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#01 – Walking
Walking through the mighty halls of the Red Keep, the halls of her father, of her father’s father, of seventeen generations of Targaryen’s before her, should mean something, she knows, but it all just feels sort of hollow when Arya isn’t by her side.
#02 – Waltz
Another dance, another piece of music that sounds foreign to her ears, and as her new husband takes her hand and leads her onto the floor, her eyes find Arya’s across the hall and she smiles and, for a moment, Daenerys let’s herself pretend this dance is for them.
#03 – Wishes
Arya often wishes things were different – wishes her family still lived, that they’d never made that fateful trip to the south, that Nymeria still stood beside her – but sometimes she doesn’t because, if things were different, then she wouldn’t be here, now, curled tight against Daenerys’ back, and, sometimes, that’s enough.
#04 – Wonder
As she reaches up and unpins her hair, lets it tumble down around her shoulders in a wave of silver-white, there is wonder, sheer unbridled awe, written across the storm-gray of Arya's eyes and, gods, but no one has ever looked at Daenerys like this before.
#05 – Worry
Viserion takes flight and Daenerys can’t help the pang of worry that accompanies his disappearing into the distance, his great gold and alabaster form vanishing into the oncoming dawn; no, she can’t help but worry for her dragonson or the wolf who rides him.
#06 – Whimsy
Arya isn’t a whimsical sort of person, never has been, not even when she was little, but there’s something about Dany Targaryen that makes her think about things – odd, fanciful things – like candlelit dinners and picnics in the summer and all other manner of romantic fantasies that she’s always considered wholly beyond her and, maybe, she doesn’t hate it quite as much as she tells herself she does.
#07 – Waste/Wasteland
As Daenerys walks fearlessly through the charred and still-burning rubble, her steps steady and sure as she surveys the wasteland she now calls her own, if she stops beside the odd body to see whether or not it has eyes that haunting Stark gray well, there’s no one left to judge her for it, is there?
#08 – Whiskey and rum
She’s never liked the taste of whiskey, has always preferred the spicy burn of rum, but, as Arya Stark's tongue slides alongside her own, she thinks she could learn to live with it; actually, if given half a chance, she thinks she could learn to love it.
#09 – War
Arya Stark is built for war, Daenerys can’t help but think as she watches from the relative safety of Drogon's back as the prodigal Night Wolf of Winterfell cuts down one wight after another, and maybe the thought shouldn’t excite her as much as it does but she is a Targaryen, after all, born with as much fire in her veins as blood, and, no matter what house or land it comes from, like knows like.
#10 – Weddings
Daenerys is getting married and it shouldn’t break her heart, shouldn’t make her want to draw her sword and gut the man who gets to stand beside her Queen and wrap his cloak around her shoulders, shouldn’t make her want to cry and scream and rage because it just.isn’t.fair. (but it does, does, does).
#11 - Birthday
Dany’s never really cared about her birthday – what is there, really, for a friendless orphan to celebrate? – but when Arya shows up at her door and shoves a messily wrapped present into her hands with a shy grin she thinks, maybe, she could learn.
#12 - Blessing
Daenerys puts little stock in gods – old, new, red, dead, it makes little difference to her – but, as she stands beneath the heart tree of Winterfell's godswood, as Arya wraps a cloak around her shoulders with sure fingers and a steady hand, she hopes suddenly, desperately, that, if they're listening, they'll have mercy just this once and bless this union because surely, after all they’ve been through, all they’ve lost, they deserve nothing more or less than to just be happy.
#13 - Bias
Her father may hate the Targaryen’s like nothing and no one else and, okay, maybe he has his reasons but Arya flat out refuses to let his bias keep her away from the best friend she’s ever had; and if her feelings for Daenerys go beyond friendship, well, that's hardly worth mentioning, now, is it?
#14 - Burning
A girl is not a stranger to death, to destruction, a girl is not offended by the smell of sulfur and burning flesh, a girl is not afraid to kiss the mouth that says ‘dracarys' without mercy or remorse (but Arya is).
#15 - Breathing
Daenerys presses her face against familiar scales the color of old blood and blackened bones and takes in one slow stuttering breath after another, letting the acrid smell of fire and sulfur wash over her unabated; Drogon trills low in his throat and she bites back a sob at the sorrowful sound, scratching at the delicate scales beneath his great red eye, and says, “I know, dear one; I miss her too.”
#16 - Breaking
Arya has been bruised, she’s been blind, she’s had her skin split open and her bones bent, but she’s never been as close to breaking as she is right now, watching – powerless and desperately afraid – as Drogon plummets towards the earth with a spot of silver clinging to his back.
#17 – Belief
There’s blood on her face that may or not be her own and ash in her hair and she’s tired, so unbelievably tired, but when she meets Arya's eyes, watches her lips part in a wolfish grin and hears her shout, “Not today!”, Daenerys can’t help but believe her.
#18 - Balloon
Daenerys presents the Get-Well-Soon balloon bouquet with a grin and a flourish and Arya feels a blush crawling up her neck, partly because, damn it, she’d told Sansa not to tell anyone she was in hospital – she has a broken arm not the damn plague – but mostly because Dany is kind of the best and, okay, maybe she should actually tell her that but it's not gonna happen while she’s in a no-dignity gown hopped up on painkillers; not if she has anything to say about it, anyway.
#19 - Balcony
Daenerys is always beautiful – in Arya's mind this is as much a fact as the color of the sky – but as she is now, standing on the balcony, silver hair turned red and gold by the setting sun, she is something else, something more, and Arya's fingers twitch with the desire to touch, to consume and be consumed, because Daenerys is fire made flesh and Arya wants to burn.
#20 - Bane
She pretends not to notice the way everyone looks at her, now, the way they bow their heads and whisper, ‘Nightslayer’ or ‘Wightbane', as she walks by but, when Daenerys sees her in the hall one morning, when she inclines her elegant head and says, ‘Nightslayer’ as she passes – far closer than the size of the hall demands – Arya's mouth goes dry and it takes her an almost embarrassingly long time to figure out why it feels so different when the Queen says it.
#21 - Quiet
The room is quiet as it had not been before – whimpers and moans traded for evening breaths and slowing hearts – and, though the silence used to make Arya itch, eager to move, always on the hunt for the next something or someone or somewhere, now it urges her to stay, to rest, to linger in the embrace of the silver-haired woman who, despite the odds, to say nothing of her own consent, has become her home.
#22 - Quirks
Sansa scowls and Jon huffs out an annoyed breath but Daenerys' lips quirk upwards in poorly contained amusement and Arya shouldn’t count it as a victory but, oh, how she does.
#23 - Question
There is a question burning in the fires of Daenerys’ lavender eyes, a desperate longing in her touch, and it takes everything Arya has not to give up, to give in, but she knows, with a certainty that would have scared her, once upon a time, she won’t be able to resist much longer.
#24 - Quarrel
They fight, of course they do – they may love one another more than life itself but at their cores they are still, are always, fire and ice – but it doesn’t happen often and it never lasts for long and that's more than enough for Daenerys and Arya both.
#25 - Quitting
The hoard of the dead are endless, for every wight Daenerys and Jorah cut down it feels like a dozen, a hundred, rush to take its place and she doesn’t know how much longer she can do this – because, yes, she’s made of fire and blood but what use is it against these creatures of ice and death? – and then Jorah falls, a blade through his middle, and all thoughts of giving up, of just letting the dead take this whole gods-damned country and everything in it fade away because, no, she can’t let it end here, refuses to become another name on Arya's already-too-long list of the lost; so she rushes forward with a feral cry that tastes like a howl as it rips its way from her throat and hopes Arya, wherever she is, can hear it.
#26 - Jump
They're standing on the edge of something, here, and, even if they didn't plan it, she can't shake the feeling that it was all sort of inevitable and it's as thrilling as it is terrifying because there's no turning back after this, not for them, not now, and Daenerys is trembing and she can't seem to stop but Arya's hands are steady and her eyes are soft and, really, there's only one thing left to do; so Daenerys jumps and trusts Arya will be there to catch her.
#27 - Jester
The jester bobs and weaves across the floor, dramatic and colorful as he portrays the fall of the last Targaryen and, if Arya has to look away, if she has to bite down on the inside of her cheek until copper overpowers the taste of wine, well, no one's looking at her right now, are they?
#28 - Jousting
Queen Daenerys I Targaryen cares little for jousting, for the way the knights clank and rattle as they awkwardly clamor onto their horses and canter towards one another with lances raised; maybe it’s because she wasn’t raised with it, brought up going to Westerosi festivals and the like, but, when she finds herself on the edge of her seat as a slim knight draped in Stark blue and gray unseats yet another of their opponents, she can’t help but think she's just never had the proper motivation before.
#29 - Jewel
Dany wears a necklace – a little shard of amethyst the same color as her eyes, hanging in the dip between her breasts on a delicate silver chain – all the time, never takes it off in fact, and Arya's never cared about jewelry before but, for a reason she isn’t quite ready to name, she can’t seem to keep her eyes off it.
#30 - Just
They’ve barely wiped Cersei's blood from the Iron Throne before Daenerys has it melted down and orders it replaced with a far less imposing, if no less ornate, seat; when she tells them what she's done, her advisors balk and sputter and she's starting to think she’s made the wrong choice when Arya, Faceless Man and Mistress of Whispers, leans forward and, in that sinfully low drawl that never fails to make Daenerys' thoughts go a little hazy, says, “Come now, boys; it was just a pointy chair.”
#31 - Smirk
She stands on the balcony and watches with, perhaps, too much interest as Arya Stark faces yet another of her Unsullied – she’s always sparring with someone, it seems, and after seeing her fight firsthand Daenerys no longer wonders why the Northmen hesitate to accept her challenge – her face unreadable and her body swift and effortlessly lethal; the match is over before the chill seeps into Daenerys' gloves and she’s just about to leave when Arya looks straight at her – almost like she'd known she was there all along – and smirks and, in spite of the cold, Daenerys feels heat settle on her cheeks.
#32 - Sorrow
They’ve both known grief, experienced the true depths of loss and sorrow, been stripped down to their base components and reforged into something new; it’s why they can so easily see the cracks in each others masks, why they don’t shy away from the others sharper-edged pieces, and it’s why, when Daenerys retires to her chambers early one night only to find Arya in her bed waiting for her, she doesn’t hesitate to bolt the door behind her.
#33 - Stupidity
It’s the single stupidest and most reckless thing Arya has ever decided to do but, even so, she can’t seem to stop herself from marching across the courtyard and kissing the Targaryen Queen any more than she can stop herself from breathing; when Daenerys kisses back just as fiercely, she knows it's the best decision she's ever made.
#34 - Serenade
Arya's not the forgive-and-forget type – she’s not – but when Dany shows up at her door the day after their first fight with determined red-rimmed eyes, a box of her favorite sour gummy candy in her hand, and a cheesy song on her lips not even I'll-die-before-I-give-in Arya Stark can stop herself from smiling so wide her cheeks ache and tugging her inside.
#35 - Sarcasm
Daenerys is fluent in four languages for the gods own sake; she shouldn’t be so damned flustered by the sight of a challenging smirk and words that practically drip sarcasm but there’s just something about Arya Stark that makes it hard, terribly – wonderfully – hard to remember who and what she is.
#36 - Sordid
Arya had been taught the ins and outs of House Targaryen’s sordid reputation practically before she learned to talk but, from the first moment she sees Daenerys, she knows every lesson she ever learned, every well-meaning lecture her noble father had ever given her, is better off forgotten because this woman, this Mother of Dragons and Breaker of Chains, isn’t like the twisted men who came before her; no she, she is something gloriously new and Arya wants nothing more than to see exactly what she's capable of.
#37 - Soliloquy
Missandei, gods bless her, just sits there nodding appropriately as she goes off on yet another in a seemingly endless series of rants pertaining to one Arya Stark; and if, at the end, when Daenerys has run out of steam and flops most inelegantly onto her bed, the Naathi native chuckles and fixes her with all-too-knowing brown eyes, well, she supposes that’s more than fair.
#38 - Sojourn
Arya leaves, she always leaves, because she has not had a home since she went on that fateful journey South and she doesn’t have the heart to pretend otherwise; Arya comes back, she always comes back, because she has found a home in the arms of her silver-haired Queen (even if she isn’t ready, may never be ready, to admit it).
#39 - Share
Arya doesn’t like to share, hates it in fact, which is, perhaps, why, when they come together in their all-too-infrequent stolen moments, Daenerys never fails to wake with scratches running down her back, bites scattered along her neck, and bruises on her thighs that all but bare Arya's fingerprints; but, as she’s once again forced to choose a new dress to wear for the day – her first choice no longer appropriate, lest she show the entire kingdom who or, at least, what she’d been doing the night before – Daenerys cannot quite bring herself to mind.
#40 - Solitary
Dany is a solitary creature by circumstance rather than choice but, even so, the first time Arya invites her to Stark Manor, she’s more than a little overwhelmed by the chaotically messy noisy love she finds there; it isn’t until she becomes a semi-permanent fixture in the house – a wayward dragon welcomed into the wolf den with toothy grins and wagging tails – that she realizes exactly what she’s spent her whole life missing (and now she’s found it).
#41 - Nowhere
The wind howls outside and, despite the fire blazing in the hearth and the extra furs piled on her bed, Daenerys is still all but freezing – seven hells, it feels like a lifetime since she was last warm – but since Arya is here, naked and flush against her back, there’s nowhere else in the world she’d rather be.
#42 - Neutral
Despite the veritable chaos surrounding them, Arya's neutral expression doesn’t waver even once and, as the meeting draws to a close, Daenerys is almost overcome by a fierce desire to know what it would take to break the mask of the once Faceless Man and make the prodigal Night Wolf of Winterfell howl.
#43 - Nuance
It's the little things, the subtle nuances of her expression – like the sudden tension in her jaw or the smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes – that give her away and, in turn, urge Arya to cross the hall and insert herself firmly in between Jon and their beautiful Silver Queen; her brother’s expression darkens in time with her approach but Daenerys looks so honest-to-gods relieved that Arya can’t bring herself to care if she hurts his feelings when she leans in and, none-too-quietly, asks, "Are you ready for the tour I promised you, your grace?"
#44 - Near
She’s nearly there now, she can see the godswood, the way the ancient weirwood trees seem to go up forever as if they’re holding the whole of the great black sky aloft, and she’s so nervous all of a sudden – like a virgin maid, all flushed cheeks and shy smiles – as if she’s never done this before; but, as Grey Worm offers his hand to help her out of the carriage and Missandei leads her into the clearing, as she sees Arya standing there, resplendent in fur and Stark blue and gray, her breath leaves her in a rush of misty air and all at once Daenerys realizes that, yes, she’s been married before but it’s never been like this.
#45 - Natural
There’s a warmth to Daenerys that goes far beyond the natural heat of her dragons blood, a gentle goodness that too few people see, and Arya knows that, if she can show the people of Westeros this Daenerys, the woman who doesn’t hesitate to drop to her knees to soothe a crying child, who hides too-wide smiles behind a curtain of silver-white hair, who laughs – far too loudly to be pretty – with wildlings and Northmen and former-slaves alike, they'll love her almost as much as she does.
#46 - Horizon
Arya knows what she told her siblings, remembers every word she said about wanting to sail beyond the edges of the known world, but as she stands alone at the bow of her ship, she finally admits, if only to herself, that the only things she’s searching the horizon for are wings that clap like thunder and jets of black and red flame.
#47 - Valiant
Though it's well before dawn and the docks are near empty, whispers of ‘Jon the Valiant' and ‘Jon Queenslayer’ haunt her every step and, as Arya plants her feet on the deck of the Silver Queen for the first time, she knows that like Drogon, like the woman they both loved above all others, she’ll never set foot on Westerosi soil again.
#48 - Virtuous
Daenerys Targaryen is the dutifully virtuous daughter of a proud and noble family who never speaks out of turn and always does what she’s told and Arya isn't the only one who hates almost everything about her; Dany Stormborn, on the other hand, is a force of nature, as fierce and untamable as the storms she’s named after, and Arya loves her more than she’s ever loved anyone else.
#49 - Victory
Her sister sits on the Northern Throne and her brother sits on the one in the South and, despite assassinating their Queen, her brother-cousin still lives and they all say they’ve won but, if they did, if this is what victory looks like, then why does Arya – who now spends her every night dreaming of silver hair and lavender eyes and her every morning waking up drenched in a cold sweat, breathless and alone – feel like she’s lost?
#50 - Defeat
She's lost the North, willingly surrendered it into the hands of the eldest living Stark, and she thinks she should be angry, defeated, but as she turns to her right only to find Arya already looking at her, expression studiously blank but for the love and gratitude shining out of those now-familiar gray eyes, Daenerys can’t help but feel like she’s won something far more important.