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The thought comes to her unbidden, plucked from the depths of her subconscious as she watches the sea slam into the shores below.
Recognizing that the ebb and flow of the tide no longer brings her the solace it used to fills her with a cold, dreadful emptiness.
The kind Daenerys now associates with the North – that awful, barren place that took her youngest away.
Her baby boy. Her Viserion.
Each time she attempts sleep, she dreams of him, his falling body, pierced by the harbinger of death.
Crystal blue gaze devoid of humanity…and then she wakes, shaken to her core each night since.
She’d thought she’d been through real trials, experienced real anguish. She’d said as much not too long ago to a rugged northerner with the most doleful pair of eyes she’d ever seen.
With an arrogant bite, she’d counted the afflictions she’s suffered through – and survived.
How dare this stranger who brought the cold with him and demanded pieces of her home not bend the knee, she’d thought then.
And how the Gods have chastised her for it. For her arrogance, her hubris, her perceived invincibility. They dealt the ultimate punishment.
This pain – this ache from losing a child – she thought she would be spared from it, but oh how wrong she was, and how dearly her beloved Viserion had paid.
A loud crack in the sky – a jolt of thunder warning of the approaching storm – pulls her from her thoughts, just in time to hear the halt of boots outside her door.
That part of her that has indeed lived through so much and survived forces her to stand up straighter, expression schooled into one of feigned authority and coolness as she preempts the knock.
“Come in.”
She is half expecting her Hand – who tried so hard to disguise his disappointment upon seeing only two dragons emerge from the horizon upon their return.
And it would be much safer, simpler if it were the dwarf, but she knows it’s not and never could be.
This man, who enters her chamber with authority and restraint in equal measure, is someone else entirely.
Daenerys has not crossed paths with anyone like Jon Snow before – someone who has tilted her so off balance it feels as though the universe will never be righted again.
Perhaps she will never be righted again – forever cursed to hover with one foot off the precipice – suspended by his presence.
It would make sense. Given what she has seen him do, given that he’s cheated death not once now but twice; the second time before her very eyes.
But no.
It is the very opposite - his humanity – that enthralls her so.
The deep-rooted regret in his expression upon waking – unrestrained guilt, remorse – that she cannot forget.
The conviction to take it all back…that he would sabotage the plan he so wholeheartedly believed in and all so she would not have to suffer loss.
She saw it clear as day in those tired brown eyes and then she didn’t need his proclamation of loyalty to know she had it.
Daenerys would fight for this man, with this man and together, they would triumph.
Against the dead. Against the evils of the living. Against it all.
Together.
She doesn’t even realize she’s staring until those same eyes crinkle at the edges with sheepish amusement.
“Am I interrupting, Your Grace?”
His words bring her back to the present, a jolt that strangely grounds her.
She is Daenerys Targaryen, still a mother of dragons, breaker of chains, and she will not succumb to grief.
There’s still a kingdom to save and an army to vanquish.
“What could you possibly be interrupting?” she asks instead, eyes sweeping across the emptiness of the council chamber.
A gust of wind passes through, disturbing only the curls framing Jon’s face and nothing else in the stone room.
She doesn’t wait for him to answer – afraid of what may pass his lips.
“You look well. I trust our maesters have taken great care of you.”
She has not seen him privately since their journey from East Watch.
“Aye, they have, Your Grace. Thank you.”
Since then, it’s been nothing but council meetings, negotiation strategies and mock war scenarios.
She’s not been alone with him at all and it is a revelation she can no more escape than the weight of his gaze upon her.
The way he looks at her, she senses he is one or two breaths away from asking how she’s fairing. If one catalyst can destroy her hard earned resolve, it is this northerner with eyes full of concern and a tongue laden with conviction.
She cannot let it happen.
“I trust you’re well enough for wine then.”
She turns to the side table behind her – the one adorned with the stone carved pitcher and three identical goblets.
“Aye, though even if I were not, I dare not refuse.”
The “you” goes unsaid – swallowed behind the lip of the goblet she hands him, filled near to the brim with Dornish red.
The smile comes to her lips almost as unbidden as the earlier revelation that she may never be at peace again.
The parallel dims the levity of the moment but it doesn’t extinguish it completely. Daenerys holds onto it, keeping Jon’s gaze for as long as she can, knowing it will be a while longer until she can be so open with her feelings again.
Not until one enemy is pulled from the throne and the other burned to crystal ash.
Jon must sense the course of her thoughts for his own smile falls flat again – lips now curved down in what Daenerys knows to be his customary expression.
But she doesn’t much care for that, not when that fire is still very much ablaze in his eyes.
Suddenly, it doesn’t feel so cold in this room – this empty chamber with the last coals of the fire failing to offset the powerful gusts of wind. She turns her head away, to look at the vast nothingness beyond the cliffs adorning her home.
Clouds have come in, the sky looks angry and yet…
Daenerys doesn’t even realize Jon has taken several steps towards her until they’re standing nearly shoulder to shoulder staring off into the gray.
Where there was solace before, there’s now a chasm edged with panic and uncertainty.
She hasn’t felt this powerless in so long, not since she emerged untarnished from the fire, her babies besides her – safe and sound.
With them, she knew she could be anything – there was nothing to be frightened of, but now…
She’s not sure what prompts her to speak, how her intention to keep closed off has diminished so entirely in the presence of this man.
She knows he blames himself in part and perhaps it’s cruel to be so open with him, but a part of her – one that sounds quite a bit like her Hand – tells her that he may be the only one who understands.
“I’ve never really known silence. I’ve only ever known noise and chaos.” She pauses then, watching the seas grow more restless, more turbulent.
“Seems appropriate for a girl born during one of the worst storms in Westerosi history.”
She means for it to be in jest – or perhaps not – but either way, Jon is not smiling when she looks at him. Instead, he stares straight, profile unmoving as he parts his lips to speak.
“There was a lot of silence at The Wall. Especially, when the Lord Commander would enter the room. I’ve grown suspicious of silence since.”
He turns to her then and there’s a flash of his scars in her mind’s eye.
It’s the closest he’s come to telling her what happened and it may be the most vulnerable he’s ever been with her, judging by the wave of discomfort he gives off.
She doesn’t probe, it’s not her place…yet.
Instead, she takes a long sip from her goblet, letting the sweet rich wine warm her from within.
“You’re right. Silence does not intimate order. I used to think it did, I even wished for it at times, but then-“ she pauses again. For all the ease with which the scene plays out in her head, the words don’t seem to fit.
“Seeing one of my children fall from the sky, speared to death…there’s nothing in that memory but silence, deafening, choking silence.”
She can practically feel how Jon tenses besides her, his grip on the goblet tightens and she can feel his eyes on her, burning a path down the column of her neck and across her shoulders.
For a moment, she wonders how someone from the North could awaken such heat inside her, but she doesn’t ponder it for too long. There’s a purpose to her words and she needs him to know.
“I say this only so you understand. We will destroy the Night King and his army – with or without Cersei’s help. She can choose whether her people burn alongside him or if they fight with us. Regardless, we will be ready when the time comes.”
She momentarily loses herself in the planes of his face – the ones that she nearly memorized as she sat by his bedside on the ship.
It’s an altogether different experience when he’s standing within fingertips’ reach of her, looking at her with an intensity that shows no signs of abating.
And then…like flipping a page, his expression lightens, a genuine smile curving his lips as he nods.
“I have the outmost confidence in my queen,” his voice is barely above a whisper, so soft spoken is he, but Daenerys hears him loud and clear.
The implication is there – the careful boundary they’re treading seems frivolous at best – an ephemeral line drawn in the wet sand of the shore below; one that doesn’t stand a chance against the incoming tide…
She’d seen it when he refused to let go of her hand – that longing that Tyrion described, which she foolishly scoffed at. Even then, she’d known there was a grain of truth to her Hand's words. It’s here now again, but somehow amplified and she knows that if he makes a move again, she will not pull away. She will give in, let the tide take her far, far away from here.
Alas, it is not meant to be, for Jon is the one who breaks their connection this time, turning back to observe the storm headed their way.
She means to bid him farewell, dismiss him though it is the least of her desire, but Jon has other intentions.
“After the Red Woman brought me back, she asked what I had seen. Whether the Lord of Light had visited me, whether he spoke to me of his grand plan.”
“And did he?” she cannot help but cut in and Jon turns to her again.
“No.”
The words feel final somehow but she senses he has much more to say.
“He never came. No one did. There was only darkness and emptiness…and silence.”
She almost reaches for him then, propriety be damned, but something stops her. This isn’t the right time.
“Silence and stillness and uncertainty until Sansa walked through the front gates of Castle Black, until we reclaimed Winterfell, until I touched on your shores…”
Those fraught orbs find their way to hers again and she feels rooted to the ground beneath the enormity of what he has revealed. The silence stretching between them is not the one of which he speaks but she wishes she could offer him some comfort.
“What I mean to say, Your Grace, is that there’s nothing wrong with chaos, with noise. They symbolize life and that is the side I believe in, the side of the living.”
It’s an apology wrapped in confession and laved with admiration – the girl born in storm and chaos bringing life and vitality to a broken bastard risen from the ashes of betrayal. Daenerys does not need to know more, though she very much wishes to.
She wants to know all his secrets, see everything he’s seen, squeeze herself into all the crevices that rattle him with cold. She wants to protect him.
It’s never been so before…not with Daario, nor Jorah, certainly not with Drogo.
Perhaps it’s this realization that blinds her to her own action, because his hand feels unexpected in hers – soft in some parts, jagged in others.
The beat of his pulse at the base of his wrist; it’s all too much and at the same time not enough.
The urgency blooming in her chest is only mildly subdued by the weather infringing on their moment. It’s as if the heavens know this is not meant to be…at least not at the present.
“I’m glad,” she whispers through the dryness in her throat, “I’ve seen you with a sword, Lord Snow, and I would not want to face you in battle.”
His grip tightens ever so slightly, but she refuses to tear her eyes away from him to look down. This feels important, monumental. The turn of the tide. The beginnings of a bond stronger than any political alliance, built of something deeper, impenetrable.
“Jon.”
She must look confused, because he actually snickers.
“Just call me, Jon. I am no lord, Your Grace.”
“Ser Davos is of a different opinion.” She quips back easily, instinctively.
“He has a wild imagination.”
His words bring her back to that moment, when she had asked him about the proverbial knife to the heart, which turned out to be quite literal. That conversation seems so many moons ago, when in fact less than a fortnight has passed.
“That he does, but from what I’ve seen thus far, he is almost always right.”
She needs to say it and perhaps Jon needs to hear it. He squeezes her hand then, a true acknowledgement of what she is implying and the gratitude he cannot verbally express.
“Aye, he is.” Jon acquiesces and it only dawns on her then, that perhaps he is also in need of faith, of loyalty, of someone to tell him that all will be well.
“I do not need heirs to leave a legacy behind, Jon. Saving this land, changing it for the better – that is what I have always wanted and it is the legacy I am meant to leave behind. I hope to do so with you by my side.”
He looks at her for a long time, frozen, unmoving, like a statue. She has no concern in holding his gaze…propriety is not something she can afford right now.
Belief…faith…loyalty, all these ephemeral concepts now feel as tangible as his flesh in hers and Daenerys needs him to feel it too.
Needs him to know that this grief will live with her forever, but it will not break her. She will learn from it and grow stronger.
And despite all rationale and logic, she deeply yearns for him to fight alongside her.
“And peace…”
His voice sounds oceans away, the last she thought she’d hear.
“Your legacy,” Jon explains, sensing her confusion, “it won’t just be changing this world for the better. It will be peace and stability. It’s what I see in you, what Ser Davos and Missandei and Jorah and Tyrion see in you. And it’s what my people will see as well. I have no doubt.”
Somehow, he manages to turn her words against her, take the comfort she offers and wrap them both in it. He’d said as much while bed ridden, but it feels so much more potent here with him towering over her in his tunic emblazoned with the sigil of the Wolf.
How she had ever thought him as little or small is beyond her – not when it feels so difficult to breathe in his presence.
“Peace…” She murmurs out, as if testing how the word sounds on her tongue, “it’s not the same as silence is it?”
She already knows the answer but she needs to hear him say it.
“Aye, it is not.” Jon confirms, his thumb drawing a lazy path across her knuckles – back and forth like the ebb and flow of the tide.
Perhaps, that more than anything is what she’d always craved for. Not silence or solitude but peace, peace and stability when her life had been nothing but chaos and fear.
She’s certain the man besides her craves for it just as much, and she resolves to give it to him.
To all of them, if it’s the last thing she does.
The storm brings dusk too soon and she knows that parting is inevitable, but Jon makes no move to separate and she does not either.
Tomorrow, the cycle will resume. More strategy, more planning, more scheming but tonight there is warm flesh in hers that sends a calmness through her veins that hasn’t been there in far too long.
And if it is at all an indication of the peace they speak of, she’ll fight for it with all her might.
Tomorrow.
Tonight, they rest…at least until not a drop of Dornish red remains.
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