Archive of Our Own

Verisimilitude (noun): The degree of reality or believability contained within a story.

The meeting is not going well. He would say it was not going according to plan, but he hadn’t had a plan. Davos had hounded him relentlessly to make one as they sailed the coast to Dragonstone, but he had outright refused. He didn’t need a plan, he had a purpose. And that purpose was to convince Westeros’ prodigal Targaryen to do the right thing. To not selfishly hoard her resources and her armies like the dragon she claims she is. To set aside her egotistical campaign in order to fight against the true foe. To actually do something for the people, and not just for herself. 

Upon walking in to the Throne Room he’d immediately been disarmed by her presence, and that disarming had aggravated and frustrated him, throwing him on the defensive. They’d argued and quibbled over meaningless matters, their Hands each throwing in a few sharp words of their own, and now he could not tell who was less impressed with whom. Her with him, or he with her.

Her on her elegant throne and infuriatingly beguiling person. He had scoffed at the stories that she was the most beautiful woman in the known world. Perhaps he should have leant more credence to the stories. Perhaps then he wouldn’t have been so shaken when he first laid eyes upon the tiny, silver, singular scion of House Targaryen. 

But shaken he had been, and it had led them to where they were now, with him forcefully indicting her for her selfish callousness while she looked down upon him expressionlessly exchanging the occasional dry quip with Tyrion who looked similarly unimpressed.

Her apathy enraged him. He needed her to understand. He needed her to give a damn. And this need only fuelled his tirade.

“The Army of the Dead is real. The White Walkers are real. The Night King is real. I’ve seen them.”

But as he began to passionately detail more specifically the threat to the Realm he noticed something peculiar. Her expression, blank while he had reprimanded her, was changing. Her eyes growing wider, her lips parting, her brows lifting. She looked surprised, she looked intrigued. It was not the reaction he was expecting. Not the one he needed. He needed her to believe him, to understand the severity of the situation, and so he carried on.

“If they get passed The Wall…”

Abruptly, she stands from her throne, interrupting him as all eyes turn towards her. “Would you please excuse me for a moment.” She mutters quickly, her wide eyes bright, almost excited, before she turns and all but scurries from the room.

A strange and awkward silence follows. He looks to Tyrion for any indication that this was a normal reaction or occurrence for his Queen, but Tyrion looks just as baffled as everyone else.

Tension mounts as the minutes pass in silence with no sign of Daenerys returning. He resists the urge to shift about or pace anxiously. Had she simply decided he was not worth her time and absconded leaving Tyrion and her guards to deal with him?

More minutes pass by and he is just about to try his luck at getting past her guards, storm after her, demand the propriety due to him and shake the truth into her when, finally, she returns to the room, somewhat flushed and breathless, a weighty looking tome clutched tightly to her chest in her arms.

She skims and skips and slides down the steps which lead up to the imposing looking throne and then, rather unceremoniously, certainly most unregally, she plunks herself down on the second most stair pulling her little booted feet up to rest on the last, placing the book most delicately in her lap then impatiently shoving her heavy skirts to the side and out of her way as though she finds them the most cumbersome nuisance. 

Once she has settled herself she looks directly up at him with a singular focus, her bewitching eyes pining him down and she surprises him by asking gently, almost shyly, nothing like the tone she had been using on him up until this point, “Would you join me? I’d like to show you something.”

This he had not expected and he has no idea how he should proceed. He looks to Davos for advice, but Davos merely shrugs looking just as bewildered as he feels. He supposes he has very little to lose, and everything to gain, so he turns back to Daenerys giving her a stiff nod indicating his assent.

She smiles warmly at his gesture which is just as surprising as everything else that has just occurred, and returns his nod with a nod of gratefulness of her own.

“Leave us” she commands to the room at large. The tableau it presents is such a juxtaposition it is almost comical. It is almost endearing. Her voice is strong and authoritative, every bit the voice of a Queen – but the way she is seated, her tiny frame hunkered on the steps clutching at a book, she looks very much like a child who is desperately hopeful for one more bedtime story. 

Her guards, he notes somewhat impressed, are quick to obey. Though they are as equally quick to all, each of them, down to the last man, shoot him a murderous, warning look. A look that transcends their language barriers. A look which unmistakably said that if any sort of harm, real or imagined, befalls their Queen while they were alone that he would be begging for death before they were through with him. Despite himself he is impressed by that too. Whoever Daenerys Targaryen is she clearly had the loyalty of the people around her. 

Tyrion, conversely, is not so quick to obey. He remains stubbornly standing at his post looking at the book in her arms with the same kind of contemptuous scorn Old Nan had looked at the ratty fur he had carried around for far longer than was thought proper for a hardened boy of the North.

“Your Grace,” he begins and his voice sounds chiding, “Surely you are not going to entertain this delusion based on your little book of fantasies?”

In return she throws Tyrion an icy glare, one that leaves no room for dispute that whatever it is she is currently up to is not open for discussion or counsel.

“I am going to listen to what this man, a man you yourself encouraged me to summon, a man you yourself said you liked, a man you just admitted you thought neither a liar, nor mad has to say.” She asserts imperiously.

He can see Tyrion is about to interrupt her, but she will not be silenced.

“A Queen must listen to all, Lord Tyrion, I read that in a book as well. I would expect you, of all people, to appreciate the wisdom books can contain. And so, I am going to listen. Now, as I have already asked, please leave us.”

Tyrion scowls and gives a curt little bow before stomping from the room clearly agitated by his dismissal.

And then, they are alone.

He doesn’t quite know what to make of the fact the she was willing to, was asking to be left alone with him. He doesn’t know whether he should be offended that she did not perceive him as a threat - for he could easily snap her pretty little neck the way Ghost has done to enemies if he so wanted – or whether he should simply be thankful that she seemed disposed to listen to him.

Once the room is finally emptied he moves to walk towards where she is seated and stops before her standing as tall and as imposing as he can. She looks up at him, seemingly unfazed by his attempt at intimidation.

“Please, take a seat, Your Grace” she says evenly and politely.

This startles him given the argument that had occurred only moments prior.

“Your Grace?” he repeats, wary, wondering at her motivation for addressing him as such. Wondering if she is trying to unsettle him, or trick him somehow.

“It is what you claim you are is it not? A King. It is what your Hand demanded that I call you.” She responds calmly. He does not appreciate how composed she seems while he, in comparison, is a fractured mess of confusion, misgivings, agitation, and tension.

“Aye, but you didn’t seem inclined to do so.” He accuses, gruffly infusing his voice with the aggravation he felt at her initial disregard. Her lack of respect. She may be willing to call him Your Grace, but it did not feel as though she was doing so out of any real regard or esteem.

She appraises him silently. If she was offended by his tone he cannot tell, her expression smooth, giving nothing away. It unnerves him and irritates him all the more.

“I called my brother King his entire life until the day he died and I cannot imagine one less suited to the title. I can call you King, if that is what you need in order for us to be able to speak amicably.” She avows simply.

He bristles at that. The way she said it was plain and unassuming enough, but the words themselves irked him, as though he was a child she needed to indulge and placate in order to get him to cooperate. He does not need to be validated by a spoiled Targaryen princess who garners loyalty with nothing more than her highborn name to recommend her. Unlike her he was a King who had been chosen by his people. Not because of, but in spite of his bastard name. He had craved and coveted their respect his entire life and now he had it. He did not want that respect demeaned by her flippant attempt at a truce.

“So you do recognize that I am a King?” he growls at her menacingly.

But again, she is entirely unmoved by his attempts to be domineering.

“I recognize that your people chose you as King. An accomplishment few can boast, one you should be proud of, and one demands my respect.” She states simply yet earnestly.

He had not expected that. He feels his anger quell somewhat at her sincerity.

“Though,” she continues “it is not title I would wager you will have long if Cersei were to remain Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, nor if this dead army you are telling me about are real and manage to do the things you say they will do.”

And just like that his anger returns. “They are real,” he seethes, “and they will…”

She holds up graceful, pale hand imploring him to silence. “Please,” she repeats, “take a seat, Your Grace so that we may discuss it.”

He’s fuming and he doesn’t know what there is to discuss. What she could possibly have to say about it? She hasn’t seen them. She doesn’t know. But his current tactic of shouting the situation at her is getting him nowhere and so he lowers himself down on to the step she is sitting on leaving a leery, yawning, chasm of distance between them.

She huffs indignantly, and, what sounds a little amusedly under her breath and shuffles closer to him presumably so that she may more easily pass him the heavy book which is taking up much of her attention. Despite her movements they still weren’t touching yet it almost feels as if they were. He can sense a soft heat radiating from her body, as warm and enveloping as a crackling hearth on a stormy night. He commands his focus away from it. He will not allow the comforting feel to lure him into lowering his guard. He highly doubts that this tiny woman has a weapon stashed anywhere, and he knows with certainty that he would be able to subdue her should she try anything. But trust was not something he gave easily anymore, if he ever truly did. After all, he hadn’t expected young Olly to have a blade either, and look where that got him.

Daenerys, for her part, seems oblivious to his internal turmoil. She opens the book and leans over engulfing him even further in that sweet, dangerous warmth to place it on his lap before leaning back again. He refuses to mourn the loss of the soothing presence of her heat.

“Is this what you are talking about?” she asks. Though he doubts it. She sounds more eager than afraid.

But then he looks down at the pages and it takes all his willpower to contain a gasp of shock, of fear. It is a story, clearly this is a book of stories, but this one he knows is no story. The title is bold and meticulously, beautifully penned. It would be a lovely thing to behold if not for what it was. ‘The Long Night’ it proclaims in elegant, cursive mockery – as though there were anything elegant about what was coming for them. And right below the title there is a detailed illustration, an illustration that chills his blood, an illustration of a White Walker.  

He begins to read frantically and it’s there, it’s all there. The facts and the details so clear it is as though someone had forced their way into his head and scribed his nightmares onto the page.

He’s engrossed. He’s urgent. Flipping roughly from one page to the next and then back again checking and double checking, noting the things he already knows, desperately searching for anything, any tiny little detail he doesn’t that might help them.

He haphazardly flicks to the next page and, from the corner of his eye he sees Daenerys’ hands flutter abruptly, and anxiously towards him then falter, drifting back to her lap before they seem to franticly try to take flight again despite her obvious efforts to reign them in.

“Could you… Would you…” she begins stutteringly, worriedly. Her voice low and anxious. Then, with more conviction, more like a command, “Can you please be more careful with it?”

“Sorry,” he snarls out sarcastically, making a big show of mockingly smoothening out the current page and sardonically turning the next one with a derisive delicacy. He doesn’t understand what her problem is. She’d summoned him here to this step, to look at this book, and he’d obliged her.

At his actions she gives a quiet sigh and he thinks for a moment that he has won something. That he has managed to subdue and suppress her petulant nature. But then he chances a glance at her and her eyes are shiny. Shiny with unshed tears. Shiny with gratitude. Her fingers stilled now but for light, fretful twitches observable only to one who was looking for them. Her lips trembling a little.

Suddenly he doesn’t feel like he’s won anything at all.

“No. I’m sorry,” she starts softly, gently. It tears at something in him. That gentleness. When was the last time someone had used such a tone on him? Had anyone ever addressed him in such a tone?

“It’s only that,” she takes a deep, stuttering breath trying desperately to fill her lungs, yet he can tell she has failed in that. She continues on regardless; “That book was given to me as a bride’s gift at my first wedding by a very dear friend. One I fear I may never see again. I… I…” Unable to finish that thought she shakes her head and tries again. “I taught myself how to read the Common Tongue using that book,” she tilts her chin up and looks him straight in the eye refusing to be ashamed of this fact, almost challenging him to mock her for it. It was an exposing, and personal admission, and seeing her impermeable, yet vulnerable pride he knows he wouldn’t dare mock her. Knows he wouldn’t want to. “It was my first tangible connection to Westeros, to my home.” She whispers passionately, leaning towards him again slightly to reverently run her fingertips along the side of the book.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, but this time with sincerity.

She gives a dainty shrug, bashful suddenly, “It’s alright, you didn’t know. Just, if you could please…”

“Of course.” He doesn’t hesitate to assure her, knowing what it was she was about to ask. He may be a bastard, but he’s not enough of a bastard to make her ask him again.

“Well, is this it? Is this what you were talking of?”

He’s thankful for the abrupt topic change.

“Aye, it is. I can scarcely believe it’s all here.”

“And you’re telling me it’s all real?”

“I am. I wish I wasn’t, but I am. It’s all as real as you and me.”

She goes very quiet, and after a time he chances another look at her only to see a thoughtful little furrow between her brow. Surely she must believe him now. Was she not the one that provided the additional proof needed beyond his word?

Suddenly she turns to him with purpose and he looks away quickly so that she wouldn’t notice that he had been staring at the sweet little way she nibbled on the inside of her cheeks while deep in contemplation. “Are all of these real?” she asks with that same odd eagerness in her voice instead of the terror that should be there when faced with the knowledge of the undefeated enemy.

“I don’t know,” he responds gruffly with a sense of finality to his tone. It’s true. He doesn’t know. He has no idea what is in the rest of this book. And more to the point, he doesn’t care. The only story that matters. The only truth that matters is the one laid open on his lap right now. The one he sees scorched across his eyelids every time he tries to rest. The one that is going to destroy them all if he cannot get this stubborn woman to listen to him. The one that may destroy them all even if he can.

“Oh,” she breathes out quietly on a sigh. The sound so weighted with disappointment, with despondency that he can almost feel it drop heavy and consequently into the space between them. Widening that space with its magnitude.

He doesn’t like that, though he doesn’t know why.

In an attempt to contain himself he squeezes his hand tightly into a fist and then releases it a few times. He’s frustrated. He wants to get on with it. But when he turns his gaze towards her he sees her staring at the book, a look of insatiable hunger, of longing in her eyes.

He thinks she must sense his agitation because suddenly she is explaining herself.

“I only ask because when I was young,” she begins, and despite himself, despite the gravity of the situation he finds this an amusing start. She speaks of being young as though it was a time long since past. As if she were an old woman telling a tale to her grandchildren and not still a very young woman. But then, he supposes, he is the same. He feels as though he has lived several lifetimes already. Indeed, is he not, technically, already on his second life? He wonders if that is how she feels? From her tone, and her delineating the difference between her being young and her now, the way she sounds almost dissociative of herself when she was young, he believes that she too does feel that way. That in this at least, they could understand one another.

“When I was young Viserys, my brother, he would tell me stories. Stories of our home, our family. He told me our father was a wonderful and beloved King, that the people deeply mourned his passing.”

He stares at her agape, “You said you knew what your father was.”

“I do.” She assures him hurriedly as though she is worried that he will think less of her if she doesn’t. “I do now because Ser Barristan told me the truth of it. And that is what I am trying to say. Viserys told me stories but as I grew older, and he… as I grew older and he grew crueller, as he grew… madder” she barely whispers the last word. He wonders if she fears the word, or if she feared her brother. “I had to acknowledge that the things he had told me were most likely not the way things actually were.” She sighs deeply and it feels to him as though it came from the very depths of her soul. “It was not his fault, I know. He was but a boy when we left Westeros, how much could he have truly known? And after Ser Willem died who was there to teach him? He did his best. It’s not his fault. But still, I’ve lived my entire life never knowing what was real and what was not about my own home. And of what I knew was real, I never knew how embellished it may or may not be. I know my histories now of course, and my geography. I know about resources and trade and the strengths and weakness of each Kingdom. This isn’t my only book – though it is my favourite” she says conspiratorially with a gleam in her eye that catches his breath in his chest, the secret and the gleam both, “And Lord Tyrion is relentless in my continued education which I am most thankful for. But as for the songs and the stories, well,” she shrugs, “I always wanted to know more about the songs and the stories.”

“Why did you never ask Tyrion about those?” he inquires unsure when his aggravated demands for aid against the Army of the Dead had morphed into a somewhat personal conversation, but entirely sure that, for the moment at least, he doesn’t mind a bit that they have.

She chews her cheek in what he now knows is her pensive way before saying, “Lord Tyrion is... very intelligent, and a fine Hand, but he is not really wont to indulge in the finer points of story telling. He is rather more... rational.”

He barks out a rough, amused sound, “I think you mean cynical.”

She giggles in response, much to his surprised delight for he has never been accused of being an amusing man. And Gods, he wants to bottle the sound. Use it as a tonic during dreary days in the North. The sound is like sunshine itself.

“I was trying to be diplomatic” she scolds him playfully through her giggles.

“How can he be cynical when he’s seen your dragons?” That is something he does not understand. Daenerys and her people must believe in the fantastical, her dragons were proof of that surely.

“Yes, he has. But he has also seen the dragon skulls that reside beneath the Red Keep. Logically, rationally he knows that dragons once existed, even if they were gone from our part of the world for a time. He’s seen no such thing of these dead men and their army.”

That, he supposes, sullenly but fairly, is a point he must concede.

“Besides, you saw and heard just now how he referred to my book,” she remarks sadly. “I’d never shown it to him, I was too embarrassed to. But he came upon me reading it one day and asked me why I was wasting my time on children’s tales.” She blows out a rueful little breath between her plump, pink lips, “It’s not his fault, he just doesn’t understand. He had children’s tales when he was a child whereas I did not, and sometimes I, sometimes I just want…” she shakes her head sorrowfully, looking down and doesn’t finish the thought. And he finds himself desperate to know what it is that she sometimes wants. He finds himself wondering if he could give it to her.

“Anyway,” she rallies, “he would prefer me to focus on more pragmatic ventures. He already thinks me too much an idealist, the last thing he would encourage is my fanciful interest in songs and stories.”

He doesn’t know what to make of the woman sitting next to him. He had assumed many things before arriving but now he is not so sure. She is a cascade of contradictions. She is as sharp and cool as steel, yet also as soft and warm as a lovers smile. She is unrelenting, but also so, so forgiving. She is a woman grown who treasures the simple joys of childhood. She is a Queen who sits on the steps instead of her Throne. She is a conqueror accused by those who know her best as an idealist. He cannot pin down what she truly is. Who the real her is. Maybe she is all of those things for people were never so simple as one might like them to be. But he wants to know, he wants to know the truth of her.

He makes up his mind then to humour her about her songs and her stories. Indeed, despite time being short he actually wants to humour her. He wants to give her this little something that no one else ever could or would.

He clears his throat and asks as nonchalantly as he can, “What others do you want to know about?”

She whips her head around to face him so fast that her braids swing like a pendulum and do not lose their momentum for many moments. But it is the look on her face that he is focused on. She is positively beaming at him, almost vibrating with barely restrained excitement. If he didn’t before, he knows for certain now that he made the right choice.

“Really?” she all but squeals at him.

“Aye, really.”

“Truly?” she gasps out as though she cannot believe her good fortune.

“Truly,” he concurs. “Go on. Pick one.” He’s interested to know which one she will choose first, her enthusiasm contagious apparently.

Instead of taking the book back like he assumed she would she merely leans closer to him again, humming to herself under her breath as she contemplates her choice.

With her this close, for this long, he can smell the unique and arresting spicy, citrusy scent of her hair. He wonders idly what it looks like unbound from all of its braids before forcibly snapping himself back to reality. It would do him no good to wonder.

He tries to focus on something else so her watches her hands instead. She navigates the pages of the book with expert precision but such dainty care. He can tell just by watching her that she has read it many times and cherished every single one of them.

Finally she stops turning pages and leans back.

“That one, please,” she asks sweetly, clearly still giddily caught up in her child-like excitement.

He looks down and sees the title: ‘Jenny’s Song’.

“An interesting choice” he remarks, because truly, it is.

“I know she was married to Duncan Targaryen,” she recites as though in a lesson, “But I want to know if the song is true. Does her ghost really dance through the halls?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know one way or the other,” he confesses, a little upset that he has to give her such a disappointing answer to her first choice. “But I doubt it, there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“So your dead army aren’t ghosts?” she queries.

He’s stymied by her entirely unexpected question. “No, no they’re not. I thought you’d read the story of The Long Night?”

“I have, I have,” she reassures. “But, aren’t they the same? The dead coming back to the land of the living.”

“No,” he answers, some of his good humour fading, “I can assure you that the Army of the Dead are not ghosts. They are mindless killing machines. Ghosts are different.” He states with certainty.

Apparently that is not good enough for her though.

“How do you know that they’re different?”

“Well, I don’t know much about ghosts but...” he trails off and, to his surprise he can feel a small, but silly little grin begin to form on his face.

“What is it?” She prompts him to continue.

“S’nothin’” he demurs scratching awkwardly at his beard and shaking his head feeling a few errant curls spring their way free of the tight knot he had held them back in.

She huffs again, this time definitely amused. “It must be something, you’re grinning like a fool” she points out, though not unkindly. From the corner of his eye he can see she is smiling too. Her pearly teeth exposed, her eyes crinkled with good natured humour. It makes for a captivating image. Makes him suddenly wish himself a painter, or better yet, a sculptor so that he may capture said image to keep eternally for himself.

“Go on, please tell me” she encourages brightly nudging him playfully with her shoulder. And the shock of that seemingly uncharacteristic, familiar action prompts him suddenly into speaking. 

“Well, it’s silly,” he mumbles.

“Good.” She chirps in reply.

“When I was a boy, my brother Robb and I thought it would be funny to scare our younger sisters. And what could be scarier than a ghost? So Robb dumped an entire bag of flour on me so that I was covered top to toe in white powder and I hid down in the crypts and waited. When the girls came down I jumped out at them. They were terrified, and Robb and I got the scolding of a lifetime.”

“Oh that’s adorable,” she laughs clapping her hands together in delighted amusement. “How wonderful it must have been growing up with so many siblings to play with.”

The grief has faded over time, of course, but like a still pond that has a rock tossed into it, sometimes all it takes is a tiny reminder, a memory long since thought forgotten, and the pain hits and ripples through him like waves.

“It was,” he chokes out, his voice a touch gravely. “I was very lucky in that regard.”

But Daenerys’ mind is sharp, and she clearly senses his distress, her hands are fluttering again as though she wants to reach for him to comfort him. He wishes that she would, though he knows that she will not. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I know what happened to your father and your brother. I… I never would have asked if I thought that…”

“Don’t be sorry,” he interrupts gently, “Sometimes it’s nice to think and talk about the good times. To remember them all when things were simple, and they were happy.”

She’s smiling at him so softly he worries that he might actually cry if she continues to do so. He never really got the chance to share his loses with anyone. He’d turned them inward instead, and they had made him angry. He had thought it was better than, was preferable to being sad. But looking at her gentle smile he wonders what it would have been like if he had had someone empathetic with him at the time. Someone who could have consoled him. But there is no point going down that road. It is over and done with now. He needs to change the conversation so he turns the page to the next story. This one entitled ‘Brandon the Burner’.

She seems to take the hint for what it was and looks at the page before scrunching her nose and reaching towards the book again.

“You don’t want to know about that one? He asks her, surprised. From the way she had reacted when he said he would tell her about the stories he would have thought she would want to know everything about every single one of them.

“I never liked that one” she admits in a small voice.

“Why not?” He wonders if it was because it was about a Stark? Was she was trying to subtly express her dislike of him through her aversion to a tale about one of his ancestors? He’d thought that they’d moved past that, at least a little, during this time on the steps. Besides, he wants to tell about that one because he knows that it is true. He thinks that if he can find enough stories in this book that are real it will go a long way towards convincing her that the Army of the Dead is real too.

“I didn’t like that he burnt all the ships,” she mumbles quietly. But then her voice returns to normal, “When I was a child we were always running, always moving from one place to the next. So we spent a lot of time on ships. I loved it. I thought it would be the grandest thing in the world to be a sailor. It was all I wanted. To learn their songs and to be forever at sea.”

He can’t imagine it, but she clearly can if the look of longing and wistfulness in her eyes is any indication.

“Then why didn’t you become one?”

She laughs again, but this time there is no warmth to it. It is a broken, resigned sound. He immediately hates it, it doesn’t fit at all with the powerful woman she appears to be. “Have you ever known a woman who got to choose and do as she wanted?” she asks. There is a little bite to her tone, but not much. No, instead that resigned melancholia swallows up whatever other emotions she might have been feeling.

“You’re doing what you want now.” He reminds her, uncertain where the overwhelming desire to comfort her is coming from.

She hums thoughtfully twisting her fingers into knots over and over again before saying carefully, “I’m doing what I feel like I ought, what I feel like I must. Whatever you think of me, whether you believe me or not I can assure you that want has never had very much to do with it at all” 

The statement intrigues him. He wants to know more. He wants to know why she is doing it then. He thinks of Sansa and her childhood obsession with being Queen. He had thought Arya had been the exception, that other than her all little girls dream of being Queen someday. Surely, out of all the little girls, a Targaryen princess must have dreamed of sitting on a pretty Throne in a pretty castle wearing a pretty gown and a pretty crown. But apparently not. Apparently she wanted to be a sailor. She really was a mess of fascinating contradictions.

But he doesn’t want to pry so he simply says “That story is true, for what it’s worth.”

She merely nods in response before taking eagerly to the book again.

“I hope this one isn’t true.” She says morosely as she lands on the page inscribed with the words ‘Brave Danny Flint’. “I was so excited when I first saw it. Viserys he,” she swallows something down, something like longing, “he used to call me Dany. And when I saw the title I thought it would be a story of great daring and adventure, a story about a girl with my name who was bold and fearless. I would have loved that. I… I needed something like that desperately at the time. But then, then I read it and… and it was too real, too close to what…” she’s trembling and he’s worried. He doesn’t know exactly what she is talking about but based on what he does knows he can hazard a horrifying guess. She’d gotten this book as a gift for her wedding. She’d been married at the time, sold into that marriage if he remembers correctly.

“It’s not true.” He says firmly. It’s all he think to do to comfort her. Disabuse her of the idea that this terrible song was based on a truth.

She smiles shakily at him, and he thinks she might have guessed what he was trying to do because she thanks him very quietly in a wavering voice.

She’s silent again for a while, and he gives her time. She can have all the time she needs.

Eventually he feels her tremors subside.

“But the Night’s Watch,” she asks him, her voice stronger but not quite stable, “is that what it’s like? Is it really such an awful place?”

He prevaricates for a moment over how to answer her. He doesn’t want to lie, not to her. Not now. He feels like they are paving their way towards some semblance of trust and a lie could cause irreparable damage. But he doesn’t want to upset her again either.

“It can be,” he admits. “Before I joined I had this idea that it was an honourable institution. A place where everyone was equal and people got what they earned based on themselves and not their birth.”

Beside him she is nodding raptly as though this is a notion she approves of wholeheartedly which he finds most interesting coming from perhaps the most highborn woman in Westeros. Though maybe not so surprising given that she never got the chance to grow up with any of the privileges her name would have bestowed upon her. Indeed, her name was probably more a curse than a blessing. He still recalls Robert Baratheon yelling about the Targaryens across the Narrow Sea, about how he would kill them all. He knows he hunted them.  

“I thought it was a place where I could serve the Realm. Be useful. But when I arrived I found it was nothing like that at all. It was mostly full of criminals guilty of a variety of distasteful crimes. And just like any place, it had its own politics. It had hierarchies and favouritism. I did find some good friends there. But I found even more enemies.”

He doesn’t speak of the rest. The mutiny. His murder. He can’t. He just can’t. That is too personal and wouldn’t serve the purpose they are trying to achieve right now anyway.

Again, with that keen insightfulness he is coming to appreciate dearly Daenerys realises he is done. She doesn’t question it, she just shuffles closer again and turns some pages of the book.

“What about this one? Is it real?” she asks pointing to the book where the story of ‘Florian and Jonquil’ is laid out in front of him.

“Is it?” she repeats, scratching the question out roughly in a voice that sounds almost like a plea.

His heart misses a beat thinking of the lowborn knight who wielded an impressive sword and the highborn lady who loved him. He refuses, refuses, to examine why he should want so profoundly for it to be true, for him to be able tell her it was true in this moment.

“No,” he grumbles shaking his head, “no I don’t think it is.”

“Oh…” she utters so quietly it might have been nothing more than a desolate exhale.

He waits for her to continue but instead she goes very quiet, very still and eventually he turns his head to face her only to see the tiniest, most childlike pout upon her full lips. He doesn’t know why but it tugs at his scarred heart. It may, somehow, impossibly, after all the things he has witnessed, be the saddest thing he has ever seen.

“Of course it isn’t. Of course.” She cries out, “Of course the one, sweet, kind, lovely, romantic story in this entire book would not be true. I was a fool to think otherwise.” She finishes self-deprecatingly.

He is suddenly absolutely overcome with the ridiculous, fanciful, foolishly romantic and gallant notion of desperately wanting to remove that pout. To put a smile back on her lips and a light back in her eyes.

He thinks hard and remembers something that Sansa had once said, or had he heard it in his lessons? It doesn’t matter, perhaps it will cheer her up.

“You know, many people have suggested that the sudden marriage between King Jaehaerys and Queen Alysanne is akin to the love story between Florian and Jonquil. So this story might not be real,” he taps the page lightly, “but theirs certainly was. A grand romance, and they are your ancestors. Surely a real life love story is even better than a fictional one?”

She smiles. Briefly. But it is still tattered and trembling. Her eyes still sad and filled with longing. “You know more about my family than I do,” she whispers despondently. “Or at least you know the truth of them better than I do. I only know what Viserys told me, and as I mentioned, as I grew it became more and more obvious that his word, his stories, were biased. I question the veracity of everything he told me. I must,” she adds forcefully, “lest I become as arrogant and deluded as he became.” She blinks a few times, and the sweet softness returns to her eyes and her voice much to his pleasure. “Thank you for telling me that though, I do appreciate it even though that’s not really why I love that story.”

“Why do you love it?” he asks haltingly both afraid and drawn to what her answer might be.

“I love it because they got to choose. It’s all very well for Jaehaerys and Alysanne, and I’m happy for them that they got that. But they were both Targaryens. They were both royalty. Highborn. I liked that Jonquil was but Florian loved her anyway. He wasn’t intimidated, or merely in awe, or simply using her, he just loved her, and she loved him. People should get to have that. They should get to choose. I think that makes for a better love story than two people of the same station coming together and not being completely miserable about it.”

His heart doesn’t miss a beat this time. Instead it stops completely. Queen Daenerys Targaryen is nothing like he had thought she would be. She is… she is…

He cannot finish his thought because she has leant over him again, her divine scent invading his senses as she turns to a new story in the book.

“Now this one, this one must be true,” she says in complete seriousness as though it were a forgone conclusion.

He looks down at the title and sees ‘The Bear and the Maiden Fair’. He blinks quickly and reads it again to make sure he had gotten it right. But yes, there it is.

He doesn’t know what to say in response. Do things such as this happen in Essos? Are they that commonplace that she is willing to believe this outlandish, ribald tale but not others? He doesn’t want to offend her. She sounded so certain. But Seven Hells how can he explain this?

“Uh,” he starts articulately, “Well, it, see, I mean, well, the thing is…” he feels a subtle shaking and turns to see that her eyes are dancing. Sparkling brighter than the stars in the True North. Her little body struggling valiantly to contain its mirth.

“You’re teasing me” He exclaims suddenly realizing.

At that she bursts into laughter, full and sweet. Her entire body in on the jest laughing along with her.

He is confused. He is amazed. He cannot even begin to reconcile the woman sitting next to him with the woman he had walked into this room to meet not even an hour prior. He certainly cannot reconcile this girlish amusement with the formidable Dragon Queen of legend. But, he supposes, that is the nature of their conversation. They are discussing how legends may be truths, and truths may be legends. Though, all he sees when he looks at her now is a legend in truth. She does not fit a genre. She is something else entirely. Something precious. Something strong. Something caring. Something good.

Her laughter is so bright, so contagious, and his relief so palpable that he finds himself chuckling alongside her.

Eventually, finally she composes herself “I was, I’m sorry” she says lightly placing her warm tiny hand on his shoulder, and removing it just as quickly – much to his displeasure. “You first entered this room so serious I wasn’t certain you even knew how to smile. Then you did when you told me about your family. And, well, your smile was so lovely I wanted to see if you had a laugh to match.” She shrugs bashfully as though this were nothing. But to him, it is something. She had thought his smile was lovely. She had tried to, and succeeded in, making him laugh. She had wanted to make him laugh. But why?

Suspicion raises his hackles for a moment and he wonders if she was merely stroking his ego. If she was merely trying to flatter, beguile and seduce him into some fallacy of security before attempting to extract a pledge from him. He wonders if this whole thing had been a ploy from the start.

But one look at her bright, open face proves this suspicion false. There is no guile there, only wide eyed interest, happiness, and, if he were not mistaken, a little bit of awe.

He is entirely flustered by it but somehow he manages to ask with some measure of control over himself, “Well, was it? Was my laugh as lovely as my smile?”

“No,’ she says simply, and he cannot help but feel forlorn at the declaration. “Somehow, impossibly, your laugh is even lovelier.”

He wonders if he’s blushing like a green boy. She is certainly flushing like a maiden he can tell even though she is trying to hide that fact by avoiding his gaze.

Suddenly she breathes a heavy sigh, and he knows, somehow, that their stolen moments of levity have come to an end.

“But you did not come here to laugh did you, you came here because of this,” she says solemnly turning the pages back to the story of The Long Night.

“Aye, I did.” He replies with a burdened sigh of his own. For a moment. For just the briefest of moments he had forgotten about his responsibilities, about his duty, about the impending horror and doom that awaited them all. For a moment he had just been a man sitting next to a woman, sharing stories of their lives and slowly coming to know one another. They were perched on cold stone steps yet he had felt warmer than he could ever remember feeling. More welcome here than he ever felt anywhere.

“And you’re telling me it’s true. That it’s all true?” Her manner of asking has changed. He can hear it in her voice. She is more open now, he can tell. But conflicted still.

“I am.”

“And this ohbseedyan, does it really do what the story claims?”

“The what?” he asks, confused.

“The ohbseedyan,” she repeats sounding a little frustrated, “I thought you read the story?”

“I did. I have. But I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Her lovely, pale face turns a light shade of pink and she looks down suddenly. Her voice, when she finally speaks, is drowning in embarrassment, “I’m talking about the, the…” she hesitates, she won’t look at him but she turns to the book and points at a word. “I’m talking about that.”

He looks to where her finger is pointing.

Obsidian.

Oh.

Of course.

Gods.

He feels like a right ass now. Not only for not picking up that that was what she was referring to, but because of how his moment of denseness had made her feel. She’d told him she taught herself to read the Common Tongue using this book. Obsidian is not exactly a common word, he doubts she’d ever heard it spoken out loud before, and so she’d pronounced it as it was written.

With every moment he was starting to get a much clearer picture of who Daenerys was. He’d known before coming here that she had lived in exile but he had, uncaringly, given no real thought to what that might actually mean. What it might look like. She had never received any form of education, her only instructors being a cruel, mad brother and the things she was forced to learn from her own experiences. She was not, as he had first presumptuously assumed, a woman who was used to getting her own way, a woman unused to dissent or hearing the word no. Indeed, it seemed she had been told no for most of her life. Power, not only over others, but even over her own life was as new to her as it was to him, and they were both trying it on like a foreign garment, doing their best to make it fit, yet somehow, for them both, it never quite covered their vulnerable, exposed skins. The outcast that was their natural state.

“You’re talking about the obsidian.” He says softly, as kindly as he can without sounding pitying. He instinctively knows Daenerys is not a woman who would take favourably to being pitied.

“Yes,” she murmurs quietly but says nothing else. He glances over and sees that she is still determinedly looking down, her cheeks are still stained pink, and most heart wrenching of all, that she is slowly mouthing the word ‘obsidian’ over and over again apparently determined to get it right.

“No one really calls it that any more, it’s an old word,” he proclaims not knowing whether he’s speaking bullshit or not. But right now he would do anything, say anything to make her stop feeling like, stop looking like she thinks she is worthless. “Now we call it dragonglass. In fact, here at Dragonstone you have a huge mine of dragonglass.” 

She nods at him slowly, peeking at him out of the corner of her eye, and he knows it was a nod of gratitude.

But then she starts nibbling on her cheek again, clearly thinking hard, her face returned to its pristine porcelain colour.

When she finally looks up he feels an odd and unpleasant shift in the rapport they have built.

“You weren’t impressed by my list of titles, Your Grace,”

He is stunned and hurt by the abrupt jolt to their dynamic.

“It’s not that…” he tries, because it’s really not. Well… it’s not now. Now that he knows her better he has no doubt that she is all those things and more.

“No,” she waves his feeble protest off though he can see the frustration and resentment pooling within her eyes. “No, you weren’t. You thought it boastful, vain, ostentatious.” She laughs. But the sound is hollow and bitter, nothing like the one he was so keen to capture and seal before, “Men collect titles and no one thinks a thing of it,” she pulls her shoulders back and now she looks more like the Queen he first met. He mourns the loss of the woman he got to know “But I earned all of my titles, each and every one, and I bear them proudly. For example, I am the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea. I may have not been born to their way of life, but I am a Dothrakaan, and they have myth, a story of their own. They believe that in the shadowlands beyond Asshai there are fields of ghost grass with stalks so pale that they glow in the night, and that this ghost grass murders all the other grass. They believe that one day it will cover everything and that that is the way the world will end.”

She pauses for a moment to take a breath and stares at him steadily, “There are many similarities are there not, between their myth and your story? Yes, the objects are different, but grass is important to the Dothraki, it is entirely possible it is used as a metaphor for the exact same thing of which you speak.”

He nods slowly, understandingly. He still wants desperately to reach for her and coax back out the woman he was speaking to before their unfortunate misunderstanding. Though he recognises and respects her desire to mask herself in the aftermath. He would do the same thing.

“But, but, they’re just stories. They’re just stories. Only stories.” He cannot tell whether she is speaking to him or speaking to herself. She is clearly warring within herself. With what she knows and what she doesn’t want to know

Again he feels the distinct urge to physically comfort her, it is an urge so strong that it is outweighed only by his relief that she is so clearly opening herself up to the possibility that all that he has told her is real.

He settles on trying to comfort her with words. “Your name sounds like a story.” He starts, and he allows the awe he feels for her to bleed into his tone. “All your titles. The things you’ve done. They’re as fantastical and unfathomable as anything in this book.”

Her face, when she turns to him, is devastating to behold. She looks broken, and angry all at once. It is as frightening as it is powerful.

“But they’re not a story.” She cries, “I know they’re not because I was there. I saw them. I did them. I lived them. They’re not a story.” She pounds her little fists against her little knees, “They’re not a story. They’re not. They are my life.” Her eyes are begging. Pleading with him to understand. To stay the course. But he can’t. Too much, indeed everything, depends on the opposite.

He lowers his voice and finally, finally allows himself to expose the true undercurrent of his worst fears, the strength of his convictions. Not to manipulate, but to implore. At this point manipulation is as unsavoury as it is unneeded. Her last words were proof enough of that. The desperate, jaggered waver of her voice, the frightened look in her eyes, it all showed that she believed. She believed, but she just didn’t want to. And he understood that. Believing was terrifying – though something in him knew that she was not a woman who would run away from terror no matter how much she may want to. A small, fool part of him anxiously wishes to nudge her tightly burrowed fist aside, to place a hand on her knee to comfort her, maybe even to comfort himself. But he knows he can’t, shan’t, and so he won’t. “Aye. You were there and so you know. Just as I was there and saw the Army of the Dead, fought the Army of the Dead, and so I know. But they’re not just a story.”

He cannot blame her for her reticence to believe. Many of his own brothers of the Night’s Watch hadn’t believed and they had seen more proof than she had. Additionally, he knows that despite what he’s told them, despite the fact that he is their King, many of the Northerners still do not believe him. He only believed because he had seen it for himself. He wonders if he would believe if he hadn’t.

No, he cannot blame her for her reticence to believe. He has known of the horror for years and the responsibility, the fear, the weight of it still suffocated him every day. Tortured him every night. And now he had come here and thrown it all at her in one brief, disrespectful angry outburst and demanded that she take that burden upon her tiny, delicate shoulders. Shoulders that he knows now, are already carrying so much.

Impressive as always, she collects herself with admirable, and impressive speed. And when she looks at him again that warm glow is back in her eyes and something that was strangling his insides loosens its painful grip.

“I was told that you united the Wildlings...”

“The Free Folk,” he interrupts her gently.

“Pardon?”

“The Free Folk. That’s what they prefer to be called.”

“Oh, I apologise” she says sounding so genuinely sorry and sincere.

“S’alright, you didn’t know.”

“Thank you,” she responds gracefully, “But yes, I was told that you united the Free Folk and bought them south of the wall. I imagine this is why” she says indicating the book. “You did it to protect them, to keep them safe?” she poses it as a question but he can tell from her tone that she already believes it a statement. A fact. That she believed, based on nothing more than knowing him for an hour or so that that was the reason why he would do such a thing was an unrepayable gift. He cannot help the proud feeling blooming inside him from knowing that this remarkable, powerful person who barely knew him immediately assumed that his motivations were pure. Fuck, his own brothers, men he’d known for years, had killed him for it. But she saw things differently. She was different. In the best possible way to be so.

“Yes,” he confirms gravely, “That was why.”

“If the Free Folk came with you willingly then I must admit I... I have to accept… Well, I can’t imagine why anyone would leave their true home unless forced to flee.” Her voice now has taken on a melancholy tone and he turns slightly to see her looking upwards at the high vaulted ceiling of the Dragonstone Throne Room. Her eyes wide, shiny and sad. 

He understands immediately. She was forced to flee and it had been hell for her. She wouldn’t have done so by choice. She wanted desperately to be home, and she had battled long and hard to make her way back here.

“And I assume that the reason you answered my summons was because you want, nay, you need this obs…, this dragonglass?”

“Yes.” He admits. There is no point denying it, she would see right through him. And that was indeed why he had initially come, regardless of whatever else he had found and discovered since arriving.

“You need it because all of this is true.” She says seriously.

“Aye. It’s an unfortunate truth I know. I know it is not what you wanted or expected when you set out to return home. But it is still the truth and…”

“And the truth doesn’t care about duty or desires. About wants nor needs. The truth has no agenda, but it has no compassion, either.” 

He’s stunned to silence at the bitter wisdom in her words.

“Do you know why I invited you here?” she inquires curiously, fixing him with that piercing look again.

“Because you want the North.” He responds, he can think of no other reason why she would summon him.

“No… Well, yes,” she concedes, “I would like all Seven Kingdoms united, but that is not why I invited you.”

“Then why did you?” he asks, curious himself now.

“Someone told me to. They told me that the Long Night was coming, we were conversing in Valyrian so I didn’t connect what she had said to the story in my book until you started speaking of White Walkers and the Night King. She said that you and I both had a role to play in the bringing of the dawn, and that I should summon you so that you could tell me the things that you had seen with your own eyes.” She takes a shuddering breath, “And now you have.”

“Now I have.” He agrees, but one thing is nagging him. “Who told you?”

“A red priestess did. I have no faith in the Gods. Not any of them. I didn’t believe her at first, didn’t trust her...”

“What was her name?” he interrupts feeling full of dread.

“Melisandre. Why?”

He scowls deeply. “You were right not to trust her. She…”

“So after all this you are telling me that the Long Night isn’t coming?” 

“No, I mean yes. Yes it is. But Melisandre herself, she cannot be trusted.”

She nods her understanding, but with that remarkable insightfulness she has, she seems to know not to pry.

“She also told me that you weren’t just in the Night’s Watch but were in fact Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.”

“Aye. I was.” He mutters uneasy about the direction the conversation is taking.

“How did you come to leave your post?” she asks of him gently. But as gentle as she is he still cannot tell her. Still cannot say.

So he tries to keep his voice level, to not show how much that question, the answer to that question haunts him

“It’s a long story.” He huffs out.

“And..?”

“And I’m not telling it.”

She smiles at him “I thought that was what we were doing, discussing stories, telling stories” she says sweetly and teasingly clearly trying to lighten the serious mood slightly.

“Not this one.” he barks out harshly. Far, far more harshly than he had intended. For all his hurt, he didn’t want to hurt her.

And yet, he did.

Her face loses all its light and she recoils from him abruptly, almost scurryingly. If he hadn’t changed his opinion of her so much in an hour he would have been amused. He’d done all he could to appear domineering and intimidating in the beginning, and she had been stoic in the face of every action. But now, now that they had come to know something of one another, now that she had bared parts of herself to him, he can upset and unravel her with the snap of his voice alone. He hates that. And he hates that she has moved herself away. He hadn’t realised until the moment that she did that they had, throughout the course of their conversation, moved much closer to one another, that they were leaning towards each other. Now that she has shied away from him following his outburst he feels the loss of that closeness, that almost connection, so keenly.

“I’m sorry,” he starts trying desperately to fix it. To bring her back. “I, some things are just...”

“I understand,” again her tone so gentle, so caring. “You don’t know all my stories either. But I imagine, now that we will be fighting this war together we will be spending more time with one another. Perhaps one day you will tell me that story?” 

He swivels his whole body to look at her feeling entirely flabbergasted. “So you believe me? You’ll help?” He, himself, cannot believe it. Of all the things they had discussed somehow this feels too good, too impossible to believe.

She looks at him softly but seriously, placing a gentle hand on his knee, “I do.” she supports him, “I will” she promises him. 

Tentatively, slowly, he gives in to what he has been wanting to do for what feels like his entire life and places his hand gently on top of hers and looks into her wide, bright eyes which are brimming with assurance and sincerity.

Tenderly, she turns her hand beneath his and gives it a firm, comforting squeeze smiling at him with a soft, yet resilient conviction, before pulling her own hand away.

He tries to hold on for just one second more, the slight widening of her eyes and surprised opening of her lips the only indication that she was aware that he was doing so, before he lets go reluctantly.

“Shall we begin then?” she says sounding strong and resolute. But tucked within the cadence of her voice he can hear something that sounds like a sweet, girlish shyness. It matches strikingly with the hesitant hopeful look in her eyes and the gentle smile she is attempting, in vain, to tame by biting down on her lower lip.

Every story starts somewhere.

And despite the fact that he has already lived many years, he cannot not help but think, but hope, but believe that his story is starting now.

With her.