to show him how easily it was done. Cruelty for cruelty’s sake. Tywin’s mad dog until the end.

Sandor takes a step in front of Sansa and growls at his brother menacingly, “You’re still the same old cunt, as always, brother. Come on, damn you! Let’s finish it!”

Near the arches over the outer entrance, in the same spot where Tywin Lannister once rode his white horse through these chambers, Jorah wastes no time against the approaching line, using Longclaw to shatter the first of the Walkers in two blows, parrying the strike of a second, as Brienne gives a warrior’s cry, joining him with Oathkeeper.

The wights stand down. Those beyond the archways held back by Lights. Those in the Throne Room compelled to stand and witness, as their master has not given them any other instructions.

The sound of Valyrian steel and those crystallized blades fill the chamber with singing, joined by a chorus of shattered ice. Lyanna Mormont rattles her cage with approval as her cousin dispatches another of the pale-faced monsters.

The White Walkers who still hold Lady Melisandre aloft appear to be antsy, itching to join their brothers, as two more fall, one by Brienne’s blade and one by the whim of the Mountain, who will let no other have his brother’s kill.

Melisandre’s jailors give the Night King an entreating glance but their master is too busy playing with his wounded prey.

Melisandre notices their unease, taunting them, “Death by ice leads to the coldest hell.”

In the meantime, four or five of the stray Lights begin to buzz around the Night King’s horned head like golden gnats. They can’t burn him like the White Walkers. They can’t stop him, as he swats them away too easily, but they buy time and force him to take a step back, away from Jon.

It’s too late to save Rhaegar Targaryen’s son. Feeling his life force slip away, Jon is bowing his head, waiting for the killing blow.

But it fails to come! In his manic swatting, the Night King spins around, so that he’s facing a hidden staircase in the stone wall behind the Iron Throne, a hideaway where once upon a time the royal servants would have watched and waited, ready to spring to their capricious king’s side at a moment’s notice, bringing him whatever strange whim he desired.

A perfect hiding place for chambermaids…and bastards.

Like Gendry Rivers, a low-born blacksmith with a strong arm and a wounded heart—she was his lady, the only one for him in the whole world, and this creature stole her from him—bursting from that door and sending Arya’s catspaw dagger end over end with a true aim, finding its mark, the blade lodged deep in the Night King’s chest.

Chapter Text

Missandei knows it’s him, spying those familiar features through the holes he makes in the heavy oak door, battering at the lock, smashing the boards with a spear-turned-hatchet, pulling it down splinter by splinter with manically scratching fingernails.

Her heart drops at the sight of him, this monster sent to kill them. His eyes are blue where they should be brown, the flecks of gold she loves so much are nowhere to be found.

No, no, no!

She’s shaking her head at how wrong this is, her fear mixing with renewed grief and anger and old hate mixed with ashy bitterness, feelings that she thought she left across the sea. She’s tempted to reach out and shake the rabid creature.

Fight this! You are not a slave!

In her arms, Jeorgianna just cries and cries, fat tears falling off the baby’s cheeks. Missandei holds her tighter, presses kisses to the top of her head and attempts to cover her tender ears from the sound of a rattling lock and spear splintering wood.

“Shhh, Jeorgianna, it’s all right,” she repeats herself, but she can’t keep her voice steady anymore. It breaks in a tearful pleas, as she shouts through the failing door. “Torgo, please don’t do this!”

In the frosty thermals above King’s Landing, Drogon’s wings keep beating, despite the cold, despite the dark magic that lingers there.

Up and down, up and down.

He’s a stubborn dragon, much like his mother, and follows impulse, knowing that whoever put these clouds here wants to strangle the Light and murder those who brought it.

To murder his mother. And this, he won’t allow.

His muscles strain, his black scales take on a frosted hue, but he’s still a young dragon, filled with fire and vigor. His efforts are rewarded, as the magic begins to loosen and the clouds begin to thin, misting away in the strong blasts of air.

The Light spills out, first along cracks that split like a hatched egg. The dragon descends, just before it breaks.

Drogon screeches his victory as he comes down from great heights, soaring in smug triumph. The city below is once more bathed in a golden, heavenly glow, under a flood of Light that follows close on his talons.

Viserion and Rhaegal are caught up in it, too busy sparring to notice what approaches. But as Drogon blasts above them, so does the Light of the Seven. Viserion feels a strange and sharp pain at the mere touch of those rays, breaking off his dance with Rhaegal, giving a raucous cry that echoes loudly in the iced air.

A hitch in his wing causes him to lose altitude quickly. With claws that slip and scratch against flagstone and clay, he lands atop the White Sword Tower gracelessly, almost slipping off once. But Viserion’s as stubborn as the other two, and finds his perch, clinging to it with dogged effort.

As soon as he has his balance, he raises his tattered wings against the imposition of Light, hiding from it like a bat caught out in sunlight.

Beneath the cover of his wings, he screeches out again, but more petulantly this time.

Rhaegal feels no pain at the Light, but is blinded by its brilliance, and just at the moment he might have torn into his dead brother and ended their dance once and for all. His talons miss Viserion’s hide by inches only.

This is fortunate. The dead have enough wounds. It’s long past time for those wounds to heal.

And they will, in a matter of minutes only, as the scattered Lights around the city begin to spin with renewed energy as soon as Jon Snow takes that sword to the gut. Some are swallowed in the waterfall of Light from the sky, but others remain separate, as beacons, as capsules of life, glowing brightly, reflecting off a city cast in glittering ice. And sparkling in the eyes of the dead…

Blue eyes, yes.

But now many are flickering in shades of amber, hazel, green and brown as well.

Confusion reigns among the living, as the Night King’s remaining vanguard shatter like glass figurines, as soon as Arya Stark’s dagger finds its mark.

Every White Walker immediately bursts in cascades of ice, their cold remains scattered on frosty stones. Without their supporting grasp, the feeble Lady Melisandre collapses to the Throne Room floor as well.

Her energy is now spent, her days ripened to their last harvest and her fires burn dangerously low, but the old crone’s smiling nonetheless.

With the Walkers gone, almost all of the skirmishes in the Throne Room come to an abrupt end, Jorah and Brienne both lowering their swords in astonishment.

Only the Clegane brothers continue fighting, with heavy swordplay and grunts and growls that ring out like hollow thunder, pushing each other forward and back between frosted pillars, with savage hammer swings, meant to kill.

If they notice the demise of the White Walkers, they don’t show it.

Sandor had forced the fight away from Sansa, even as it gives the Mountain an early advantage. But Gregor Clegane wasn’t above murdering women and children before he became this patched-together monster—this is the same room where they once laid Elia Martell and her slain children out on scarlet cloaks—so the Hound won’t risk letting him near her.

Sansa swallows hard and clenches her teeth, fingers digging into her skirt nervously as she watches the brothers’ violent, terrible duel, suddenly recalling that first tourney in King’s Landing, and how it might have ended between them all those years ago, had Robert Baratheon not raised his voice above the crowd and commanded them to stop.

Stop this madness in the name of your King!

There’s no one to stop them now. The king is dying. Both of them.

She sees Gendry emerge from that secret passage, but she has little time to manage more than a desperate prayer that the blacksmith’s aim be true.

But it is! Bless all the gods, both the Old and the New, it is! And the Night King stumbles back, watching his White Walkers burst into pieces under firefly lights that continue to glow as bright as stars.

With the way finally clear, Sansa rushes to her dying brother’s side.

“Jon…Jon, I’m here,” she’s holding him up, cradling him in her arms, her eyes blurring under an onslaught of hot tears.

It isn’t fair, why must you take them all from me? she rambles in her head, and the tears just spill harder.

But she tries to suppress her sobs, if only for Jon’s sake, her grip tightening around him, as if she might hold his body and spirit together by will alone.

Jon is saying something stupid, in a voice that grows faint. “It’s too…late…”

With the Maiden’s sweet touch, Sansa takes off her gloves and softly lays her hand against his cheek, caressing his face, forcing a smile that shines bright with tears.

“Shhh,” she says, flinching each time the Mountain’s sword comes down against Sandor’s shield, as the steel sings too much like an executioner’s axe.

Not so far from Sansa and Jon, the Night King appears utterly dumbstruck. Paralyzed, even. There’s a burning pain in his chest that grows and spreads like veins of fire and he’s not used to the feeling of flame. At least not ones he can’t snuff out.

His gaze is dropping oh-so-slowly, unable to reconcile how a blade came to be there, buried to the hilt in his icy skin.

He looks across the Throne Room to the secret passage, from whence the blade came, and sees a man he doesn’t know—a blacksmith, a bastard, a nobody—staring at him with a severe, if rather calm expression, caught somewhere between grief and justice.

Who are you and why have you done this?

He’ll never know who his killer is or why he did this thing. But that’s fair.

Gendry Rivers doesn’t know the Night King’s real name either.

No one does. Not the Children he slaughtered, or the trees he blinded and put in chains. Not the dead who have been his slaves, following him without thought, without hope. Not even the Night King himself, as it was lost too long ago.

A nobody killed by a nobody. It’s fitting, in its way. And all because he killed No One.

Oh, he’s not a creature of self-reflection, but it suddenly hits him very hard that he will die without knowing his own name.

Regret. Is that regret he tastes?

No, it’s blood. Old blood, black blood, the kind that shouldn’t be flowing. Raw and iron-like, filling his mouth, dripping from his nose.

The Night King’s stare is more foggy than cold, now. His gaze finally lifts and he seems addled and disorientated, his White Walkers gone, the living watching him curiously.

And the wights aren’t moving at all, failing to answer the frenzied flick of his hand, restrained and hypnotized by these damn Lights, their eyes flickering in that strange array of colors.

His skin is ice cold but goes hot under a sudden flush of perfect dread, as the burning sensation reaches his fingertips and he realizes that this is the end.

But he’d conquered Death and become its master—hadn’t he? If Death had any humor at all, she would laugh at his naivety.

Young and foolish as the rest.

He chokes on a sudden cough of blood, his throat filling up with that iron taste, and the Night King falls to his hands and knees. He’s unable to remove the blade—how it bites, how it burns—unable to stand.

He’s not the only one.

A great quaking shakes the foundations of the Keep. Stained glass shatters and bursts, stone and ice break off in chunks, falling from dome ceilings.

The flood of Light outside has cut a swath across the city, warming a true path, guiding roots that have travelled from beyond the Frost Fangs in the Great North to this very spot, drawn to one purpose.

Vengeance of an old, old kind.

The Mountain is thrown off balance by the shifting ground, monstrous eyes going wide behind his helmet. But Sandor is steadier, too used to terrible things—his face pressed to hot coals, his broken body rotting away on a hillside—to care if the earth shifts beneath his feet.

He holds his ground.

With a great holler, he pushes Gregor back towards one of the broken windows—the same one that Cersei Lannister had been thrown out months ago—knocking him further off balance. He gives his brother a fierce push to his armored chest which sends Gregor tripping on that icy sill, grasping at broken glass, reaching out and finding only air as Sandor jerks back, before falling…

Down, down, down.

The Mountain joins his queen below.

“Sansa, move!” Sandor shouts out, as more of the ceiling starts to give way and the stones beneath them grumble and groan, under volcanic pressure.

He’s rushing back to her, but she has assistance already, as Gendry springs forward to pull her away. Ser Jorah hands Longclaw off to Daenerys, before gathering Jon up in his strong arms, all of them moving out of the way and back towards the gallery just in time.

The floor around the throne breaks apart on the pressure, as a giant weirwood sprouts from beneath, growing tall and wide and twisted, white-barked and red-leaved, forcing itself up through the Keep at the exact spot the Night King remains, hunched and terrified, one blood-smeared hand reaching out towards…something.

The tree’s shoots break through thick stones like a sea dragon breaching the waterline, knocking the Iron Throne off its base, breaking its brittle bones, throwing it aside like a tin toy.

Or an iron eyesore that should have been thrown out years ago.

The Night King can only give one last fleeting look towards the living, eyes gone wild and frantic.

Lady Melisandre breathed her last a moment ago, but the contented smile remains on her face.

By comparison, the Night King’s final expression is dark and full of terror.

With vicious speed, those shoots and branches spear his body straight through on their way higher, carrying him up to a gallows made of wick and wood, twig and leaf.

The others watch in awestruck wonder, as the massive weirwood shatters the cathedral ceiling above the discarded throne, rising up with a solid trunk and sturdy bark, breaking above the tower with a canopy spread wide and strong above the frozen city.

Perched on the neighboring spire, a frightened Viserion screeches at the sight, rather pitifully, still hiding his snout and eyes below wings raised against a painful glow.

But he’ll shake off the ice on his wings in seconds only, and what a spectacle for the dead still outside, as they’ll see the dragon’s tattered wings knit themselves together, his call losing the hoarseness of torn vocal cords, his hide mending all its ragged holes, with the same speed that a tree—larger than any the world has ever seen—just planted itself in King’s Landing.

The dead who watch will be transfixed by the sight, only belatedly looking down to see their own wounds fading away and healing before their astonished, and awakened, eyes.

Drogon and Rhaegal swoop and glide around the tree and the dead monster caught up in its branches, as the tree’s red leaves unfurl under the last rays of the gods’ own Light, swiftly fading to a more natural sunlight.

Down in the ruined Throne Room, Jon Snow breathes his last, sending those lights darting among the dead.

Torgo breaks down the door so quickly. But as he squeezes through the ruined boards and splintered molding, his balance is compromised.

In last resort, Missandei lays Jeorgianna on the bed and rushes forward, impulsively pulling at him with all her might. She grasps the front of his armor, using her weight to wrench him down with her, as he hisses and screeches like a wild thing possessed.

The topple together, falling onto the stones of Shireen’s Tower. She cries out, to wake him from this terrible curse, to make him see, “You are Torgo Nudho of the Summer Isles!”

She’s crying as she says it and the words are broken, desperate things, but she continues, holding onto his squirming arms as tightly as she can, wrestling with him, using every ounce of her strength to keep him on the ground, preventing him from crawling over her to get to the wailing infant on the bed.

“You are no slave!” she screams at him. “Please don’t let them do this! Fight it, Torgo. Fight it! You are stronger than this!”

He’s stronger than her, that’s for sure.

She can feel the strength in his grimdark muscles, returning swiftly as he regains his balance too soon, pushing himself up and digging into her skin to do it, pinning her arms back against the stones. He snarls with menace, hovering above her as he marks her face, his teeth bared and powerful fist raised to finish this with a single blow and then he…

Stops.

The dead thing that once was Torgo Nudho just stops, seemingly arrested by the sight of Missandei of Naath, trapped beneath him.

“Please, Torgo…,” her eyes are wide and full of tears, as her voice drops to a near whisper, unable to manage more, exhausted by the fight, knowing he’s likely decided to kill her slowly. She should feel more fear but it's overwhelming sadness that overtakes her now.

With his loosened grip, she’s able to slowly raise her hand and cover her tear-stained face, unwilling to look into this stranger’s ice blue eyes as he kills her.

She hears his breathing—the dead breathe? she thinks, wondering on the absurdity, knowing it doesn’t matter, soon nothing will matter.

She wishes she could have kept Jeorgianna safe, she wishes she could have kept her promise to Daenerys, she wishes she could have seen the blue butterflies and the white shores of Naath once more.

The rapid breathing above her slows, the creature’s tattered lungs inhaling and exhaling on a few breaths that sounds almost…human?

And the struggling and squirming has stopped, on both sides, for she’s waiting for the end and he must be waiting for…what?

Has she died? Has he done it already and she missed it?

But no, Jeorgianna’s cries continue, sharp and clear, piercing the ensuing silence. Missandei is still pinned to the stone floor, with Grey Worm above her.

…the same Grey Worm whose hand now guides her own down from her face. So, so gently.

She opens her eyes, blinking through a mess of tears to look up into dark brown eyes, glimmering with gold flecks.

“Missandei?”

Chapter Text

From the air, they spot three figures waiting on the beach.

Ser Davos is one of them—looking a little worse for the wear, as he appears to be holding a cloth to his head—and Grey Worm is another, although they won’t recognize it’s him until they land, mistaking the straight posture and the quilted breastplate for any of the handful of Unsullied who remain at Dragonstone.

Missandei is the third, with a bundle cradled in one arm. Her free hand is raised on her brow, shading her sight from a glorious winter sunset that fills the clear skies behind the dragons, as they fly back from King’s Landing.

All of the dragons.

Rhaegal and Viserion are without riders this time—the others stayed in King’s Landing for now, as there is much left to do in the now kingless city. Carefree and lively, the dragons twist and dance in the vaulted skies above the iced Blackwater, screeching with happy cries that speak of reunited brothers and dragons’ pure joy.

Drogon answers his brothers’ songs with vigor but skips the aerial acrobatics, as he carries two riders and will not throw them off this time. He owes his mother this much. And he must sense Daenerys’s strong will and anxious desire to reach Dragonstone Beach as soon as possible. Or Jorah’s, which is much the same. They are both fixated on the sight of those three figures gathered on the shore.

Or, more accurately, the bundle held in Missandei’s arms and the tiny hands poking up from its winter-proof furs and blankets.

“Do you see her?” Daenerys stretches up, gazing past the lift and heft of Drogon’s shoulder muscles, her hand reaching down to grip Jorah’s thigh in her excitement, making sure he sees the baby too.

“I do,” Jorah confirms, smiling broadly at the sight of their child, at the feel of Daenerys so close to him. Both alive, both nearly within reach.

They should be worn out and weary, both of them, ready to collapse after all that happened in King’s Landing. But Daenerys is jubilant and impatient, filled with a homebound energy that might include some of that residual Light from the heavens, as she seems ready to leap from Drogon’s back before he’s properly touched down.

Jorah senses her impulse and holds her tight, wrapping her waist lightly from behind with a steady arm, while his smile goes wider at the way she can’t sit still, rising, bouncing on the scales and biting her bottom lip at their descent, willing the dragon to go faster. They are mere minutes away from holding their daughter.

He wonders if Daenerys will ever let go of her again. He sincerely doubts it.

Just before Drogon’s talons dig into the sands of that beach, Daenerys muses, in a voice that betrays she’s entertained more doubts than she’d previously been willing to let on.

Now that the danger has passed, she admits it to him plainly, “I didn’t think we’d come back…,” she murmurs, “I don’t know that I can believe it now.”

I still can’t believe you’re real…

He’s been taught his own lessons in accepting the impossible. Over and over again. To the point that the gods must be weary of heaping such simple truths upon his undeserving head.

That nothing is impossible. That love conquers all. That the world doesn’t have to be cruel. Not always.

“Believe it, Khaleesi,” he assures her, in a strong timbre, chasing any lingering doubts away. He keeps one arm loose around her waist as he raises the other hand to pull back a strand of silver hair caught in an airy breeze, planting a slow kiss at her temple before he pulls back, grinning as they soon make landfall, “Now go kiss your daughter.”

She doesn’t have to be told twice. He gives her a steady hand as she swings one leg over the dragon’s leathery hide and quickly slides down Drogon’s scales to the beach below, her boots landing with a thud in frosted surf. She’s racing to meet Missandei, who’s rushing down to meet them with steps that are just as hurried.

“I missed you! Oh, Jeorgianna, I love you!” Daenerys falls upon the baby with a thousand kisses. As many as she left behind, and then a few more besides. She’s laughing and crying at the same time, her emotions raw, and spilling over without reserve.

Missandei is grinning as widely as Jorah and Daenerys, her eyes crinkling on the sight of their unlikely return, both alive and unhurt. Behind her, Grey Worm is smiling, beaming, his hands coming together in a clap of almost instinctive applause. And Ser Davos smiles too, with a few cringes mixed in, courtesy of the bumps and bruises he’s nursing.

“I’ll be fine,” he mentions gruffly to Grey Worm, after the Unsullied soldier notices the man’s wincing and asks him about it. Grey Worm’s tone holds some guilt, despite not remembering the skirmish that led to the bruising of the Onion Knight.

But Ser Davos doesn’t hold any grudges, only muttering, “But how many times have I told you people that I’m no fighter? Perhaps next time you’ll listen.”

Many tears and somber thoughts plagued their last farewell, but the merry laughter and bright smiles that now grace all their features make up for it, a hundredfold.

Missandei hands the baby over to Daenerys without delay, as Jeorgianna is awake and reaching for her mother. The baby’s recovered from what almost happened in Shireen’s tower with resilience, her tears all dry by the time her mother and father return.

She won’t remember it. Neither will Grey Worm, having little memory of what happened between the night on the Winterfell moors and that moment he found himself staring down at Missandei, at her tear-washed, pleading features, on the stone floor of the tower.

Much has happened since he’s been under the Night King’s spell, as it turns out.

“Oh, Torgo…,” Missandei had given a teary laugh, completely undone, as she lay on those stones in relief and fatigue and gratitude and disbelief, unsure of how to begin after he wondered, quizzically, who’s blue-eyed, silver-haired baby was lying on Shireen’s bed.

Whose baby, indeed.

Daenerys pulls Jeorgianna to her breast tightly, her hand supporting the baby’s head before smoothly splaying across her little back, hugging her even closer, breathing in her scent, as she closes her eyes and lets herself really breathe, for the first time since they left this island.

It’s this image that arrests Jorah as he disembarks from Drogon and comes up to meet them. He’s nearly as anxious as Daenerys, but his steps slow on their own accord, faced with the most beautiful sight he’s ever beheld in his life.

The spiced splendor of Qarth and the Great Pyramid at Meereen, the mist-and-ivy ruins of Old Valyria, even the pine forests and waterfalls of Bear Island. These are wonders of the world they live in but they are nothing to the image that currently takes his breath away.

Daenerys Stormborn, on the winter sands of Dragonstone Beach, embracing their child.

Your Grace, I…

She left him speechless that day too. Or nearly. His heart was too full, too tempted by the look in her eyes and the feel of her hands sinking deep into his, as he risked just a little more…

I meant what I said.

And he means it even more now, where there’s no risk, only blissful reunion. He joins his family on the beach, enveloping the woman he loves and the daughter he adores in a warm and lasting hug, filled with many kisses, soft words and gentle laughter.

“We’re home, Jeorgianna. We’re home.”

Chapter Text

Winterfell

A few years later…

Late autumn brings an earthy crunch to the northern stretch of the King’s Road, with oak and birch leaves mulched under horse’s hoof and carriage wheel. The scarlet leaves shiver on their branches in the godswood, where the weirwood tree’s eyes are now closed in sweet slumber, with no more bloody tears running down its white bark.

There’s a scent of snow on the breeze and frost hovering in the clouds. Winter is coming. And soon.

In Winterfell, it brings the old families together for a night of cheery fires and harvest feasting, as the remnant gathers in remembrance before the first snow of the season falls on the moors outside.

Winter’s Night, they call it, and make sure to teach their children what it means. Of all the kingdoms of Westeros, the North remembers longest.

But it’s an easy thing at present. The castle walls still bear the marks of the Long Night. They’ve repaired the damage to the roof and the halls but Sansa told them to leave the scorched stones. They wear their scars with pride in this family.

Lyres, flutes and chatter fill the Great Hall. There’s roasted meat, sweet-smelling garden greens and baskets of orchard fruit on every table. They spare no expense for this gathering.

Sansa takes a flagon from one of the pine tables and pours whiskey into two tankards. She’s not one for strong drink most days, but the occasion calls for it. So does the weather, fair for the season but cold enough in the halls already that she’s wearing wool with her silk. Her red hair is worn long, in a simple northern style that her mother would approve.

She doesn’t mind the change in the weather. She’s used to the seasons now, as they’ve become more regular in the last decade, coming and going by turns. And they can’t expect summer to last forever. Winter must always have its time.

And this is not Winter, Sansa tells her young sons, Jon and Ary, when they shiver and complain about bundling up against the snow and cold to come. They’re so young, just eight years for both, but they’ve lived through a couple winters already. They know what to expect.

Like all children, they prefer the sunshine and mud of spring. They get restless and grumpy when they’re told they must put on extra layers or stay inside.

She musses their hair—one head dark like Sandor, one red like hers—and push them out the door to their father’s keeping, wrapping her shawl tight around her and giving them a little wave and rueful grin that says she expects they’ll grow up too soft, after all.

Summer children, you are, she often chides them, echoing Old Nan, but there’s affection in her tone when she says it. Sansa loves her boys and blesses their existence daily, as they came to her in the healing days of the Promised Spring, after the heavy snows finally melted off the eaves of Winterfell and the moors turned green and blossomed anew.

She didn’t trust it at first. Even with the Night King defeated, that Winter had lasted so long.

The morning the twins were born, Sansa kept Jon in her arms while Sandor took Ary. The smile stealing over her features was irrepressible, if only in seeing the hint of a rare grin on his. Soon, he wandered to the nearest open window, letting sunlight pour over the newborn as if in blessing. When Sansa saw this, the smile on her lips vanished. She leapt from bed with Jon in tow, tossing her red braid over her shoulder with fire.

She marched to her paramour and placed Jon in his care as well, if only to free up her grasp. The Hound juggled their babies deftly, as she shut the window pane beside him tightly, scolding, “Do you want him to catch his death?”

“If the whelp dies from northern air, girl, we might as well give him back to the gods right now,” Sandor reminded her.

And that was true enough. Even with all that happened, the North was still rough and rugged country. Its weather was harsh, its people were born of ironwood and evergreen. But the boys were true northerners from the start, taking after their namesakes. They were born healthy as young direwolf pups, wrestling each other in her womb and nearly all their days thereafter.

They would grow tall and broad and rough like their father. They would find southern manners tedious. They would scoff at dandy, summer knights. They would collect their own scars as they grew, so many that Sansa asked them often if they were intentionally trying to break her heart.

“No, Mama, never,” they promised through wincing smirks, as she patched them up herself or paced as the maester did it. They survived it all. Mostly scrapes and bruises from climbing trees and running through the woods and none—thank the Gods—given by each other. At least not on purpose.

They were good boys. Strong boys. Like fierce guard dogs, they would protect the North all their lives. She knew they would protect her too, stepping into their father’s boots when the time came, watching over the Lady of Winterfell until her fair face was a mess of wrinkles and her scarlet hair turned steel-grey.

She sees them wrestling together on a bear rug near one of the fireplaces now, like puppies playing together in a tangled mess of limbs, and she suppresses a sigh. Long-ago wisdom always jumps to her tongue at these times and she’s tempted to call to them, Stop that, boys. Don’t you know? Winter is coming.

Her father’s old wisdom feels a little spent, to be honest, as the Winter it prophesized has come and gone. No such winter will ever come to Westeros again. If the Stark name were to last beyond Sansa, perhaps they might have to consider changing their family words.

But Sansa is the last of them and her boys carry Sandor’s name.

This is no great tragedy. Her family did what they were charged to do. They acted honorably and nobly and did their part to save the realms of men. More than their part.

The Starks gave up…nearly everything. They will never be forgotten. Not by anyone, least of all the last daughter of such a lauded house. Dutifully and with love, Sansa places flowers on the tombs of her mother and father, kissing her mother’s statue each time she does it. She visits the graves of Robb, Rickon, Jon and Arya often, and charges her boys with keeping the winter roses she’s planted there well-tended.

Bran’s body is buried with the others, but Sansa doesn’t leave flowers for her younger brother. She sprinkles a handful of corn on his grave instead, with a wish passing her lips that Meera Reed will return from her adventures in the Far North soon, and bring her seemingly ageless raven with her. And perhaps Tormund Giantsbane and Ghost too.

It would be good to see them again.

They may appear tonight, snow-covered and ice-crusted, for this is an anniversary that few forget and bring many back to Winterfell, from all corners of the kingdoms. There are no invitations sent as all are welcome and all know the date. They gather in half-merriment and half-somber reflection, to toast their heroes, to honor their dead and to celebrate the living.

Sansa soon sets the flagon back where she found it, retrieving her tankards and making her way back to the head table, where Sandor sits. He’s fidgeting in his seat and regarding the fine stitching of his lordly robes with distaste. This amuses her, as ever. His place is by her side, forever now, but that doesn’t mean he’s always comfortable in it.

I’m not a knight, Sansa. I’m no lord. He holds to this, even after everything.

No, she agrees, with a teasing grin, straddling him, taking his burned face in her hands and kissing him, red hair spilling over her bare shoulders and his bare chest. But you are husband to the Lady of Winterfell. You are father to her children. And so you must act the part, I’m afraid.

He grumbles about it. He fights against it. But he never wins. He’s taciturn enough about the defeat that most of their guests don’t dare approach him during the celebration.

Cowards, Sansa thinks, knowing her Hound is all bark and little bite.

When she returns with the drinks, she neglects her chair in favor of his, sliding over and sinking down into his lap. He doesn’t resist her company. He welcomes it, smoothly letting his arms go around her, his fidgeting finally at an end as she joins him.

She smiles as she feels him press a warm, slow kiss to the crook at her neck, in simple greeting while she places the mugs on the table. She then settles back with him, arms soon gliding around his thick neck to better allow her a better view of the man she married. She studies him, her fingers playing in his shaggy hair, ever in need of trimming.

“Is your mangy dog presentable tonight, little bird?” he asks, giving a wry smirk at her scrutiny.

“Hardly,” she laughs on a familiar answer. “But I suppose you’ll do.”

At least she got him to bathe for this, even if she had to join him in the tub to do it.

Someone calls for a toast, one of many. Gendry rises from his seat, raising his glass and his voice. To Jon, this time—may the Stranger’s path lead him to home and hearth—and her own Jon seeks out her grey eyes in that moment. He’s in the midst of pinning his brother, but he takes a quick break to share a broad smile with her, happy at the fact that he’s named for someone who is spoken of with such honor and respect.

They raise their mugs with the others, sipping on a drink that burns all the way down. This is wildling whiskey. Sandor sucks air between his teeth while Sansa bats at his arm and points to a goblet down the table, seeking out some sweeter wine to chase it down. The Hound’s arm holds steady around his lady’s waist as he reaches for the silver glass, soon passing it to her.

The wine is a gift from Tyrion, who sends his regrets this time but promises he will make the next Winter’s Night, come blight or blizzard.

It’s mostly northerners this year, a relatively small gathering by comparison to some of these affairs. They’ve hosted many where half the bloody kingdom, what’s left of it anyway, showed up to visit the place where darkness tried to conquer light and everything was nearly lost.

Until it wasn’t…

After Sansa sets her goblet down, she absently brings a hand to rest against her arm, to the spot where pin-prick scars still mark the inside of her elbow, speaking of the blood she once gave to Ser Jorah Mormont.

“Does it hurt?” Sandor asks her, noticing where her hand has come to rest, his brow furrowing.

“No,” she shakes her head, with a soft expression assuring him she’s in earnest. Her scars do ache in cold weather sometimes, that’s true, but it’s a soothing ache.

There’s great peace in knowing that she did exactly what she needed to do when she most needed to do it. Both for Jon and for Jorah. Just as there’s peace in the love she’s found after tragedy. With a man who will lay down his life for her, with sons who will do the same, young as they are. And they aren’t the only ones…

The North rallied around her in the aftermath of all that happened. If she hadn’t refused it—and there are to be no more kings or queens in Westeros, they all agreed—she’d be wearing a crown adorned with wolves and winter roses tonight.

But a crown sits very heavy on the head. And she has their loyalty and their love without it.

The world is built with love and don’t you ever forget it. Sandor told her in King’s Landing.

No, she won’t forget. She gives him another fond smile and follows it with a kiss, abandoning her scars in favor of his, her fingers finding their favorite path with little trouble. She’s traced them in the dark often enough.

Across the hall, the boys have abandoned their wrestling for the sake of a tray of sugar plum pies and apple cider cakes, brought in by Gilly, who carries a tray on one hip and a baby on the other. Samwell Tarly is at a nearby table, speaking with Archmaester Ebrose over parchment scrolls. There’s a little grey at Sam’s temples these days, but his eyes are clear and wise. They reminisce and record memories with the old maester, as Not-So-Little Sam and one of his curly-haired sisters look on with interest.

The musicians play wistful, northern ballads as Lady Sansa and her Hound turn inward, their lips brushing by each other again in grinning kisses that taste of whiskey and wine and winter, but the kind of winter that comes with hearth and health and good company.

The kind of Winter’s Night that will bless this land for generations to come.

Chapter Text

May the Stranger’s path lead him to home and hearth…

Oh, it’s a strange path Jon Snow walks these days, but not an unpleasant one.

He’s been following a winding road—where else is he to go?—well-trod but not heavily traveled, with a lonely wolf tree leaning over the bend and patches of grass and pink clover growing up in the middle. The path skirts high cliffs above a craggy shoreline. He hears the surf crashing against sand and rocks far below.

He’s been traveling this road for some time. How long? Well, he couldn’t say. He finds that minutes and hours don’t exactly fit the timepiece anymore. Day and night don’t seem to exist with any set pattern. Sunsets and sunrises persist but he can’t say which one bathes the footpath before him in such soft shades of violet and rose-gold.

There’s wild and lush meadowland to the east and mountains in the north, with alpenglow spilling against their snowy peaks. A great sea unfurls to the west, a beautiful light glimmering on its white-capped waters.

Up ahead, on the cliffs, he sees a little cabin built of logs and stone, with ivy draping the fence and smoke rising from its square chimney. There’s a sturdy rowboat resting upside down along the seaside wall, with a quartet of ducks waddling by and a nanny goat and two lambs grazing in the hillside pasture. There’s a diminutive, golden-maned pony chewing on a bale of hay in the front yard.

And a pretty direwolf, with grey-and-white markings, dozing on the porch.

This cabin is the first sign of civilization that Jon’s seen in…a long while. He glances behind him, curiously regarding the path he’s traveled, all winds and turns—it looks like gloom and night down on the southern horizon—trying to remember where he’s come from.

He shivers on fragments of broken memories. A cold, cold wind. The bite of steel, the sting of frost. And Sansa’s tears falling on his bloodied face.

A young girl’s steady voice, with a call that he expects he must have answered:

We know no king but the King in the North whose name is Stark.

For why else would he be here?

Lyanna Mormont’s words still stir in his chest, but with triumph, not the desperation that he remembers in the other place. He thinks he hears her girlish laughter on the road behind him, thinks he feels her hands flat on his back, pushing him forward, urging him, “Go on, Jon Snow,” but how is that possible?

Lady Mormont is not here. Unlike him, she still lives.

When he turns back to the road and the cabin, it’s with a thoughtful look in his grim features. When he died before, he didn’t lie when he told the Red Woman there was nothing.

This time, it’s different. This time, he wonders if…he swallows hard, not sure what to expect. Not sure…

But the lambs are playing among the clover and the pony continues chewing on his hay, as if life here is something to be continued, not ended. And the pretty direwolf has heard the crunch of his boots on the path. She lifts her furry head and blinks her big eyes in something like recognition when she sees him there. She soon tips her throat back before letting out a low howl.

It echoes down the cliffs and hits the sea like a song.

And Jon’s grimness softens into something like a huff of smile—of amazement, really, or just dumb wonder—as he sees the door to that cabin open and watches a hale and hearty man, white-haired and bearded and still gruff as an old bear, step out onto his porch.

The man reaches down to scratch at the fur between the direwolf’s ears, “Aye, Lady, I’ve seen him,” before he straightens up, regarding Jon with a pleased look. And is that a grin hiding just beneath his white beard?

Surely not.

He wears no cloak, no crow’s black, setting those threads aside for the chunky, comfy northern wools of hermits and grandfathers, but he’s just as imposing as ever, unmistakable at a glance.

Jeor Mormont, the 997th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, grips one of the pine posts on that cabin’s front porch with a powerful hand, raising the other in greeting and inviting Jon closer, with an almost fatherly manner, “Come, Jon, I expect you could use a drink.”

Lady follows them into the cabin, padding through the cozy kitchen to take her usual spot on the bear rug spread by the fireplace. She lays her head on her front paws, while the men drink spiced mead and eat a hot meal meant to warm the bones. The wolf’s intelligent eyes remain open, watching them, listening to them talk, her head coming up whenever the Lord Commander tosses her scraps from his own plate, which is often enough.

It’s habit between them. He spoils her something fierce.

“It’s the least I can do for your sister,” Jeor explains to Jon, when the boy asks how Lady came to be in his care.

Jeor found Lady soon after he arrived. She was sitting on her haunches beneath the wolf tree at the bend just down the lane, waiting there. She likes to stay close to the road that brings those they’ve lost to where they’ll meet each other again. And Jeor is of a similar mind.

It’s too many years on the Watch. He’ll never shake it. At least not until his son and his grandchildren walk up that path. He’ll make sure they all find their way.

And Lady won’t go upland until Sansa comes back. She may have been the gentlest of the litter, but that gentleness comes with a fierce and loyal heart. She is to watch out for Sansa, even from beyond her grave. And she’ll keep to her vigil too, better than any recruit they ever had manning the Wall.

Jeor loves her for her loyalty, for he owes her mistress a great debt. And she reminds him of her brother, Ghost, who saved him once from a fate worse than death.

“What Sansa did for my son…,” Jeor begins but can’t finish, shaking his head with a great sigh, unable to express the depths of his gratitude. His voice goes somber at the memory of that Night.

A Night whose shadows were cast long, reaching even here, beyond the borders of life and death.

“You were able see that?” Jon is surprised, unsure of how any of this works. He’s as green as he was the first day he rode into Castle Black, grim-faced and grave, shadowing his uncle’s footsteps with lofty dreams of being a ranger.

He’ll be able to range all he likes now. And over landscapes far more glorious and spellbinding than the Seven Kingdoms could ever boast. That red-headed wildling girl will show him—she’s got no fear in trekking across the mountains, fields, and rivers, unmapped as they may be. Or Benjen can show him the way, if he likes, as Jon’s uncle still comes and goes as he pleases.

He’s one of those with one foot in both worlds and seems reluctant to give it up. He brings wisdom to those he travels with in the Old North, a swamp girl, a raven, a wildling and a wolf, and brings stories of their adventures back to those who love them.

It’s a fitting role for the First Ranger. And Jon will do well to seek him out again.

Benjen’s stories are not the only thread that connects the world of the living and the land of the dead. Jojen Reed still sees much with his greensight, Ashara Dayne reads the stars with ease and Jeor’s nieces have found a way to talk to their little sister in the woods at home, giving Lyanna the strength of five she-bears as she keeps the Island safe for those who survived.

And when the sea out there is clear and calm, Jeor’s found there’s much to behold in its depths.

“Aye,” Jeor’s eyes twinkle with the mischief of someone who knows there are wonders to be shared here. More to be found every day. But he doesn’t elaborate, not yet. The Lord Commander was always a patient man in life, and that extends to the hereafter, where there’s no need to be in a rush about anything.

His former steward will understand this soon enough. There’s much for Jon Snow to discover and learn. There’s much for him to know. But he will.

Jeor takes a drink of the sweet mead, notes of blackberry, honey and cinnamon on the tongue, and tears off another piece of rye bread that Julia baked just this morning.

He continues, with true admiration aimed at the boy who became a man, after all, who learned to lead before the end, “We saw what you did too. All of us.”

“All of you?” Jon wonders at the turn of phrase, perhaps still swallowing back his deepest hopes.

Jeor notices that Jon’s still clinging to the dourness that shadowed him in life, ever expecting the worse. For how else is an orphan boy with such a heavy fate supposed to act? Jon Snow knows much of death and betrayal and cold feelings. He knows little else.

Love, family, joy…

Jeor is more than willing to assure Jon that all this awaits him and more. For now, he says, “Ned was very proud, as was Robb. And Grenn and Pip. They never doubted you, not for a single moment. But they’ll tell you themselves, I’m sure. And Catelyn’s got a whole litany of apologies ready, so brace yourself. The Tullys are all for making things right when they’ve made a mistake…”

He continues, “And your mother longs to see you,” he gives Jon a soft look. “She’s been waiting a long time.”

Jon blinks at these words, and at those names, those lovely names. Pain flickers in his features, mixed with a candle flame of hope, jittery and looking around for the strong wind that will blow it out. He can only manage, in a very quiet voice, “I don’t know what my mother looks like.”

The young man’s eyes fall to his hands, gripping his mug very tightly. He glowers, much like Jorah did as a boy, in those forlorn days after Jeor retreated into himself, leaving his son to tend his mother’s grief on his own. And he has forgiveness to ask for this. He will. Catelyn Stark’s not the only one who’s been preparing apologies.

But Jorah’s time will come. Gods be good, not for many years. In this moment, Jeor’s focus is on Jon. He can too easily picture him, not as the recruit he once knew, but as a little boy in Winterfell, all eagerness and hope swallowed up by a reserve and fate thrust upon him.

A motherless boy, a king’s son in bastard’s clothing. Jeor expects few men could have borne it half as well.

“She knows you,” Jeor assures him, bringing a fatherly hand to rest on Jon’s shoulder.

The older man’s heart is full, with joy to spare. And he knows how it can be. After that mess at Craster’s, he’d found himself in a dense fog on the road, as bad as those that used to blow in on the island when the sea was warmer than the land.

But he’d heard a song in that fog, a woman’s voice singing gently, as if just down the way.

“Dark the oceans, dark the sky, hush the whales and the ocean tide…”

His heart leapt at that voice and his mouth went dry, for it was a soft and pleasing sound, one he hadn’t heard in decades. The song was familiar, laced with the same sweet tones that lilted Julia’s voice as she hummed over a laundry vat, back when she was still a young and pretty maid serving in his father’s house.

And he, a young lord, head over heels in love with her. The Mormonts never love in half measures. Jeor spent years lamenting this, as the hurt went far deeper and longer than the joy. At least, back there, when they’d come from. But he knows better now…

Love lost is love found.

His own reunions brought much life in death. It was Julia’s voice that drew him from the fog. But he saw his sister, Maege, first, up on the cliffs, above a crashing waterfall that reminded him of theirs at home. Her arms were crossed over her chest, a smile upon her lips, waiting for him to join her. And he wrapped her up in his arms, lifting her off her feet, just like when they were children. Then his she-bear nieces were there, crowding around him, all brown hair and brown eyes, grinning wide and finding their gruff Old Bear’s embrace for the first time in years.

“Hello, Jeor…”

And Julia, his sweet and perfect Julia, as beautiful as the day she left him, restored to him as if she’d never left, the hole in his heart mended by a word. He and Julia row out onto the water many nights, to better peer down to the other side, keeping a mindful watch over their grandchildren, those little silver and ginger-haired cubs who run up and down the beach at Dragonstone, barefoot and laughing in the surf, the wings of great dragons above them.

She’s out in the woods with Jory and Lyra just now, their fingers lightly dancing over the secrets of moss and mushroom. They’d all had a sixth sense that Jon was to come up the road and find the cabin today and they didn’t want to overwhelm him with faces he couldn’t know.

But Jon is to find his family again too. And for a soul so battered in life, it’s to be a relief that Jeor is most happy to witness.

Sooner rather than later.

They’ve barely finished that drink before there’s an eager knock at the cabin door. One of his neighbors must have heard Lady’s howl, knowing what it must mean, and come running.

“Come in,” Jeor calls out without hesitation, smiling beneath his beard as he’s certain he knows who has come to call. Not the wildling girl. Ygritte would never knock, too much like Mance in her rough manners. She’ll be by soon enough, late of hunting on the meadowland, ready to tease the boy with pretty hair…and give him a kiss for his trouble.

But this girl loves Jon just as much, if in a different way, and knows the howl of a Stark direwolf as if it’s the howl of her very own soul.

Jon looks up at the creak of hinges, his grim face transformed in an instant.

“Arya!” he says at once, almost unbelieving. He’d last seen his sister in the godswood of Winterfell, motionless, lifeless, laid out where the Night King left her.

She’s not lifeless now.

“Jon!” she answers, with a breathy laugh, running into her brother’s arms, burying her dark head against his shoulder, holding on tight as anything. Jon hugs her back, just as tightly.

Jeor sits back in his chair, satisfied and smiling, tossing another scrap to Lady as they watch the lost Stark children find each other again.

Chapter Text

“What’s it?” Daenielle has taken to asking lately, about everything.

Jeorgianna was the same at her age, if a tad more reserved. And Aemon is still asking questions, in a way that Daenerys expects will never end. She hopes not. She loves his questions, all of them, and the girls’ as well. She’s happy to spend the rest of her life just appeasing their many curiosities.

Daenielle will point little fingers at any number of everyday wonders and then settle back in either parents’ arms—she isn’t picky about who holds her, perhaps even preferring her Aunt Missandei—and wait for them to explain it to her. She listens through ears that have yet to recognize half the words used. But she smiles anyway, dimples appearing in those cheeks.

She doesn’t care much about the answer. She just likes to hear their voices.

She does the same again now, presently held in Daenerys’s arms, tiny fingers stretched out towards the most impressive of Bear Island’s many waterfalls, a cascading river spout carrying the spill off from the snowmelt and rainwater in the mountains down to the sea.

They stand there, mother and daughter, on a gently sloping cliff side that has become a favorite spot for Daenerys over the years, framed by tall pines and sea flowers that bloom in pink and blue-violet in the spring and early summer. This is where she kissed Jorah on the night they stole away from Winterfell. They stood just here, under frosted moon and crusty snow, their breaths intermingling, keeping warm only by clinging to each other. This is where they brought Jeorgianna after the war’s end, while snow and ice still hung from the evergreens.

This is where Jeorgianna and Aemon play with their father now, running rambunctious circles around each other and him, ducking under Jorah’s long grasp with laughter until they’re finally caught. Aemon giggles as Jorah swings him high above his head, “Higher, Papa!”, while Jeorgianna stops running and clasps her hands together, waiting patiently for her turn. It will come soon enough.

Jorah plays no favorites between their children. And he knows how much they like to fly.

Both the older children like heights and Daenielle seems not to mind them either, even if she’s still just a baby. Her thumb’s in her mouth and her blue eyes are wandering over the plunging waterfall before them with much approval.

This is fortuitous, as they are Targaryens as well as Mormonts, and they’ll all be dragon riders someday. A dragon rider who is afraid of heights is something that Daenerys would not be sure how to manage, having no sense of it herself.

Riding on Drogon’s back, way up there in the rafters of the sky, with the sea and the fields below just blue and green patches of earth far beneath her wings—there’s only one other place where she feels the same sense of peace and calm.

And that’s wherever her family is. The ones who love her the most. The ones she loves more than life itself. She presses a soft and lingering kiss to the silver streak in her youngest daughter’s otherwise red-blond hair, breathing in the scent of the baby with the same bliss that comes over her in waves sometimes.

Daenielle will be their last. And so she savors these months while she’s still content to stay balanced on her hip or snug in her arms, not yet begging to be off running with the other two.

Lyanna is with them, having joined them on this excursion with little prodding. She’s taller now than she used to be, a woman grown and the fierce Lady of Bear Island. She wears her long, chocolate-brown hair in a single braid down her back and there are trousers peeking out beneath her skirt. She’s always battle-ready, although there are no wars left to fight.

She’s been watching Jorah and the children with a small grin gracing her usually stern features. But she’s soon wandering over towards Daenerys and the baby, that grin remaining in place and even widening slightly as she regards the newest member of their family.

Here we stand. Lyanna gave the toast at dinner last night, defiant in those old words, while adding an extra line that was becoming habit, Dragons and bears together.

The Mormonts and Targaryens are one people now. One family, stronger for how their branches twist around each other. And Daenerys is very willing to give up her family words for something new.

Fire and blood…you keep them, Viserys, Father. I’ll trade them both for my children and love.

And even the dragons appear to agree with her, soaring over the northern sea just off shore, swooping over an island they’ve come to regard as a second home.

“What’s it?” Daenielle asks, spying the daisy petals that poke out of the tie holding Lyanna’s braid in place. A gift from Jeorgianna during their walk up the woodland path, as no one else would be able to trick Lyanna Mormont into wearing flowers in her hair. Not with her sisters gone.

With care, Lyanna removes the daisy stem and brings the flower to Daenielle, who giggles when she uses the petals to dot at the little girl’s nose and eyelashes.

“Jorah told me that you might want to stay at the Keep for the summer?” Lyanna mentions, off-handedly, even casually, playing her feelings close to the chest, as ever.

“If you’ll have us?” Daenerys replies, pleased at the idea of spending more time here.

She loves Dragonstone, as they have made it a home instead of a fortress in recent years, but there’s no denying the wild beauty of the island on which Jorah was born. And it seems only right that his children should be given the chance to know this place too. To wander the deep woods, to pick apples in the orchards, to witness northern whales breaching in the bay, to watch brown bears munching berries on the hillside.

“Yes, of course,” Lyanna answers, in her curt Mormont way, but Daenerys notes how her dark eyes seem to brighten at the prospect, knowing that the young woman must be lonely up here sometimes, even strong-willed as she is, even as well-loved as she will always be. By her Bear Islanders, by the whole of the Seven Kingdoms—as there are many who say that Jon wouldn’t have been able to do what he did without her stubborn words, spoken through a curse of death.

Bears savings dragons and dragons saving bears. It’s just the natural way of things, Daenerys has come to believe.

Lyanna’s looking out at the sea, but dares to add, “I’d like that.”

“So would I,” Daenerys replies, in a gentle way, and the women exchange a look of mutual respect and love, borne of the times they lived through and the horrors they survived.

“I dreamt of my mother the other night. She was standing just here, looking out on the water like she used to,” Lyanna admits, while turning her face to the sea winds again, closing her eyes against the golden sun, a healthy rosiness coloring her cheeks. She sighs, “And I swear that I can hear my sisters when I’m out in the woods sometimes. I know it’s nonsense but do you ever think that they…that those who are gone might stay with us? Or come to visit, at least?”

“I do,” Daenerys doesn’t hesitate, giving the younger woman a mother’s answer. She’s well-practiced in them by now. But it’s not just spun tales. She believes it too. She believes her own mother watches over her, even if she wouldn’t know her face or voice well enough to recognize them.

She knows this, because that’s what she would do, if the gods ever snatched her away too early. And she knows, down deep in her soul, that she’ll see her mother someday. And that Jorah will be given the chance to make peace with his father. And that Lyanna will be reunited with her mother and sisters.

They’ve all seen more wondrous things than this.

And she still remembers those visions she saw in the House of the Undying all those years ago. They were mostly lies and tricks but she suspects the warlocks might have slipped in a little truth too. There was a time that she would have given much to join Drogo and Rhaego in that windswept tent in the Night Lands. As the pain has receded, she’s glad that they went together, that they’ve been together all this time.

She imagines them in health, tall and proud warriors of the steppes, riding black stallions together under vast desert skies filled with glittering stars.

The thought doesn’t come with the sting it used to. Nor does she feel guilt in finding happiness with another. Drogo may have been her sun and stars. But Jorah is her heart. Jorah is the other half of her soul.

Their eyes meet across the grassy cliff side, she holding their youngest closely and him with the other two on either side, bouncing along beside him.

Love…love, how can I ever repay you?

But she knows there’s no gratitude expected. There’s no debt to be repaid. There’s no bargain that must be struck.

Love is freely given and freely received. It fills her heart and overflows, like that magnificent waterfall, never to go dry.

It’s in Jeorgianna and Aemon’s chatter, Lyanna’s grin, Jorah’s rumbling laughter and Daenielle’s little hand falling on the curve of Daenerys’s mouth, saying, “What’s it, Mama?”

“Joy, baby,” she gives another sound kiss to Daenielle’s cheek. “Just lots and lots of joy.”