章 2405: 40
40.
Dust.
Winterfell
Suddenly, two worlds collided and destroyed themselves.
Jon jolted out of bed, falling gracelessly to the floor with a loud thud. His head burned with an impending explosion of hurt and confusion. His eyes shut close as everything felt like spinning, his skull about to burst open.
He heard the sound of glass shattering but didn't bother to look about where it was coming from. He knew it was all his mind.
How did it happen? How did they bring him back? The last thing he remembered — NOT, the last thing he really remembered was closing his eyes, surrendering his last breath to a disease that had slowly consumed him from within without much fighting on his part.
Beyond the Wall.
Far from home.
How in the Seven Hells did I end up in Winterfell?
You never left Winterfell.
Except when we went to Dragonstone.
Dany.
He went to find Dany. But Dany was dead. No. Dany was his wife. But he'd murdered her. They were never married.
King's Landing.
The fire.
The betrayal.
The years that followed. The famines. The wars. And Dany was still dead. He had killed her with his dagger, a lethal stab through the heart, that slowly turn off the light of her eyes as he placed her lifeless body on the floor as if she weighed nothing.
Jon had to murder her so that she wouldn't continue killing people.
Jon had to murder her so that she wouldn't murder his family.
Sansa.
Arya.
Bran.
BRAN!
Jon leaped up from the ground and reached for his cloak, wrapping it around him, instinctively reaching for his belt in passing.
As he was striding his way to Bran's chambers he went bumping into walls or holding onto them so as not to fall. Even in the darkness, silhouettes and shadows danced in front of him, seeking to push him back.
Nausea plagued him at every turn.
When he found himself face to face with the door of Bran's quarters, he didn't bother to knock. Jon kicked the damned wood to splinters, shaking Podrick Payne out of a slumber.
Young Podrick could barely make out who it was before Jon had struck him aside, heading for Bran's bed, climbing up to it, and waking him up.
Bran blinked slowly, deep dark eyes that stared at Jon with an unsettling understanding in them.
"You have awakened," he said.
How could he carry this calmness? Jon wondered desperately. If Bran had any involvement in this, he would not hesitate.
He'd slit Bran's throat right then and there.
As if reading his thread of thought, the cold steel of a sword caressed Jon's neck. Podrick Payne stood behind him, his sword ready to defend Bran if necessary.
"Your Majesty, I am beholden to an oath I made to protect your brother," the young man said, his voice trembling because he knew he was threatening the King, but determined to follow through.
Jon bore him deadening eyes over his shoulders.
"Podrick, leave us," Bran intervened, "This is a private matter. You are dismissed."
Still reluctant, Podrick sheathed his sword and withdrew, closing as best he could the doors that Jon had destroyed on his entrance.
Now alone, Bran was finally able to voice his worst intuitions of the day.
"I perceived a shift earlier in your behavior," he said, "I worried that would happen eventually."
"Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let it run for so long?" Jon questioned him. Reproached him. Indeed, Bran knew about it and had played a part in it.
"I was in the belief that my intervention may cause more harm than good," he explained.
"You should have told me!"
"She didn't want me to," Bran said and shocked him.
She, was Dany.
And although at that moment what Bran least wanted was to suffuse more discord than what was already brewing, he had to make that clear.
"Have you asked yourself why is happening now? Just when everything seems right and in place?" Bran asked him.
"The Night King," Jon answered, "He knows it too."
He knows everything.
"Do you think I care about him now?" Jon rebutted. "My whole life was taken away from me — my life, my death, my memories! And all for what? To come back here? To the same place where it all began?"
"You're confused now and I understand," Bran tried to reassure him, but Jon is relentless.
"Tell me the truth! Tell me now!" he shouted, just as the doors behind them opened. Jon's head snapped around as Sansa and Arya rushed in, their faces bewildered as they see what a state he is in.
Them.
Jon stumbled off Bran's bed.
"What is the meaning of this? Sansa asked in her always reproachful and condescending tone. His newly settled memories reminded Jon of how annoying he found that about her.
In fact, all the misgivings that Jon had stored seemed unjustified until now, as they took on a new meaning; he had ceased to trust her and had never forgiven her for the oath she'd broken.
And Arya...Jon remembered loving and missing her but holding her memory at a safe distance. Both of them cruelly reminded Jon of the choice he had taken in seeking to see for their welfare. A rational part of him knew it was all contradictory, and yet he couldn't help feeling what he felt.
That they had all taken from him something he could never, ever find.
***
He trudged along the snow fields against the mighty blizzard trying to push him back inside, the effort sending a surge of pain through his muscles in a way that felt oddly. In winter it was useless to dwell on the pain for too long.
Jon's mind was fractured, taken over by two parts of himself that now he distinctly told apart, the Jon Snow he thought he was and the person he had once been.
The person he remained in spite of everything.
Guards came down from their posts to inquire about his vigil but Jon ignored them and walked on, crossing the bridge and the barbican.
Ahead, another obstacle stood in his way, a more difficult one to avoid.
Ghost stood directly in front of him with those red eyes like two glowing lights in the dark. Eyes that seemed to warn him of something.
Jon approached his wolf with the stubbornness of a man who was numb and given to any danger. It took no sound from Ghost to let him know that this was not a friendly encounter. The wolf wanted to block his path. But the storm swerved to all sides when Rhaegal's wings flapped and he landed gracefully above them, causing Ghost to retreat without further ado.
I'm sorry, my friend. This time you must step aside, Jon thought.
Even in the darkness, Jon struggled up onto Rhaegal's shoulder.
Hold on to whatever you find. He heard Daenerys' advice.
Another current surged through his mind, warm and abrasive, like wax sealing a letter. This was Rhaegal who seemed to take him this time for good.
***
The Neck
She was not going to experience calm tonight.
Daenerys had settled into the tent her soldiers had prepared for her at the Neck, and after tending the many audiences with the officers of her army, she had taken a little time for herself. She rose from the meeting table and started brewing a herbal tea, when the flapping of her tent's lowered awning revealed an intruder.
It was Lord Redwyne.
"Your Majesty," he saluted, even though his composure was anything but collected. "I have come to hear for myself that the tidings I received are true. Have you married the defector King in the North?"
Dany already imagined that sooner or later she would face this questioning. Last thing she recalled when heavily demanded on the matter by the Lord and his Lady grandmother, was promising to have him in his utmost consideration.
Dany clasped her hands together and raised her chin.
"The news is true, my Lord. To seal our alliance with the Northern Kingdom I have taken marriage vows in a ceremony according to their tradition."
Lord Redwyne's already enraged face obfuscated into shades of crimson almost the same as his hair.
"And what about the alliance with us, your loyal subjects?" he questioned, rightfully, "Are we supposed to be labeled secondary when we have been the first to swear obeisance to your Grace when even the North still claimed independence?
He was not short of reason, Dany understood.
Ser Jorah, who had so far not intervened, also made his presence known, stepping up with a stern face that sent Lord Redwyne a few steps behind.
"I just want to let you know that as your Queen I do not dismiss your grievance, Lord Redwyne. But there are matters of greater importance at stake, to deal with at the moment," Dany explained.
A strong gust of wind caused the tent fabrics to shake, and even they ducked for a moment. Dany looked upward with a strange foreboding lurking in her chest.
***
It was Jon.
It couldn't have been anyone else riding Rhaegal.
Dany hurried through the camp with Jorah following close behind. Rhaegal was in a restless state, having landed on a hill above them. Soon Drogon and Viserion were hovering nearby, responding to Rhaegal's seemingly screeches of distress with equal restlessness.
Daenerys ordered her guards and Ser Jorah to stay down there.
Dany crossed the marshy grounds up the hill, not caring how painful her gait was. If Jon was there after they had agreed to follow a plan, it must be that something serious enough had gotten in the way of those plans. When she had come close enough to see Rhaegal she stood still. She had never seen her child shaking like that as if he was holding a volcanic explosion within him. She hurried her climb to get to him but that's when Jon's voice stopped her.
"Daenerys," he called to her; voice hollow, empty of emotion.
Or was it the opposite?
Daenerys turned slowly to find a completely different man from the one she had left behind at Winterfell. A shadow that looked menacing.
She swallowed hard.
"Jon?" she responded, looking at him and then at Rhaegal. "W-what, what'd happened? The Night King..." she halted her words. His menacing figure rushed toward her as if he wanted to catch her and she was running away. Like she was a prey.
Only then, in the clarity provided by the closeness, did she realize that this wasn't even Jon. Not the Jon she had left behind, the man who had become her husband by vows and oaths.
This was the Jon Snow who had buried his knife inside her chest.
***
Harrentown
Lord Varys wrinkled his features in a semblance of concern but did not flinch at the image of the fugitive Aurane Waters. He turned his face and quirked an eyebrow at Petyr Baelish.
"Are you now a vile pirate?"
Baelish laughed, catching the eunuch's mocking tone.
"Just a man of many resources, Lord Varys. Now let me explain the course of things."
"I am all ears," Varys replied with nothing more to say.
"I am well aware of the tribulations that stalk Westeros from the North, and the distress our young dragons are under for its toil, and trouble. And oh, don't act surprised, Lord Varys! You know little birds travel faster than most beasts. Jon Snow has charmed his way not only to the heart of the beautiful Dragon Queen but also to her dragons and now he rides one of them himself."
"Even put it way, my Lord. I find it horrendously difficult to understand the purpose of plotting at such fateful times."
"Chaos, as I have always said—"
"—is a ladder. I know, I know. But what good does it serve if said ladder is frozen?"
"Monsters and beasts are but shadows dancing in front of the fire," Aurane interrupted, taking Lord Varys by surprise, "Those ice critters will fall eventually, for the only person who knows how to stop them wields a power far greater than any we know."
Baelish seemed unconvinced yet nodded.
"The important thing here is that when winter comes we go to the warmest place on the continent — and what place is that if not the city sitting atop the greatest wildfire stores?"
***
Winterfell
It resulted impossible to sleep again with all the commotion that had ensued with Jon's unexplainable racket. What demon had entered his head now, Sansa wondered.
"There's nothing wrong with him, he's just discovered something he shouldn't have known. At least not now," Bran explained when his sisters had helped him into his wheelchair and settled him near the fire.
"And what is it that he wasn't supposed to know?" asked Arya.
"I'm afraid it won't do any good for you to know either," Bran replied.
Sansa snorted, frustrated. More secrets piled up again. Just when she thought that all Jon needed was his Dragon Queen...She whipped her head around with the realization.
"Is it about Daenerys? Is that why he's fled south with Rhaegal?"
"Partly yes," Bran agreed, "But this is about himself and who he is. I'm afraid there may be some external force trying to upset Jon just before the war."
***
The Neck
Dany traced her steps back as Jon walked forward trying to reach her until she stumbled back against Rhaegal. Jon understood the dreadful state she found herself in and it upset him most.
"Do you now fear me?" he questioned her.
"When?" she asked him instead, staring at him with those same resentful eyes he had never understood in the very beginning when they first had met. It turned out it wasn't causeless. She knew him as he knew her now. Both versions of her.
"Daenerys," he calmly called out, "Twice a kinslayer is a folly. I will not harm my own wife."
Rhaegal growled lowly beneath her touch and she felt oddly humbled. This was not the person she had become.
"You are not the man I married. You will never be," she said, words sharpened to ease into the skin of his emotions.
Was she trying to hurt the Jon she loved or the man that killed her?
"I have an equal claim, don't you think so?" Jon spat with unusual cruelty. "After all you are for me just as a stranger as I am to you."
"That's where you are wrong, Jon Snow. I know who you are," she said, standing still with a face hard. "So you know the truth, now. And it has again driven a wedge between us. Who told you this time? Your brother?"
"It just happened."
"Nothing just happens!"
"But it does! Or else how do you explain that you turned back time?"
"I did not! Your brother Bran did!"
Just as he had suspected, Bran had played his hand in it. But still, Daenerys was a piece of that game, moving of her own free will.
"Since when has this been happening?" Jon asked desperately. "Since when have you and Bran initiated this evil plot?"
She could've said that it wasn't a plot. Dany could've told him that she was doing it for him too, but it didn't come naturally to her.
The hatred, the reproach, the unsaid things that transpired between them...it all came back with an overpowering rush.
"The night before our arrival to Dragonstone, that's where Bran sent me to restore it all. That's what we are doing."
FUCK.
Jon turned around walking away. She'd been knowing since the beginning.
"And before?"
"Before?"
Although he provided no elaboration, a pause passed and she understood what he meant.
"Twelve years from now," Dany answered. Finally.
After being resurrected, she isolated herself for years going from one place to another aimlessly, until she found her small village where she was finally happy.
Not happy, but at least she was calm, that's what she remembers.
Then Bran appeared and took that peace away again, offering her a chance to mend wounds no red god could heal.
"I didn't make it that far," Jon pondered aloud. "I died so long before."
She shook her head, her heart aching.
"I never knew, not until Brandon —Bran— told me..."
"So you came back," he said, "What does that mean?"
She scoffed.
"You know what it means."
"Do you hold me accountable for it? Is that it?"
"It doesn't matter."
"It does matter," he shouted out, "It does fucking matter!"
Jon strode up to her and grabbed her by the arm.
"Where you fooling me?—"
"—I was fooling myself..."
Dany couldn't feel his face so close to hers without feeling the force of dejection hit her. She had to turn her face away from looking into his eyes.
"—taking your personal vengeance for the sins I hadn't committed in this life."
"Yet," she said slowly, almost in a whisper. You haven't killed me yet.
Jon released her arm, stupefied.
"You burned the city!" he claimed with a broken voice, "Children, little children scorched in the streets of King's Landing...and you wanted to go on!" He paused, his face contorted with an expression of horror. "I had to stop you!! I had to protect my—"
He trailed off, almost berating himself for what he was about to say.
But Daenerys looked up, and with a sad smile that finally conceded with all her grudge and unforgiveness she'd held against him, she encouraged him to continue,
"Your family," she said.
"I-I had to take a choice," Jon muttered.
"And you made it."
Cautiously she approached him.
"We own our choices, Jon. I own mine. In this life and the other," she said decisively, "No matter what trials and tribulations I have to endure."
And therein lay the difference that drew a line between them. He gave in to guilt. She kept going, never looking back.
"What about us?" He finally dared to ask. A question so intimate and so terrifying; for himself, and for the idea of himself he had built all this time. "What about everything we were up till now?"
Dany trembled.
"We were just dust in time, Jon."
Notes:
I can feel you lighting up the torches but hold a second there, it was to be expected that such a moment would be this angsty.
I promise that all this will lead to a much more optimistic ending than you can guess.
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