Chapter Text
305 ac.
King's Landing.
"Be with me. Build the new world with me. This is our reason…"
These words echoed in his mind long after Drogon had flown off and become a shadow in the midst of smoke and snow. The whole world became a blurred vision around him.
"Be with me."
"Build the new world with me."
Jon turned around and staggered aimlessly about until Grey Worm, Ser Davos, Arya, and other people stormed into the destroyed Throne Room. He had nothing to say. He only made enough sense to untie his belt and toss Longclaw at Grey Worm's feet.
As he lay face down on the wrecked floor, the cold ground burning him, he heard not the chaos around him created by Davos and Arya's protests. All he heard were those words repeating themselves, over and over again.
"Be with me."
"Build the new world with me."
***
315 ac.
Castle Black.
Samwell cursed as his clumsy passage through the snow mounds made him slip. Some men at the entrance laughed at him before they rushed and helped him up, feeling the sting of embarrassment as the snowburn that was about to form on his back and rear. His teeth chattered out of cold and nerves, and that constriction of his gut again weakened his resolve. Did he still think it was a good idea to be here after all these years?
"Snow arrived a few hours ago but asked not to wake you up," informed the sworn brother on duty who led him to the private wing of the castle where he would meet his oldest friend. The only one that Sam could account alive. "I don't think he'll stay here the night. He never did once since he came back."
Since he had been unjustly sent here, Samwell thought.
He had been glad to hear that Jon did not abide by this absurd punishment. But, at the same time, he could not help but feel at fault for not having fought harder and instead, remaining silent at Jon's request. As much as killing Daenerys had been an enormous act of heroism in his eyes, others could not see it that way. It was Ser Davos who told them that Jon wished to step aside and allow the Great Council to decide whether he lived or die and that he would rather kill himself before being crowned King after what he did.
It was all so unfair.
The heavy wooden door creaked open as he stepped into Maester Aemon's old bedchamber. Jon was sitting at his desk, an old open tome atop the table that Sam could swear had been placed there by Aemon himself and never ever closed again by anyone.
Jon's appearance caught him unawares. He had a long, dark hair and a full beard, like a wildling himself. The only difference was that the furs he wore were still dark.
Black has always been my color, Samwell heard him say at some point in the past.
Jon stood up when he saw him and Samwell immediately ran into his embrace.
***
"Rumor has it that you are now the King Beyond the Wall." Samwell smiled. "We fought a king beyond the wall to protect the Realm once and now you are that king—"
"It is only a name, not a title," Jon cut him off. He looked at his bowl and stirred the broth in it so as not to meet his eyes. "Other people call themselves the same."
Other people call themselves King. Jon is called a King by the people, Sam thought but did not speak of this with his friend knowing perfectly well he didn't find joy in it.
"Were there more people?" instead, he questioned.
"Yes, there was. Some wilder than others."
Sam nodded and also lowered his eyes to his bowl. He cleared his throat before blurting out, "Things are not going well in the kingdoms." And it wasn't even the most important thing he had to say to Jon, but Sam was shaking out of shame. Admitting that was admitting that his sacrifice had been in vain.
"I know. Rumors travel fast even here," Jon shrugged it off. He never expected things to get better before getting worse.
Build the new world with me, her voice spoke in his memory.
"Some people are not happy with us and they have armies. Armies that can win wars. We...we, don't have too much of that. We've tried but none wants to fight for a northern king except the northerners but they do have another queen to fight for. After Ser Davos’ death—"
"I understand, Sam," Jon said, aching for his former Hand. He had received the news from a missive Sansa sent. "And as much as it hurts, I'd rather stay here and be of use to these people than be just another puppet in the hands of the Lords of Westeros. I did what I could for them."
Sam chewed on his lower lip.
"Rumors came from the east too. About Drogon."
Jon dropped his wooden spoon and the soup splashed into his hand, burning him. His friend hissed in pain but immediately turned his attention.
"Where?" Jon asked.
"The shores of Valyria. Bran thinks he's going to stay there," he lied, "We are all back home, eventually," he intended to make a jest that caused no laughter.
"Not all of us," Jon said.
Sam didn't know what he meant but his face grew stern with the thought of her, he was almost sure.
"Are you happy? Do you think you will be happy with the wildlings?"
Jon did not hesitate.
"More than anywhere else." Of course, he meant that he didn't want to return if that's what Sam's intentions coming over here were.
"I think you deserve to be happy," Sam agreed. "This will be the last time we'll see each other," he said after looking to the ground, full of unspoken shame
"Is my sister banning Southrons from the North?" It wouldn't have surprised Jon.
Sam shook his head.
"We are going to Essos," he confessed, still not looking into his eyes. Jon frowned. "I have to keep my family safe and Westeros…there will be war very soon."
Of course, Jon thought. Build the new world…
"I get it. For Gilly and the children," Jon lightly commented as he lifted his cup of ale.
"Jon."
"Hmm?"
Memories of the last small council meeting came back to Samwell's mind.
***
"Prince Martell went east, as I feared," King Brandon warned.
"And what does he intend to find there?" Tyrion questioned. His image was neglected; a hint of the times of war they were under, that kept his mind and body restless.
"A dragon," Bran replied, serious. "He's looking for a dragon."
***
Words stuck on the tip of his tongue; he did not find in himself the will to say them. What would this knowledge do but hurt him further?
"Do you wish I hadn't told you? Would’ve been something different?"
This was the crux of the matter. The reason why now that he knew of another secret that concerned Jon, he couldn't bring himself to tell him. The last time, he has been a device in the hands of Bran. This time he didn't want the same.
"If it wasn't you, someone else would have," Jon only said. After a moment of quietness, he sighed and admitted: "I'd wish you hadn't, though."
Sam nodded.
"I'd wish the same."
So at last, he kept this secret.
***
That was the last meeting between the friends as the destiny of Sam and his family was never to reach Essos, but to be swallowed by a seastorm on their way to the new life they would never get.
***
320 ac.
Winterfell.
"You can make use of Robb's old chambers, no one else was ever allowed there," Sansa said as they sat down at the table to discuss the matter that brought him to Winterfell for the first time in fifteen years. Behind her cordial and distant treatment, there was a hint of insistence. "This could take a few days," she added.
"I'm fine. I have everything I need now. And it won't take more than a few hours," Jon replied, setting down the maps he had brought with him from Castle Black. He had taken it upon himself to finish tracing the limits of their agreement so that he would not have to be in Winterfell any longer than necessary.
"You don't really want to be here. Do you?" Sansa inquired. "I can't say I'm surprised. The day you first left Winterfell was the last time you considered Winterfell your home."
"I will always consider Winterfell my first and only home. That's why I have fought for it so many times."
Sansa did not object to that.
"Did you get my message about your friend Samwell Tarly?" she asked.
Jon nodded. When Sam said that it would be the last time they see each other, he was in the right sadly. He didn't want to linger on the particular memory.
Sansa cleared her throat.
"Things are not going well in the south. Bran could be at peril in this very moment," she hinted.
Jon just looked at the black traces on the map and nodded.
"Reigning is not for the weak," he commented.
"Is that why you chose to step aside?"
"I don't know, you tell me," Jon answered through clenched teeth, "Would you have liked me to take the crown of the kingdoms including the North?"
"The North is not in trouble," she replied. "But it could be if something happens to Bran and they decide our family is to blame for all the misfortune Westeros is going through. There are rumors running across the continent and songs being sung where we are being blamed for conspiracy and treason."
He blew out a chuckle.
"And aren't we?"
"What are you talking about?" She sounded outraged. "You know she..."
"As much as I can remember worse things have been said about her. That does not erase the responsibility of the North in all this. We were there. Soldiers from the North massacred the citizens of King's Landing. And then a man from the North took the throne of the six kingdoms. To any bard, it sounds rather a tale of villainy."
"And the stories of our sorrows? Of our family's sacrifices? Where is left all of that?"
"Well," he paused. "I'm sure that somewhere in the world they sing songs about Daenerys' good deeds. Pay the bards of the North better."
***
It didn't take much longer for Bran to be dethroned. His weak body and his poor charisma were impossible to sustain in time even with the diplomatic skills and the smart mind of Tyrion Lannister, whose head first rolled when King's Landing was taken over by the lords of the South and the West. And though Queen Sansa sought to pay a ransom for her brother, Bran's ominous words and haunting presence doomed him to the stake, where he burned without even uttering a word.
When there was nothing but ashes where he burned, a reddish seedling began to grow.
Jon mourned for his brother, but not for the entity that inhabited him. The little boy he last saw on his deathbed in Winterfell, back in the day, was not the man he bid farewell to a long time ago at King's Landing.
***
325 ac
Beyond the Wall
"Are you Jon Snow, king of the kingdom Beyond the Wall?"
Jon quickly turned around when he heard that question. Behind him was a man — a soldier — dressed in garbs too neat to be from the North, much less from anywhere beyond the wall.
Over the years it has been impossible to deflect from that title although Jon never did anything to make them believe that he wanted it. He meanwhile continued to serve the Free Folk and help them build and rearrange the various settlements on the lands beyond the wall. Now his home was here, and no conflict in the Realm would cause Jon to cross the wall.
Bran's death did not, nor would Sansa's insistence on forming a united front against the threats from the south.
So Jon shot a sharp look at the man who came looking for him.
"Get out," he snapped at him. "Southrons don't fare well up here."
Jon took the heavy bag of potatoes that he was unloading from a cargo ship and carried it over his shoulder, bypassing the intruder.
"I only bring a message, my Lord," the soldier explained, trotting after him. "A message from the King."
A bitter feeling settled in the pit of his stomach.
"I don't know who this king is, nor do I want to know," Jon replied without slowing his quick steps down the dock.
"King Jaehaerys Targaryen the third, my Lord. King of the Seven Kingdoms and the commonwealth of free cities of the East."
Jon stopped. His heart thudded in his chest.
Targaryen.
"What in seven hells do you say? The Targaryens are dead."
Some time ago Jon would have refrained from even answering. People used to want to approach him on a subject that he would never discuss.
"Well, no, my Lord. Not all are. King Jaehaerys is very alive, and after landing in Dorne and pacifying the conflicts with the southern lords, he finally had been recognized as King."
Jon looked at him with puzzled eyes.
"Where did this Targaryen come from?"
"He comes from the East, my Lord. Where he was born and raised by his benefactors before being brought home by Prince Martell. Their alliance has provided with a strong military front."
"Alliance? What alliance?"
Jon was so confused that he barely remembered that the South was still in a long and unending war for the conquest of a throne that no longer even existed. Rumors had it that House Martell and House Hightower had risen as the two pillars of this conflict and since then, there was no peaceful solution looming on the horizon.
Jon sometimes thought it was his fault. In fact, he thought about it every day. But what could he have done? The Free Folk would never march south to defend a king they didn't even respect. Not that his best warriors could stand up to the mightiest army in all Westeros.
It was to be expected that Dorne would seek alternatives in the East, even one that seemed unlikely and otherwise infeasible.
"That's what this message says, Sir. King Jaehaerys is to marry Princess Elia of Dorne and to seal the peace their future child will be promised in a royal ceremony to House Hightower. The entire kingdom is invited to be part of the signing of the peace treaty. Even the Northern Kingdom and the Kingdom Beyond the Wall."
***
King's Landing.
Jon did not accept the formal invitation to sign the treaty but he set off on his own to King's Landing nonetheless. It would be the first time in almost two decades that he would return to the south and it would be for the same reason that he marched twice before in the past: for a Targaryen.
He sensed something off with this young man who claimed to carry the name but whose origin no one could trace accurately. Raised by benefactors in Essos, brought to the mainland by the Dornish...it all seemed like a tale. A powerful tale that had moved enough men to fight on his side. A coercive enough power to take over a throne that had been contested for over three decades now.
Jon needed to see it with his own eyes.
On the way there, he found bits of information from other wanderers like himself. The king's road was long and full of taverns and brothels where he stopped to collect information, food, and company. Not the kind of company a prostitute could offer but the conversation that ensued.
"He is not a true Targaryen," someone said, "True Targaryens are mad."
"He is a true one. A descendant of the Princess exiled on Volantis," said another.
The crux of the matter was that this Targaryen did not bring a dragon with him. They were quick to draw comparisons with Daenerys.
"This one is not like the Mad Queen. This one, people love him," commented a prostitute, to whom Jon politely declined her services but invited to have supper with him. "They say that wherever he goes he draws people. He is a young, idealist lad, they say. And of course, he proved himself a good warrior."
Jon was still skeptical and full of questions that he didn't know where to settle.
He continued on his way to King's Landing, taking care enough not to be detected or recognized, although he doubted there was anyone alive who would recognize him.
On the day he arrived, wedding bells rang throughout the entire city, and a feast on behalf of the newly married King and Queen was arranged.
King's Landing was not the place ravaged by the dragonfire he left behind all those years ago. The crumbling and smashed buildings had been rebuilt, and in their place, new brick-colored buildings stood as a mockery of the past.
Everything that was destroyed seemed fixed, except for the bad decisions that all of them had made.
The people around him began to run towards the square, where something seemed to take place that was driving them restless. Jon pushed people aside and sought a glimpse of what was going on.
There they were, the King and his Queen.
She was everything expected of a princess of Dorne, with her tan skin and long brown hair cascading down to her waist. Her dress of exotic colors and her accessories of pure gold, things that he had never seen in other women.
Beside her, her king, the Targaryen king, was nothing but a boy clad in overly elegant cloth. The silver and gold cloth covering his dark armor streaked with rubies.
Jon couldn't make out the features of his face but he could tell the silver of his hair although he brought it tied up in a bum. The same kind he had. His presence was imposing, like the Targaryens in the history books...like the Targaryens he knew.
A bluffer or not, people seemed comfortable with him. Happy even.
Aside from some bad-mouthing heralding another short reign like that of Bran the Broken, there was a glimmer of hope in the people who huddled together and clamored for his health and name.
Jon turned around, wanting to run as far north as he could get. But then two large, imposing male figures in armor stood in front of him and spoke to him in thick accents, giving him no choice but to obey.
***
Jon sighed heavily and surrendered himself to his impending destiny the moment he was escorted to Dragonpit. He wouldn't leave without giving them a good fight, but he knew that he brought his own misfortune, not for the first time.
"Jon Snow."
His name came from a distantly familiar voice, mature and deep. When he turned to look for it, he found an image that got him rooted to the ground.
Daenerys.
No. It couldn't be true. It must be a dream.
He blinked several times to wake up but the image of her was still there. Live like the last time he saw her before he ended her life.
Build a new world with me.
"You are alive," he said.
"And does that surprise you?" she rebutted.
"No. Not, at all."
In silence, they contemplated the other as former lovers turned into estranged adversaries. Positions that they assumed at the moment the blood that united them, divided them into different ideas and dreams. An unworkable conciliation; a prospect lost forever in time.
Build a new world with me.
"He thought you wouldn't come. I told him you would be curious, so my guards were waiting for you," she resumed, indifferent and detached from his almost catatonic state.
"He?" he asked, confused.
Daenerys cocked her head. "He, my son. Jaehaerys."
Jon blew out a breath, his knees buckling, and he had to hold on to keep from falling. Thousands of thoughts crossed his mind but only one was leading.
Her son, my son.
It could be otherwise and yet he had that certainty.
The boy was his by blood. And his mother...his mother that he killed once, was carrying him inside her womb when that happened.
He deserved no forgiveness. Not now, not ever.
"I haven't come to…"
"I know you don't," Daenerys quickly cut him off. Only then did he stop to truly regard her, in all her regal splendor that had always characterized her until the last day. Now wiser, calmer, or so it seemed.
Her eyes roamed the ruinous structure of the place where they stood.
"We are in this same place where you told the witch was not a reliable source of information, remember?" she asked him. Although she was not smiling, there was a relaxed edge to her voice, as if a smile was there, ghostly.
"Aye, we are," he answered, and because he could, he dared a smile. A sad one. A regretful, abashed smile.
***
"How is that…?"
Now they were sitting side by side. Not next to each other but there was a safe distance between them. Two people. Two souls haunting a place already full of ghosts, memories, and moments lost in time.
"A long story," Dany said, paying more attention to her clasped hands on her lap than to him, "Involving many actors, mainly those who were not content with the reign of your brother and Tyrion. Will you object to it?"
"I don't think I have much say in it—"
Again, she interrupted him, "There are people who would rise up in a second if you ask them," she said quietly. "Lord Varys used to say that power resides where men believe it resides."
"And that's why he burned in flames."
She cocked her head.
"...and for trying to poison me."
Jon searched for her eyes. She just glanced his way.
Under his breath, Jon cursed. There was so much left unsaid, so much he didn't know, that he was rendered speechless now that it all seemed inane.
"Forgive me, Daenerys," he said, clasping his hands, "Forgive me for everything..."
"It's done Jon," she said, sounding tired, as if this conversation had taken place a thousand times already, "You did what you had to do and I did what I had to do. Keep the son you gave me alive. A son who is good in nature, and will be a good king..."
Silence.
The whistle of the wind blowing around them was like an intruder listening to their superficial confrontation with the past. Jon wanted to look further over that invisible wall between them and even cross it but he knew it was impossible.
"So King beyond the wall?"
He cleared his throat, almost embarrassingly.
"So they say."
"Hmm. You chose to be King of a place so far away...so it was not the title that you despised but the place—"
Before she could start, he questioned her, "You could have done more but you didn't. Why?"
Although Drogon was nowhere to be seen, Jon knew he shouldn't be far away. Even living so secluded, news from the east would have reached him...if she had done something of that scale.
"I'm not a welcomed person, Jon. When they went looking for my son, they were looking for my son. Not for me."
"And how come they knew and I didn't?"
"I wasn't the one who had to let them know."
A heavy sigh escaped his mouth. Of course, someone else must have known, and not let him know. Davos, Samwell, Tyrion, Bran...they were all dead. Maybe even Sansa knew.
"He knows…?" I am his father, but he did not dare to use the word that she herself would not use. She had been clear on several occasions in this short exchange; her son.
"Of course, he knows. I would never make him go without knowing who he is. As painful as that truth is. A mad mother and a kinslayer father."
He winced at her saying that but swallowed hard despite the urge to say something. Instead, he asked her, "And that has not embittered him?"
Jon could speak only from his own experience and he knew that Daenerys would understand his question from her own.
"He is much better than us, Jon," she replied, her stare lost in a memory he was denied, "I knew it the first time I held him in my arms and he looked into my eyes, that he was a gentle, kind soul, and so he grew up into a boy that wouldn't hurt a bug," she said smiling. She looked over at him and turned melancholic. "I'd like to tell you stories about him but that'd only hurt you more."
Jon nodded even though inwardly he didn't want her to worry about his suffering.
She owed him nothing at all.
Still, Jon stood up to unsheathed Longclaw, a move that was quickly answered with the sound of her guards' weapons.
Jon slowly lowered the sword to her feet.
Dany showed no sign of flinching or distress.
"Can you give him this?" he requested.
She gave him a curious look.
"He can change the handle and make it a dragon, or a bear like it was before when she belonged to Mormon," he explained, reminiscing the time he'd wanted to return it to the rightful owner, Ser Jorah. "I offered it to Ser Jorah and he told me to keep it so that one day it would pass on to my children. He knew better than we did, back then," he finished the sentence quietly. A note in his voice that was calm and passive, as if everything that was happening was exactly what was meant to happen in the first place. "Tell him I am sorry, Daenerys. And I'm sorry for you too. If I could have done things differently—" his words trailed off.
"Thank you," she said, standing up and collecting the sword. In her terse gaze, there was understanding and sadness but above all peace and resolution. Neither of them came to confront the past but to visit it and say goodbye once and for all. "I'll pass it to him, but I hope he doesn't have to use it."
"He will have to," he countered quietly, "When he goes North. Farewell, Dany."
"You too, Jon."
***
Inn at the crossroads.
"M'Lord—"
Jon was having a meal at the inn when one of the servants shyly approached him to warn him of the presence of other men of his kind who wanted to speak with him. Jon didn't flinch or surmised why they would recognize him but he didn't really care about it either.
"It's alright. Thank you," he said with a smile.
These men closed in on him, and Jon looked to his sides nonchalantly, watching them. A hooded figure came from behind and sat down in front of him. As he lowered his hood, his stomach sank.
"I was not pleased to learn that my mother had encountered her murderer alone," he said in a grave voice. "Had I known it, I'd forbidden it," he added, with the slightest eastern accent.
His tone denoted no anger or acrimony.
Jon rendered wordless for a long moment. His son spoke clearly with the voice of a man grown.
If he hadn't already known, he wouldn't have recognized his child in the man sitting across from him: his Valyrian features from the lilac eyes to the silver hair...everything in him was Daenerys' except for the subtlest shape of his mouth, which he could recognize from himself.
And yet he had no doubt that it was his child. He didn't need to see himself in it to know it — he felt it. It was something inexplicable, intangible. As if his blood was calling to his.
"And would it have been of any use?" Jon rebutted, out of his stupor.
His son allowed himself a glint of a smile.
"No, but I would have tried."
Even in the vast distance in between and the lifetime that separated them, they both knew for certain one thing: no one reigned over Daenerys Targaryen's decisions.
"She brought this to me before leaving," he said, placing Longclaw on top of the table they shared. He wasn't surprised to hear that Dany was gone, but a pang of regret still stung. "I asked her to rule Dragonstone in my stead but she refused me, arguing that the animosity toward her person in this place is stronger than her devotion to me. Not that it is scarce but she is certain that her absence will do a thousand times more good." He frowned and looked at his hands above the table. "My mother is a strange character but she has devoted her whole life to protecting me. I trust her judgment. Before leaving she told me that this matter did not deserve further attention. Is that so? Speaking strictly from monarch to monarch."
Jon rearranged his seat and pressed his back against the back.
"There are no issues to discuss with me. I am little more than a mere peasant."
Jaehaerys looked confused.
"And that's why they call you King Beyond the Wall?"
Ah, that, Jon thought, a little surprised and even amused. How absurd to expect him to be discussing anything else.
"The territories beyond the wall have always been free," he stated firmly.
"To some extent. Not being governed by a monarch of the Seven Kingdoms does not make them free. They are governed by a system of laws anyway. Every civilization is prone to order," he countered, as the waitress placed a tankard of ale on the table and he smiled in appreciation.
Was his smile hers? Not exactly Daenerys', Jon pondered, but not his either.
Your mother raised you well, Jon would have liked to say.
"The North is mine by right. I am not just a Targaryen. Do you understand that? Sansa Stark is a poor ruler and as much as she bears the name of the Starks, she has done little in this time to make the name of her House endure."
"She still is the queen that the North chose to follow."
"For now," And he raised his cup to Jon and drank without a pause. When he lowered his tankard, he licked his lips. "I'd be relieved to know that I won't find you as my rival on the other side," he expressed and it seemed sincere.
Jon offered no response, still too abstracted by the fact he was sitting in front of a grown man that was his son. A child Daenerys bore him, unbeknown to him. A child he killed. A child he would never get to know because twenty years ago he took a decision that would never give him a chance of redemption.
If it weren't for the stupor, he could fall into a dark, bottomless pit right there and found himself aimless for months.
Finding no response, Jaehaerys went on to explain, "I used to hate her for what she did, and even I once asked her why? The stories don't suit the person who raised me. I could never forgive her for it but I love her. I inevitably and irrevocably love her. Do you understand that?"
"More than you could imagine," Jon answered, feeling his heart swelling inside his rib cage.
"It's hard to imagine. The songs say that Jon Snow was the most honorable man in Westeros until he tainted his honor to save people from her insanity. In the few times, she did mention you, her eyes filled with utter sadness. I learned from a young age to avoid the matter. For her sake."
Jon took a deep breath as he thought about the child he had been, having to take responsibility for the pain he had caused to his mother.
"Saying sorry at this point doesn't help, but I do. From the bottom of my heart. And had I known that your mother was alive and that she had you..."
"I also had a choice," Jaehaerys cut him off, "The truth was not denied me, and even knowing it, I chose to be a Targaryen. To carry the good and the bad of it. I did not come all this way here to question the choice you made twenty years ago."
So saying, he rose to receive from one of his guards a weapon: a sword.
He sat back, carefully placing Longclaw on the table.
"I know about Ser Jorah. Mother told me about him." He pursued his lips. "Even so, I don't want her."
"And she told you about it being Jorah's wish that you had her?"
Jaehaerys smiled apologetically.
"I may not have met him, but I am almost certain that Ser Jorah would have disapproved of this conversation even taking place. Wouldn't he?"
"He was a good man," Jon agreed. He would also have hated me for what I did to Daenerys, he meant.
Feeling that the meeting was drawing to a close, Jon felt a sense of despondency.
"I do not want the North to continue to bleed because Sansa Stark refuses to accept that her reign is over, and has brought only ill times for her people over the years," Jaehaerys stated, "I have not come to ask you to abstain...only that I will not relent."
***
Winterfell.
Jon did refrain but did not shy away from approaching the battlefield, however. On the south side of the besieged castle stood his son's army, proudly waving the red and black banner of the three-headed dragon, among others. Winterfell no less proudly raised the banners of the direwolf. Jon waited day and night for at least a fortnight until the gates of Winterfell opened and he saw from afar Sansa emerge and come face to face with Jaehaerys, unaware that it was also her own blood.
Compelled by the defection of her own guard, Sansa knelt down and laid her crown at the feet of his son.
***
Their second meeting took place the next day when Sansa had signed the treaty and ceded her rights as Queen. Jon had expected hostilities and protests, but Jaehaerys' words had been particularly true — The North had been going through a hardship that she had ignored by clinging to her crown.
Sadly, it did not surprise him.
When he entered Winterfell with little opposition in his path, Sansa confronted him.
"Why have you forsaken me, Jon? Your own flesh and blood!" She demanded of him in her broken voice.
Jon did not answer her.
"Is it because of what he claims to be?" she let out a snort. "It is another pretender for all I know, brought by our enemies to displace us again from what is rightfully ours!"
"He's no pretender. And if the North had wanted to defend itself, it would have done so, Sansa."
"So it's my fault? After giving my blood, sweat, and toil all these years..."
"Sometimes that's not enough, is it? To give your ultimate sacrifice only to find that in the end, it's worth nothing to those who are determined to see you lose..."
Sansa's face dawned with a bitter understanding.
"So it's because of her? After all these years, you think giving the Seven Kingdoms to one who bears the same name and colors will give you the peace of lessen your crime against her?"
Jon offered her a cynical smile.
"I'll never get that chance, but I'm glad you're clear on what I'd choose if I could have that chance back."
***
Jon climbed down to the crypts, unaware that Jaehaerys was also there, right in front of the statue of Eddard Stark.
"The stone is not at all flattering to the faces," he said, without taking his eyes off the statue of his father, or who Jon had believed to be his father. "I feel a strange here as if at any moment they're going to depetrify and start attacking me. I don't belong here."
Jon understood the feeling of not belonging, like those dreams he had where the statues of the Starks of old warned him that he was not one of them. At that time he was but a boy.
"Stark blood runs through your veins nonetheless," Jon said.
An audible sigh and finally he turned away, walking a few steps closer to him, and standing in front of Jon. In the dim candlelight, he looked even younger than he was. But there was something in his eyes like what he saw in any seasoned soldier. Little pride and lots of regrets.
"In this place, many years ago, I had been told that I was the son of Rhaegar Targaryen," Jon revealed; rather, he confessed.
Jaehaerys looked around.
"Not the best place to learn a life-changing truth."
With a sad smile, Jon nodded.
"Still, I always found myself here when I needed to be in the company of my thoughts. Which is almost always."
"I understand," said Jaehaerys, "In the mountains east of Essos, there was a place, a volcano...Drogon took refuge there, and from time to time would lay her eggs there—"
"Eggs?"
Jon had always had the impression that Drogon was a male.
"It was a surprise for my mother too," smiled Jaehaerys, the first smile Jon had ever witnessed.
As he went on, Jon wondered if this was what it will be for them ever. Awkward conversations in halves and scattered all over the place.
***
326 ac
King's Landing.
The southern air did not displease him that much the next time Jon visited the capital. He allowed himself to observe and apprehend the more agreeable side of the city, like the bay and the variety of people that made up his population.
Yes; there was beauty in King's Landing. The manse where he had been sent to, had been one of the most ostentatious places he had ever known. It was located on a state near the Iron Gate and therefore the river. It was closer to Flea Bottom than Red Keep but that place was not what they used to be.
Jon rejoiced in the knowledge that his son was a good ruler. He couldn't have expected less being him the son of his mother, though many professed otherwise. In Jaehaerys he could see Daenerys, the ruler she would have been if things had turned out better. And he could see himself too, he dared to think.
A piece of the best of the two that now survived through their son.
Their son. Still a foreign notion to him. It made him wonder a thousand times what he would have done if he had known.
Things, good and bad, happen for a reason, he believed. If all the bad that happened had brought forth Jaehaerys then he was not the one to protest. Jon was happy to be a father.
He did not see the King in his time there, it was known that around the kingdom there were still matters of higher importance to attend to and the least Jon wanted was to represent an unneeded nuisance. However, he did learned — for it was of public knowledge — that Queen Elia had given birth to a child. It had made Jon burst in gleeful laughter. In less than one year time, he'd become a father and a grandfather.
A small retinue had visited him that morning with a message, written on scented paper that smelled of lemons. On it was a simple sentence written:
I am in the city.
Jon knew it was her. Not out of instinct or a good sense, but because he remembered her legible handwriting. A detail that took even himself by surprise.
***
The guards led him to an open gallery overlooking the sea, covered with plants and where he could breathe a different, clearer air.
As he waited for her to appear, he leaned over the railing and took a deep breath. The door at the end of the corridor opened, and Jon looked up to see Daenerys emerge from it, as always, stunning and breathtaking.
He felt far too rough in comparison.
"It wasn't hard to find you," she commented lightly as if they were once acquaintances. Her small frame was clad in an elegant turquoise satin, the bluest he had ever seen.
"I was, um," He cleared his throat. "He gave me a house in the city. I've been dealing with some traders. You know, for the settlements beyond the wall."
Dany stood at a distance, steady and with her hands in front of her in a regal bearing. She listened to him talk about the issue with sincere attention.
"Your kingdom," she answered with a smile that seemed genuine. "Your home."
Jon didn't know what to answer. She sounded nostalgic. Contradictory feelings piled up inside him, a latent desire to antagonize and another to lend an arm where she could find shelter. She was, after all, the mother of his only child. The only one he would ever have. And she, too, had been the one who took possession of that child and made him her own, excluding him from their life.
He didn't have to think too much as she kept talking.
"I have a home too. It is far from here. It is where we lived for almost twenty years. It is little but homey, with a door I painted red and a lemon tree I planted outside our window."
Dany watched his strained expression soften. And that's what seemed to reassure him, to finally know that at least in all that misfortune there was some happiness.
There had to be, he thought. For both.
"I wish I had known," Jon found himself admitting. Again.
"I wish the same," Daenerys said sincerely.
They could only look back wistfully now. Bleak memories to hold at this point.
Jon couldn't resist her gaze any longer and lowered his eyes to the floor.
"You learn the news?" Dany asked, her voice intoned with more than kindness. "We have a new prince," a smile in her voice.
The mention made Jon startle.
"Have you seen him?" Of course, she must have.
Daenerys slid toward the door, whispering a few words to someone on the other side that he couldn't see who it was but suspected was a servant. Jon frowned and waited.
His heart raced and stopped when a servant girl approached with a cooing bundle in her arms.
A babe.
"Dany…" Jon released a shaky breath.
Daenerys smiled as she took her grandson in her arms, feeling that fluttering of her heart like every time. She turned after hearing him call her, and looked from their grandson to him.
Jon froze as she walked with the baby a few steps to him.
"May I introduce you to your grandson, Prince Jaeron of House Targaryen," she said.
A stifled sob caught in his throat as his eyes stung with tears. He had spent too much time suppressing this sadness. This helplessness. It was as if the sight in front of him was the living memory of what he had lost.
"He is beautiful," he whispered, searching with his eyes the pink and puffy face, with tightly closed eyes and pursed lips that suckled in the air. The lad blinked open his sleepy eyes that got lost in the ceiling.
"He has your eyes." Dany spoke as her delicate hand moved to move the blanket a little. "And his father's broody face that it's your broody face, as well."
Dany searched his face for a sign of discomfort or insecurity, something that would let her know it was too much for him. However, she found only emotion. Pure and naked emotion.
Pain was there too. And that's why she too was heartbroken. It would do no good to review the past and self-pitying, she knew. But in that moment she allowed herself for an instant to contemplate what it would have been like if instead of being their grandson between them now, it had been their son.
Dany suppressed her own emotion to ask him if he wanted to hold the baby, which he answered in the affirmative. She showed him the correct way to support the head while holding the small body, and motioned for them to sit on the long bench to the side.
As Jon stared at Jaeron spellbound, she did the same looking at him, choosing to see the goodness in him rather than the hurt and affliction he had caused her.
The time they stayed like this seemed an eternal moment that would remain forever steeped in their memories, stronger than the gray days that marked the end of their days together in the distant past.
The baby fell asleep in his grandfather's arms and Jon allowed himself to shed the impatient tears that gathered in his swollen eyes.
"Thank you," he whispered, repeating a second time the same but aloud. He lifted his head and stared at the mother of his son and the grandmother of his grandchild. "I know you did this. You didn't have a reason to but you did it."
Dany didn't understand what he meant. Their son fully agreed despite his still conflicting feelings. His heart was so much bigger than hers could ever and even more forgiving than Jon's, if that was possible. She knew it that and she hoped Jon knew too. However, she saw then what he meant by his words when his eyes were naked with a feeling that she had seen long ago before the world collapsed around them.
Love.
Before it could affect her temper, Dany avoided his gaze to focus on the sunset that was taking place in front of them, not because she wanted to disdain his gesture but because it was too much for her. Extreme emotions had been her undoing at one point in her life and she now sought peace of mind.
Their minds and hearts would appreciate it.
Jon felt not discouraged. He understood that what was in front of him now was more important than what was weighing on him from the past. What burdened him suddenly felt lightened.
"I have a reason. You are the reason, Jon. I know we couldn't build the new world but at least we gave the world a new hope and I wanted to you to see it," Dany said, smiling at him.
He believed it with all his heart.
Somehow, they did.