Chapter Text
A dark figure descends from the clouds atop his frozen beast. His beast groans and growls below him. This was a powerful being, far different from the mindless creatures that made up his army. It was born into the new world with the power and the might of the old. His resurrection wiped its soul from the flesh, but some memory must still linger; its noises sound almost melancholy.
It matters not. This beast is under his command, as all beings shall be. It will not falter from his control, this he knows. Still, death has weakened the potent magic and fire within him. Any more scrapes and cuts, and this beast will be of little use to him. One undead, even a dragon, could never match the power of one living.
His army is already in place, his generals await his order. This is the beginning of the end, the end he has sought to bring unto the world for eons upon eons. He has lived through countless eras of man and creature, he has outlasted the rise and fall of civilizations, and this one shall fall at his behest. He witnessed the age of the greatest heroes the world had ever known, but even heroes wither and fall.
Was he a hero once? Long ago, before the cold dark consumed him? Was he brave and noble, just and fair? Did he protect the innocent? Defend the weak? Did he courageously face the horrors of the world?
It matters not. Heroes are not eternal, not like him. Their stories are told, but all stories fade with time. But time cannot touch him. He is this world’s horror now. And soon, there will be no need for stories or fairy tales. Soon there will be nothing at all. Nothing but the night and the frost.
Will he be satisfied then? Will the void inside him be filled by a void in the world? Will it finally be enough to repay thousands of years of icy torment, living not alive, dying but never dead?
It matters not. The only thing that matters is his mission be complete, his destiny fulfilled. He was made with the magic of the old world to be the bringer of death, the destroyer of man. Why should he be anything other than the monster they turned him into?
He spots dim lights in the darkness, and he grins. The light of humanity. So peaceful, so warm. A light that unites all men. A light he will gladly snuff out.
He ascends back into the clouds. Not quite yet will the battle begin. But soon. Soon. How many will die? How long will it take for his purpose, his vision to be realized?
Well, he has all the time in the world. It matters not.
Before the sun comes up , Tormund had said. Before the sun comes up, the victor of the struggle between Life and Death will be decided. In mere hours, they’ll be facing the Night King and the dead, and as the winds grow stronger and the night grows darker, Jon begins to think might never feel the warmth of the Northern sun on his face again.
He’d told them all he can in their last meeting, with Bran filling in the gaps in with his...abilities. The Night King, his undead army, what they can do. What can kill them, what can’t. The simple metal weapons and swords they had stored would be of little use now. Only Valyrian steel and dragonglass can send the dead back to the dirt. If not for Daenerys allowing them to mine the dragonglass beneath Dragonstone, they surely would have been fucked. If not for Daenerys seeing and realizing the evil that haunted his nightmares ever since Hardhome, they would have no chance whatsoever to survive what’s about to come. If not for Daenerys… Daenerys…
Jon had never imagined he would feel this way toward the revered and feared Mother of Dragons before they met. When he first laid eyes upon her, he’d been stricken by her youth, and even more by her ethereal beauty. Silver hair that glimmered in the moonlight, violet eyes that shone with a blazing fire, a mind and tongue as sharp as a blade. Of course he had felt an attraction; only a blind man wouldn’t. But he had never dreamed he would feel something like this again in this life. Something like what he had with Ygritte, except more. So much more. He loved Ygritte, more than he thought possible, but he could never give himself to her fully. He had a duty to the Watch. They were never meant for each other.
But with Daenerys...with Dany, he feels free. He feels like he has met his match, too perfect it could have only been made by the gods. He could look into her eyes and forget all the horror, all the death around him, if only for a moment. When he looks at her, he isn’t lost anymore. He is home. For a moment, when they laid together in bed on that boat after a night of passion, a part of him entertained the terrible idea of running. Running away from the North, the dead, the Throne, all of it, with her at his side. They could go east, get warm. He would finally see a little more of that world everyone else is clamoring on about. He could be happy. They could be happy. Together.
No, he can’t think like this now. He has people who are relying on him, counting on him to lead them through the Great War. He has a duty to them. The dead are fast approaching. He cannot lose sight of that, not now, not when it counts most.
Maester Aemon had warned him so many years ago, “Love is the death of duty .” But when he’s with Dany, he almost feels like he could let duty die. Let it rot in the ground, so they could be together. Perhaps this moment, the revelation of his life, the truth about his mother and father, is his punishment for letting something other than duty enrapture his mind.
Sam kept telling him those not so subtle remarks, asking him by not asking, and giving him that look all day, as if he wanted to say with his eyes what he could not say aloud, when? In truth, if he had it his way, he would never tell. He would be content with leaving the past in the past, letting the biggest secret of Robert’s Rebellion remain with the dead. But since when have things ever gone his way?
He doesn’t know why Bran and Sam know this. He doesn’t know how they could possibly know the truth before he ever could. Most of all, he doesn’t know why now? Why tell him his entire life was a lie right as he faces death itself, as well as the deaths of millions of people? Why tell him he shares blood with the woman he loves, the woman he wants to spend the end of his days with? Why take all that he thought he knew and drive it into the dirt? Why?
He wonders why he’s even here, staring at the cold statue of his dead aunt Lyanna– No. Not his aunt. His mother. Lyanna Stark, the fabled She-Wolf of Winterfell. His true mother, who loved her child so much she begged her brother with her dying breath to protect him with his life, to keep the knowledge of her love with the enemy prince a secret to the world, to take that secret to the grave. For years, he had wondered about his mother. He thought knowing the truth would give him some rest, some closure. He thought knowing that his mother cared for him, that she loved him with all her being, would make him happy. Now, he wishes more than anything that his parents were anyone else, anyone in the world, other than Lady Lyanna Stark of Winterfell and Crown Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. But brooding in front of his mother’s grave won’t change that.
A light echoing patter of footsteps coming towards him. He doesn’t need to lift his head to know who it is. Dany . She’ll want to talk before the battle begins and the seven hells rain down on them. He’s been avoiding her, and she knows that he’s been avoiding her. But even when he walks away, for a split second he can see the look of hurt in her eyes, and that hurts more than he’d like to admit; like another knife to his heart.
She stops a few feet away from him, respecting his distance but silently asking to let her in.
“Your brother told me you’d be down here,” she says apprehensively. Of course he fucking did. “I didn’t even have to ask him.”
“Yeah, well. That’s Bran,” he grumbles, a bit annoyed that his privacy was no longer sacred. Her brows crook upward in that adorable way she does when no one’s looking and she laughs. She smiles gently at him, almost shy, and he can’t help but muster a smile back.
He thinks he would do almost anything for her.
She walks toward him, and after a moment, slowly folds her arms around him. Without a thought, his arms seek out hers of their own volition. He’d thought it would repulse him, the thought he had lain with his own kin, but his body, his soul, was entwined with hers in a way he did not completely understand. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t told her he loved her yet. He’d wanted that dream, of love, of happiness, to last as long as it could. He’d feared that uttering those three little words would cut it short. But it seems, with the march of the dead and the unraveling of secrets, that dream is ending.
“Who’s this?” she asks quietly. It’s almost funny; she can’t recognize the woman whose love marked the downfall of her house.
“Lyanna Stark,” he answers, waiting for her response. He doesn’t have to look at her face to see the emotions running through it; he finds himself doing that a lot nowadays. It’s a long, pregnant pause before she replies.
“My brother Rhaegar,” she says, wistful for a past she never knew. “Everyone told me he was decent and kind. He liked to sing. Gave money to poor children…And he raped her.”
She’s incredulous, indignant, at the actions of a ghost. Sometimes he thinks it’s unfair, how ghosts are freed from their mistakes with death, while the living have to pay the consequences.
He could let it end here. Let her go on believing the biggest lie in all of Westeros, the lie he had believed all his life. He could go on, living as the bastard son of Ned Stark, for as little life as he had left anyway. He could die as Jon Snow, the White Wolf, not Aegon Targaryen, Heir to the Seven Kingdoms. But would he be able to rest?
It wasn’t his way. He was free from Robert Baratheon now. Jon knew, in his heart, that she had to know the truth. Even if she hates him for it.
“He didn’t,” he whispers. A tiny voice in his head tells him to stop, but he continues anyway. “He loved her.”
She looks at him, confusion in her expressive eyes. There’s no going back now. He turns around, looking into her eyes, making sure she’s looking in his. He can’t run away from this, no matter how much he wants to. He clutches her hands in his, fearing this will be the last she’ll ever share her warmth with him. He wants to hold onto that fire, just a little bit longer…
“They were married in secret. After Rhaegar fell on the Trident, she had a son. Robert would have murdered the baby if he found out, and Lyanna knew it. So the last thing she did, as she bled to death on her birthing bed, was give the boy to her brother Ned Stark, to raise as his bastard.”
As the realization washes over her, he sees that cold impassive look fall upon her face, but her eyes, her brilliant beautiful eyes, betray her true feelings. He sees confusion and anger, but in her eyes he sees pleading, hoping for this to be some kind of cruel joke.
“My name…” He hesitates.
Her facade falters at the end, and all he sees is anguish. Her head shifts ever so slightly, asking for it not to be true, please don’t let it be true. She doesn’t know how many times he’s asked the same thing. She’s begging him to stop with her glassy eyes, her quickening breath, her quivering lips.
He thinks he would do almost anything for her.
Almost.
“My real name…is Aegon Targaryen.”
Tyrion has only been this drunk two other times in his life.
The first is on his eighteenth nameday, when his father gave him a bag of gold and then promptly told him to leave his sight. That bag bought him five bottles of Dornish red and a real good time with some lovely twins named Yrma and...well he can’t actually recall the other one’s name, only the way her lips left streaks on his skin. He’s pretty sure he’d given them twenty gold each and they’d stolen the rest. Or at least that’s what he assumed when he woke up the next day in an alley, sans his shoes and smallclothes.
The second was after he’d killed Shae in self defense and murdered his father in cold blood, on his way to Essos in a box. He probably couldn’t have made that journey if he wasn’t drunk.
And so, on this day, which is more than very likely going to be his last day, Tyrion drinks. He drinks like a fish trying to drown itself. He drinks so much it actually startles some of the local Northern drunkards. Well, if he’s going to die tomorrow, might as well drink enough to send himself to the Stranger.
And after that fun little circle of misfits in front of the fire, he decides it’s time to drink some more. Somehow, he makes his way to down to the cellar of Winterfell, disconnected from the Crypts. He’d heard of a divine Arbor red vintage, just sitting there collecting dust. It would be a shame to let it go to waste.
He stumbles down the steps into the cellar, missing a step or two on the way, but he manages. It’s a rather small cellar, only about four shelves and all half empty. It’s at least smaller in comparison to the grand collections in the Red Keep and especially in Casterly Rock. There’s rats crawling on the floors and shelves, spreading dust and dirt everywhere. Cobwebs line every wall. It’s clear that a bottle hasn’t been opened in celebration in quite a long time. Not surprising; the Starks haven’t exactly had the most joyous time in the last few years.
Nevermind that. He can’t let guilt sober him up. The Arbor awaits him.
He walks through the shelves, searching and scouring for that delicious red. There’s no light in here, making the task a lot more difficult. It doesn’t help that his eyes are blurry from the excess of alcohol. Tyrion thinks he saw a shadow move in the darkness. But that doesn’t make sense. There aren't any shadows in the dark. So he moves on, looking for that bottle of Arbor red.
He gets to the last shelf, and still no sign of that bottle. Maybe it’s hidden on one of the tops of the shelves. Yes, that must be it. He’s pretty sure he saw a ladder on the side of the stairs. Perfect. He’ll have enough time to have a taste and make it to the Crypts with the other useless folk. He might even bring the bottle to pass along to the others, if he holds his impulses in check. He spins to get that ladder, but runs right into a wall, knocking him to his arse. That’s funny. He doesn’t recall a wall being there. A wall that feels very human-like. He looks up, and sees a familiar face, toothy grin visible even in the dark.
“Hello, old friend.”
He must really be drunk.