The ache slammed through Jon's skull. A thousand thunderbolts slowed to a pulse and ground against every bit of his brain. The old gods dwelled in even this sparse forest. They had seen to their spring; they alone could name the force behind his pain. He pressed his forehead against the tree. Bark scraped the stubble on his cheeks, and the soft sweep of rain turned the wood black. Ice water poured from the tree in tiny torrents, soaking his beard to glistening, beading on his skin. Rain washed the grit from his lashes as he closed his eyes, and sweet spring cloudmelt whisked the metallic tang from his mouth.
Breathe.
The godsdamned dreams.
Every sleeping potion Sam had suggested had done nothing. Jon slept without rest, only dreaming. While sky-sifted snow still fell, he dreamt of Longclaw heavy in his hand. As snow turned to sleety rain, peaceful dreams took him with their desperation.
White-gold dragonscale pressing warm against his spring-cool skin. Dragonfire searing through his blood without burning, flowing out of his body in gentle streaks that burnt into his shoulder. Sweet wolf-scent, a red-furred tail brushing its coarseness on his cheek, and paws pressing on his chest. Wolf-teeth warm and wet, mouthing at his wrist.
He'd woken slowly, to blankets heavy with his sweat. But every shiver passing through him was a spark from a cold flame, snapping in quick, icy jerks at his skin. A fever built since war's end had broken, leaving a hollow pounding in his head. And it had marked him. Burns dotted across his left wrist, and the lightest scratches of wolf teeth scarred his right. Beneath the grey clouds dozing in the dawn, they were nearly invisible.
The old gods had seen fit to give him this; they had taken spring for their season.
Jon's old vows had been of no use in dreams. He was wasting the dawn in prayer. Prayers were not useful to him, not when his hands would do all the good. Prayer wasn't helping Jon build the memorial to those who'd died for spring, where misfits could come home. Men and women streamed to this new incarnation of the Wall. A snowmelt of people had trickled in at first, drop by drop. Now it was a raging river; he needed to make sure there would be enough food for them all. And enough training: hunting and foraging and ranging.
His own hands stacked each stone, his hands and his mind. His voice echoed across the valleys to all who'd joined him, though it still seemed small to him. So it was fitting, then that the new Wall be small, too. Small and strange and new. As new as spring. It was not yet a home. Perhaps it would never be a home. In all his years of living he'd had yet to find a home; in work he was himself, but it was not a home. The war had taken much from him; a piece of his spirit had collapsed with the old Wall. But the spring feast at Winterfell was coming, and with it, Daenerys and Sansa. The women of old blood and new, the warriors he called friends, who knew as well as he did the strangeness of spring.
~o~
There were no gods that could answer Dany's questions. Her dreams were small; she was a small queen in a small country. They would not hear her, but she had this morning with her dragons. They were curled together, and she climbed over them to burrow in the shelter of their bodies, a child amidst a pile of bedding. Their wings were her blankets. In these small hours, she watched sky and day greet each other, warm and peaceful.
A peace scraped out of sleep-crippling dreams.
Great beasts with tails of thick fur and velvet paws chased her through a meadow green and unflowered. The red wolf found her in the tall grass, fur the copper of a new sun. Paws delicate and strong, long-limbed and slender-nosed. The black wolf came bounding to Dany, nosing at them both. When the wolves toppled her over she laughed. Their teeth were gentle.
She woke with an empty tiredness: that the Seven Kingdoms waited for her guidance, and the gods had no answers to the questions of her dreams. Her skin was marked with their strangeness: two rows of tooth marks, one on each wrist. They burned with a soothing fever, a relief from the day's tedium. Warm against the Iron Throne's cold blades. Warm beneath the ink of her letters, a cool dark rain. Warm when she went to greet the smallfolk. Spring blew soft through her window, and still they warmed her.
~o~
Sansa lit candles in the Sept, and thought of her mother. She'd go to the godswood next, and think of her father.
Her thoughts were brief. Even in the light of earliest morning, her mind worked to assess Winterfell's practical concerns. The farms that fed the North were resuming operations, and needed as many able bodies as possible. She'd see that a raven flew to Jon by day's end. They needed contingency plans for flooding. It was not the leanest of times; the South had thawed earlier, and Daenerys had seen to keeping the North in what fresh supplies they could spare.
Winter's last gasp still blew through the halls. The spring feast would do everyone good, but Sansa needed to plan. It was months away. Even still, she was her mother's daughter, and her father's; the Lady of Winterfell and the Queen in the North. Planning was necessary.
Sansa rubbed at her eyes, and then moved her hands to her neck, working at the knots there. There was no planning for sleep. It came when it wanted, bringing dreams that set her blood to flame. Scaled leather sweeping across her collarbone, pressing hot into the scars there. A dark-eyed wolf, black as night. Fur as thick as the snowfall of a centuries-long winter, smelling of dusty flowers. Teeth pricking gently into the soft flesh of her neck. And then the animal spirits were gone, and she threw the half-darkness of her chamber over herself like a cool blanket. Strode quietly to the Sept, and to the godswood. To be alone with the old gods and the new, and ask them of the marks left so warm upon her flesh.
~o~
Daenerys arrived at Winterfell, to icy rain falling softly on the bare skin of her neck and wrists. The gates stood tall before her, gleaming bright against muted grey clouds. The great cold of the war was an icicle, piercing her heart with memory.
Black hands reaching for her behind gates rotted by ice; spears stabbing into dragonflesh. The screams of her children burning through the sky like flaming arrows. Sansa and Jon wounded, Sam's eyes wet and red; a room dead and cold. Their breath frozen fire, filling the chamber and her blood with dizzy relief.
And then memory was swept away. In its place, Sansa's towering grace, her soul as sharp as the red of her hair, hard as the ice was in her eyes during every moment of the war.
Sansa had none of that ice in her eyes now. "Daenerys," she said, beckoning Dany through the gates. "You're soaked." Dany's boots tapped a welcome rhythm on the stone path as she followed the beacon of shimmering red out of the wet.
~o~
"How is it," Dany asked, grinning, "that you've kept yourself alive without me and my dragons?"
Sansa nudged her playfully. "We needed you for the war effort, my Queen," she said, "but I was raised in the North. I am a child of the North. We've kept ourselves alive through much leaner springs than this."
"Yes, you are the Lady of Winterfell, and Queen in the North besides."
The war had cut away what tension could've been. Sliced through it like Sansa's decisiveness; burned it away like Dany's dragonfire. In war, there had been only the fight to live. Everyone had their place.
Sansa's smile, bright with its peculiar and particular light, asserted its place. A woman once so dark and full of winter's blood. Now, snowmelt flowing over the petal of a spring flower: every fold, colour and vein made clearer by Sansa's sight. Spring rain flowed between them. Then, Sansa laughed, a sweet bird of spring. "And you are the Queen in the South. How is life in King's Landing, Dany?"
Dany rolled her eyes. "Terribly, obnoxiously boring."
"You mean you don't like all the songs?" Sansa rolled her eyes, just a little.
Dany took a sip of her ale, then grimaced. It never got better. "Why write songs about things that have already happened? The Wall is all we need."
"We wouldn't have won the war without you." Blue spring flowers blossomed in the depth of Sansa's eyes.
"We wouldn't have won the war without you," Dany said. "You think I knew anything about dressing soldiers for the worst winter anyone had ever seen?"
A hard smile set itself upon Sansa's face, the same look that had seen her men cut through winter's organisational woes with the efficiency she demanded. In her eyes was a hollow, war-ravaged sky.
The softness returned to Sansa's face. "Isn't it better to be bored by obnoxious songs, then?"
"When you put it that way, I suppose it is. How's Jon? Have you heard from him?"
"I think he's more tired than he lets on."
Dany sighed. "He's always more tired than he lets on."
"He needs this more than ever, I think."
"We all do."
~o~
Everything was in order: the feast was planned to the last detail. Every dish was designed to augment what was left of their lean stores. They'd have an infusion of small gifts from spring. There was ample room for all the guests, and any losses they might take had been considered in Sansa's accounting. Plain fare and a plainer celebration meant all the more room for the truest of happy feelings to emerge, unburdened by the weight of spectacle.
Sansa was alone, ready to unburden herself of the weight of her station. A steaming bath rich with petals lay before her. Oils from spring flowers rippled on the candlelit water. They could, for a time, wash away some of what she carried.
There had been far worse times in her life: two weddings that were not of her own choice, a thousand nights spent running from one terror or another, only to have the terror find her again. The great terror of the winter war. It had blotted out her scars with snow, and left her mind keen as a whisper through a black, unbroken night.
Winter had come, a sword that cut her heart in three.
A piece for her.
A piece for Jon, who slashed and stabbed at all that haunted him, the real and the unreal, whose blood ran hot and red over Sansa's and Dany's fingers. In the cold of that terrible night, they had begged every god they knew for the gift of his life.
A piece for Daenerys, as Dany screamed for Rhaegal's life, and Drogon's, and Viserion's. Her dragons falling into blackness, only to rise again, as Dany rose and fought again. As Sansa rose and fought her inner battles and kept Winterfell. As Sansa and Dany rose above their pain and grief and horror to rule their worlds as best they could. They were queens, their crowns of fear and cold crafted of silver and steel. They both knew the cost of their ruling, paid in their silent grief, shared with each other only when alone.
Now the snows were gone. Sansa's blood warmed painfully. Spring came to plant its seed into her heart, if only it were whole.
Winter was gone, and she had cut herself apart.
There was a winter she had known before the deepest cold. She peeled her dress from her skin, worked the straps over her shoulders, and hissed in pain. She touched her fingers to her collarbone. Underneath her pain, something burned softly, even in the chill of early spring that came through the window. Every touch pressed its strange warmth deeper into the pads of her fingers.
"Sansa? Would you walk with me? Viserion needs fresh water-"
Dany's eyes fell upon her scars.
Ice settled in Sansa's stomach and throat, sharp as steel. It stuck to the skin of her arms, and she tamped down her goose-flesh with a savagery. Her fingernails were hounds' teeth.
"You told me, but I never knew." Daenerys' voice was very soft.
"I am the Queen in the North."
Her fingers bent very slightly at the middle joint, curving towards her palms.
"Everyone was told."
Her wrists, in all their delicacy of power, bent to her still-bright longing for blood.
"No one knew."
Lists and sums were cool questions for her mind, demanding nothing from her body.
Dany's eyes brushed soothing fire onto Sansa's skin. "How many battles have you won? One for each, would you say?"
In that deathless time, Lady had risen from within her. Comforting her with sweet warmth. Sansa's nails were wolf claws, and Lady's teeth had torn out his throat. Lady had tasted his blood, and washed her paws, as befitted her elegance.
Lady shook herself free of ice and set the corner of Sansa's mouth to quivering. She bared her belly and her throat, and bared her teeth and claws.
"Yes."
But as Sansa had been burned by a dragon, Dany had been bitten by a wolf.
The markings on Dany's wrist glowed warm on Sansa's cheek.
Dany's palms were soft on Sansa's collarbone, where dragonscales stippled her skin.
Her hands were pale white wings, sweeping sure and gentle across Sansa's scalp.
"You've not enough hair for your victories."
~o~
The tree did not deserve Jon's punishment. There was no crime that warranted such brutality of blade. Longclaw's edge cut deep grooves into the trunk as Jon whirled to meet it, the unseen made solid. Not flesh, but something he could work into tiny pieces in the ice of his anger.
He couldn't be angry at what they had found. The skin where he was marked glowed red hot, and it only spurred him to sweating, to driving the blade of his feeling into trees and soil, where rain turned to silver on his blade.
No, he wasn't angry when he met them at the gates of Winterfell, and they stood a little too closely together as they walked. Not angry when Dany's hand brushed against Sansa's as they moved in sync. Not when they tripped on an uneven bit of the path, and Sansa's hand caught Dany's wrist and rubbed with her thumb, and Dany caught Sansa by the shoulder, her hand slipping over her collarbone, and they laughed. Not angry to see Sansa's hair bound in intricate braids all over her head, tied with Dothraki leather.
No, not angry. It was only that Jon's wrists ached, and so here he was, the trees listening to the sound of his steel as it swept through the air, rain falling upon him as he danced.
~o~
Sansa and Daenerys watched him as he fought. And as the marks on his wrist burned, so did theirs, and their eyes met.
~o~
The echo of spring's growth reverberated through the great chamber, platters piled full of greens, of hearty simple fare. The last stocks of dry grains cooked into something simple and good and filling; gamey meat tasting of home and freedom and peace. Even the wine was sweet to the tongue, burning strong and soft. Daenerys was no winter queen, but she was home. Sansa had softened to her touch by the tenth braid, but the Jon was sharp as the dragonglass glittering in his eyes, warm and dark and still, his every movement quiet and precise. He would soften to their touch.
~o~
Jon rose. Aloneness had left Sansa and Daenerys, its absence sparkling in the red and silver of their voices. His wrists itched and burned, and he grasped hard at the edge of the chair, pressing his fingers into the wood, needing a different kind of pain. He was too close to the fire's edge. But it was two fires that stopped him as he strode down the hall to his chamber, silver and red, and two fires that licked at his heels.
"Jon," Dany said, and her silver flame burned him. He followed her eyes as she took his left hand and as Sansa did the same to his right, and together they exposed what was burning him so. The marks they shared.
The hollowness in his head crackled with sparks. He was melting in their heat.
Jon sat down on his bed, heavy as wood that fed their fire. "You've had the dreams."
He was atop a wall they had built. A wall of spring rain and trees and claws and wings, looking down on a future filled with beautiful, bloodless battles. The ache in his head was the great maw of fear that opened up before him as he looked upon his spring. The gods had spent their blood on branding them with their green fires.
Sansa nodded. "We have."
"And you both-" Jon swallowed. "You have come to an understanding."
"Not without you," Dany said, smiling. "We hoped you would share in that understanding."
~o~
Candlelight fell on a world cool and green. Jon's dreams were not dreams at all. Red and silver were each more than he had dreamed. Sansa's teeth on his shoulder were sharp and sweet, and Dany's mouth at his neck was a dragon's flame.
~o~
The sun rose on a world warm and green.
Gifts shaped from dream to flesh.