dragonwarder | (no subject)

I am sure you will see one, before too long. Just as perhaps I will see the weirwood, one day.

[Because she's not about to give up on trying to get him to bend the knee, if he thought they were past that. But fortunately, she does not harp upon it, and instead shifts her weight to reply to his other musings.]

It is easy to be cruel, and evil. Whether or not you've done anything to deserve their good thoughts...sometimes that can be enough, for many of the people here.

[That's the best answer she can give, without getting too personal about her feelings about the previous Jon.]

But, if I may be frank -- you have matured, and I am relieved for it.

[She takes a drink of the ale and follows his eyes to the animals darting between the trees.]

I am still trying to discover that myself. There are research facilities that are studying them, but much of it is done in secret. I do not believe they are native, but...they did not come with any of us, here.

[He thinks on that — how easy it is for some men to be cruel and evil — then nods and takes a long pull of the ale.]

I don’t know when he was — [How do you put this?] — I don’t know the last thing to happen to him before he came here. Someone told me that Sansa said to call him — me — Lord Snow, that he’d like it, so it must have been sometime after I became Lord Commander. Did he ever speak of a mutiny?

[Maybe it’s the case: it hasn’t escaped his attention that she hasn’t asked how and why he left the Night’s Watch. Maybe she just assumes that it would have been up to whoever was ruling the North to punish him for that desertion.

After he watches her watching the animals, he adds,]

So there’s somewhere else that no one but them ever comes from, might be. Or — out in New Rio, out by the gates, did you see animals with golden eyes? I saw something called a yak at Everest. And I saw wolves.

[Ah, how does she explain her relationship with another Jon Snow? She cannot, really. The experiences have been similar, but also very different.]

No. But I did not endeavor to speak much of home, with him. [She should probably just say it.] Our relationship was somewhat turbulent, I'm afraid. He was younger, and sought to treat me more like one of his sisters than the Protector of the Realm.

[She cannot suppress her expression of distaste. They had worked through it, but it had not been easy. And, at any rate, it was obvious that whatever Jon had experienced, it had turned him into a fine man. And that was all that could really be asked of anyone.

His second question though -- she has to pause before her sip of ale.]

Not animals, but...you remember how I told you of our number acting strangely? I believe our rations were tampered with. A little while after some of us would eat, we would change. Golden eyes. Long canines.

[She shakes her head. The memory is obviously unpleasant.]

[That makes him chuckle once, one of the few times he’s shown any amusement since he knocked on her door, and take a pull of his beer, and give his head a small shake. He says only,]

You’re not my sister.

[In some ways, more infuriating than the one he has. In others... well, he knows people think there aren’t many ladies fairer than his sister, but knowing other people think a woman is fair and thinking it himself are two different things, and the way Daenerys struck him at their first meeting — he’s glad she’s not his sister.

Still, it’s not strange for a queen to be fair, and it doesn’t matter whether or not he thinks she is. At the very least, though she may be stubborn, she isn’t false. Not so far. That means more just now than a pretty face.]

Long — fangs?

Did you eat any of it? How long did it take for them to go back to the way they were? [His gaze snaps back to the brush around them, and he peers into it.] — Do these creatures have long fangs?

Edited 2020-02-20 07:56 (UTC)

[Her reaction to his sudden concern startles her. The laugh that comes is amused enough that she has to lift the back of her hand politely in an effort to stiffle it. A man who is haunted in his dreams by dead men, and the thought of some wolf fangs alarms him.

How quaint.]

The cure was roughly five minutes of contact with another Displaced. The contact was unpleasant. But it was easily correctable.

[She expertly dodges his first question.]

They may. They are all different.

[He sets his half-empty ale to the side, then picks up his abandoned salad again and makes to take a bite.

The idea that the creatures around them might have fangs of that sort doesn’t unsettle him that much: it’s only that he had been thinking of... more deer than shadowcats, even if they don’t have the same forms, for the way they move through the greenery and watch and shy away. But maybe he should be thinking of something else completely.]

Has it happened before, that it needed to be cured?

[What he means is: it seems like a settled question.]

I suppose similar symptoms were seen previously, though it was not somethting I was present for.

[She glances out past one of the larger gouges in the earth to look upon one of the animals watching them. She had not checked in on Aramis lately, she realized. With the gates at the forefront of her mind, there had not been time.

Perhaps they could help unravel the mystery. She would need to press about work anyway, now that Rey was gone. She could not afford that apartment by herself.]

You would have better luck asking one of the Displaced whom has been here longer.

[Around a bite of salad, he asks,]

I don’t know who that would be. Have someone in mind?

When I have questions, I most often go to Rey as we live together. Or -- I would have.

[She takes another long pull of ale, now that she's vocalized the other source of her frustration. It had only been a day or two, but her absence made her anxious. There was no hiding it.]

Perhaps Clarke will know.

I’ve met them both.

[Still, he catches that something isn’t right in the way she’s talking about Rey.]

Why can’t you talk to Rey now?

She's gone.

[The bitterness doesn't quite leave her voice, and she avoids his eyes when she says it in an attempt to hide what she can about how it's effecting her.]

She never came back, after the gates.

[He’s silent and frowning for a long moment.]

That might mean those gates can send us to places other than we’ve been told. But I don’t remember whether or not I saw her go into them. I only know that she wasn’t lost or seriously hurt on the way.

If I came back, might be that she could, too.

[But he had come back older, and with no memories of anything but his life in Westeros.]

[That is a silver lining, and for a moment, it seems like it is what she needs to hear. Daenerys glances into Jon's eyes, as if she's searching for the truth of his statement before reality seems to catch up with her.]

And she may not remember. Just as you do not remember.

[Would she be alright with that? In Jon's case, it had been something of a blessing. But what if Octavia had come back with no memories?

It would hurt. She cannot imagine Rey and Kylo Ren's return to be any different.]

[His first response to that is a sober nod. His facial expression is not unsympathetic; if they hadn’t failed to come to terms about the North earlier, it might have been more fully consoling. As it is... well, it’s rare that he’s ever seen anyone who left him again. Most farewells have turned out to be permanent, or near to it, whether or not he’d had the chance to say good-bye.]

But is it possible that she might remember after all?

[He has a sad face, he knows it, but his eyes are sadder than usual.]

I do not know. I have not seen such feats before. Only -- what happened to you.

[Daenerys goes quiet for a few moments and polishes off the last of her ale, rolling the neck of the bottle between her fingers while avoiding Jon's eyes once she spots the sad reflection in them. She's too empathetic to see that right now.

She might slip. Even as she feels her heart tightening in her chest.]

It does not matter. There is nothing to be done for it.

No. And I know what it is, to hold on to hope too long and have it fail you in the end.

[He’s still watching her, even though she’s avoiding his gaze.]

But that doesn’t mean it will. Impossible things still sometimes happen.

[She should know that better than most.]

[She does not know what he is trying to say, with that statement. If he is trying to commiserate with her, or if he is speaking on a personal experience.

And impossible things have happened to her before. She hatched three dragons at her breast, and raised them to adulthood. But when she'd once prayed for a miracle, hope had done nothing for her except to destroy her.

The ale nudges her thoughts to dark places, and she has to bite her lip to shove memories of Drogo's dead eyes back into the deep recesses of her mind.]

Once in a lifetime. Yes.

[She tries to keep her voice even. If I look back, I am lost.]

I am glad you came back. I do not have many familiar things left in this city.

[That makes his expression shift from sympathy to curious disbelief.]

Really?

[He scoffs — Who, me? Are you sure? — and takes a drink of the ale, which is near the end of the bottle now.]

I’ll try not to disappoint you.

But there’s no saying there’s a limit on luck, good or bad. Three impossible things have happened to me in the last year. My sister coming to me at Castle Black was the least unlikely.

[It is easier to leave that one alone. Focusing too much on genuine emotion will just leave her vulnerable -- and that is not a place where she wants to be, just now.

However, she manages the slightest of scoffs when he mentions his impossible miracles and how many of them he has had. Uncanny.]

I hatched three dragons. Perhaps we have reached our limit. I suppose we will know for certain when one of us crosses the fourth threshold.

Don’t think luck is like a bottle of ale. [He sets his, now empty, aside.] And I didn’t say that every impossible thing to happen to me was good.

[One of them was seeing the Night King.]

How does someone go about hatching three dragons?

[Her smile fades again. What should have been a happy memory was inevitably tainted by the circumstances that had lead her there. She cannot imagine Jon genuinely caring or wanting to know of her late husband, or how she had laid upon his funeral pyre with her eggs —given to her as a wedding gift for the marriage she had been sold into.

Even if she had come to love Drogo, there was nothing to erase what came before it.]

Fire.

[Her eyes drop to the burned patch on the grass. It would be disingenuous to imply that fire’s hand was the only hand. Summerhall was enough to prove that it took more than fire alone.]

It is not a happy tale.

[That can’t be all of it, he thinks, before her gaze drops. If it were as simple as that, the dragons would never have gone away to begin with.

And then she looks down, and he regrets having asked so easily.]

I’m not asking you to tell me something you don’t want to tell me. Today or any day.

It's alright.

[It wasn't exactly a private affair. There were hundreds of witnesses, even if...what remained of her khalasar bearing witness was somewhat different than the whole of Westeros knowing.

But Jon does not seem the sort for courtly gossip.]

"Fire and blood". You must provide both to hatch a dragon.

Your words.

[And the North’s words, the Stark words: Winter is coming. That also means more than it seems to, Your Grace.

It isn’t the time to say such a thing, so he doesn’t, only nods to show that he’s listening.]

Edited 2020-02-27 02:46 (UTC)

Yes.

[She looks at the bottle of ale that she's finished and reaches for another from the collection he had brought. She is going to need it, if she is going to tell this story.

And even still, she is not certain she can tell the whole thing. Not yet.]

It was the eve of my husband's funeral. He'd fallen prey to infection, from a wound he took defending my honor. I'd sought help from a healer, but ... she had betrayed my trust.

[She chances a glance at Jon, and forces herself to hold his gazen. He will surely think her a monster -- and maybe she was. But it was the truth of what she had done, and she did not regret it. No one would understand.

And that was fine. But she would own her decisions, especially given what they had lead to.]

In exchange for his life, I took her's upon his funeral pyre and Drogon, Viserion, and Rhaegal were born.