AUTHOR'S NOTE: I tried to stick as best to the scene as I could. There are references here and there which book readers would recognize. I can only hope to have given proper tribute to GRRM and these characters which he had created and we so love.
All characters property of George R.R. Martin
IF THIS IS A DREAM
"Forgive me, sun of my life...forgive me for all I have done and all I must do. I paid the price, my star but it was too high, too high."
Daenerys Targaryen could feel her heart pounding ever faster in her bosom.
She had no idea where she was going and she was afraid.
Not for her own life, but those of her dragons—the only children she would ever have.
Room after room after room she went through, following the calls of her children.
She could scarcely believe how vast the House of the Undying truly was. Then again, she knew that many a sorcery was at hand.
Nay a soul she met even as she raced through the dark halls, daring with all the bravery she had for the warlocks of Qarth to beset her.
The calls grew ever louder, and eventually Dany found herself in a circular room with a great many doors, a stone pedestal jutting from the center.
Listening intently, she followed the calls where they were loudest, and she slowly opened the door from whence they came.
A freezing wind immediately met her and, startled momentarily, her breath hitched in her throat.
What?
Only then did she notice cool, powdery flakes raining down from above, on her hair, on her skin.
Snow?
Her eyes did not deceive her when she looked around an immense room, at once so alien and yet so familiar.
It was enough to make her forget why she was there in the first place.
She looked up and saw the ruined ceiling from which a dead grey sky greeted her and from whence the snow came falling.
When she turned around did Dany notice it.
She walked, transfixed, over the snow covered steps that led to it—a twisted black grotesque of steel blades shaped into a formidable throne.
My...throne, she thought absently.
Wordlessly and slowly she reached out to it...wanting to feel it, this throne of hers...of her father's and all those of her forebears down to the great Aegon the Conqueror himself.
It was there, she suddenly understood.
All she needed to do was take her rightful place.
Dany's heart hammered harder than ever while her fingers inched ever closer to the Iron Throne.
Just as she was about to touch it did the calling of her dragons finally snap her out of her trance.
My children! she chided herself, What am I doing?
Again she followed the call, coming from a wall panel that ostensibly lifted into the air as she approached.
It was a gate of some sort and wind even more bitterly cold than the one in the chamber of the Iron Throne assaulted her.
She found herself momentarily blinded by the stark white landscape and she was so cold...the wind there was but a blizzard; part of her wanted to turn back already but her dragons were calling out to their mother, and she would not let them go.
Shielding her face from the biting snowy gale, she walked through the soft, white landscape and her gaze then spied something totally out of place.
Its pyramidal shape and the patterned horsehides of its make were as familiar to Dany as the house with the red door.
It was something she had never expected to see again, and yet there it was...
A small part of her warned her not to enter the tent; that this was folly and worse, but somehow she understood that she must.
As she lifted open the tent's entrance, her fingers trembled, but had little to do with the cold.
The blizzard had suddenly gone the moment she set foot within the tent.
Warm air that smelled of horses and the great, grass sea and soft, dappled sunlight enveloped her.
And there, within the center of the tent they had shared as man and wife, he sat.
Daenerys stopped where she stood, and all thought of her dragons left her faster than dew drying on a summer morning.
She could not believe it. Drogo was there; alive and as strong as she could ever remember.
He looked up, his onyx eyes met her amethyst ones and her heart raced like a wild stallion within her chest.
"Moon of my life," he said in his people's tongue, that deep voice music to her ears.
She moved toward him as if in a trance, his words igniting a longing so bad Dany thought her heart would burst though her face remained in a state of shock.
And they were not alone.
The khal held a small bundle of life in his mighty arms; the cooing babe looked up at the woman who approached; a woman who shared the infant's silvery blonde hair.
Rhaego! Oh, my Rhaego...my son!
Dany could feel tears of purest joy building within her eyes.
Her son was alive! Her husband was alive!
She wanted to lose herself there and then; to sink into her lost husband's deep onyx eyes, to cradle the beautiful son who was so cruelly taken from her.
To be a wife and a mother.
But a part of her still remembered.
"This is dark magic..." she replied, trembling even as she continued to make her way to Drogo and their son, "Like the magic that took you from me."
She still could not believe it, and a tear slid down her cheek despite herself.
"Took you from me before I could even..." she could not bring herself to speak further.
The aftermath of that fateful blood ritual for which she had paid dearly flashed before her eyes, stabbing like daggers at her soul.
A realization suddenly came to her.
It was one that should have filled her with dread; one that should have sent her reeling away from that place—from him— in fear and revulsion.
Instead, Dany only felt peace, contentment—and if even possible—excitement.
Excitement at the thought of being reunited.
"Maybe I am dead," she smiled wistfully, but without fear nor regret, "and I just don't know it yet."
"Maybe I am with you in the Night Lands," she told her beloved khal.
"Or maybe I refused to enter the Night Lands without you," he smiled as she came closer.
"Maybe I told the Great Stallion to go fuck himself and came back here to wait for you," he growled charmingly.
She could not help but smile back at his irreverent retort.
Without a doubt, this was the Drogo she knew and loved.
The man who took away her fears, her insecurities and replaced them with courage and strength.
The man who took her from a life little above that of a slave and taught her how to become the queen she had been born to be.
If I look back, I am lost...
"That sounds like something you would do."
Oh, if she could only stay...her heart was filled to bursting with joy and the tearful smile she gave him barely gave credence to what she felt inside.
This is a dream...a mummer's farce, the lucid part of her warned, you must go!
But when he offered his other hand, she did not hesitate in taking it.
If I look back, I am lost...
That strong, warm hand gave her gooseflesh and caught the breath right in her throat...it was so real...he was so real...
Dany hoped to never again let go of the hand that assisted her while she knelt down by his side to adore their son.
Rhaego was playfully and obliviously chewing at his blanket while his mother reached out to stroke his smooth, rosy cheeks and his father gently cradled him.
My son...sweetling, how I have missed you...
"Maybe this is a dream...your dream, my dream. I do not know," he continued in that growling baritone that made her heart ache and look up onto his face, "These are questions for wise men with skinny arms."
She caught a glimpse of her own amethyst eyes, pearly with tears, losing herself in the deep black pools that were her husband's.
She never understood how such fierce eyes, the last sight of a countless many, could smolder with such passion and longing.
And that night, years ago it seemed to her, came rushing back as if it were only yesterday...
"This night we must go outside, my Lord," she told him, and beneath the shadow of the Mother of Mountains, the smiling moon and a sky as clear and blue as the Womb of the World, they had made love as equals for the first time.
"You are the moon of my life," he whispered while her heart sang, "That is all I know...and all I need to know."
On a bed of grass with the entire world to see them did they make their son...her soft ivory flesh clashing wonderfully with his own strong copper skin...
He had taken her chin gently in his strong fingers, and she reached out to clasp her own hand with his.
His was as fresh as it had ever been...
His fingers gave her pleasure second only to his manhood which she ridden the way he rode his stallion...her touch running over his sweaty, muscled flesh, his long flowing hair...wanting him more than anything else in the world.
He gave her love and strength and for that she had wanted to give something back in return.
"And if this is a dream..." his voice cracked a bit, and she remembered the culmination of their passion.
Their hearts, bodies and souls singing out as one for the wide world to hear...and his own voice crying out her name 'Daenerys', for the first time.
"... I will kill the man who tries to wake me."
She opened her eyes and saw that his own were glazed with tears of fiercest love and longing, his lips slightly parted, the breath heaving in his chest...
She would have given everything to feel his lips on hers again...
A dream...this is a dream... her reason feebly called, your children need you!
But my child...my son is here! her own thoughts rebutted.
And look down upon him she did, at the cooing infant who regarded her with curious doe-like eyes...
And then her reason, in its desperation, spoke in the maegi's voice to poison her fantasy...
"Twisted," the old woman's voice rang as if she had never been burnt to ashes in the pyre of her husband's, "I drew him out myself. He was scaled like a lizard..."
But the child before her was pink and soft and beautiful...
"...blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like the wings of a bat..."
How could her son be a monster?
"...when I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the bone and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of corruption..."
The last words were branded onto her memory and they made bile crawl up her throat while shards of pain stabbed at her soul.
"...he had been dead for many years..."
And her reason finally and bitterly won out.
Her son was dead.
Her husband was dead.
All of this...this beautiful, perfect vision...was a dream meant to imprison her.
How best to keep a prisoner than to keep her in chains she would never want to let go of?
To hammer the point home, her thoughts spoke those damning words.
"Look to your khal," Mirri Maz Duur's voice taunted, "and see what life is worth when all the rest is gone."
She no longer heard her dragons calling, but she understood what she had to do.
Just as it had been when she had grasped that cushion with trembling hands...
"Remember my sun and stars...remember and come back to me..." she had said, and the darkness that took him had denied her, "Never, never, never..."
Just as it had been when she had pressed it down on the shell that was once her sun-and-stars.
If I look back, I am lost...
So she closed her eyes, not daring to look him in the eye, while his hand once again drew her close and pressed her forehead on his.
Forgive me, my sun-and-stars...
She had to touch him again, one last time, running her fingers through his beard...
Dany knew what to say, and the words tasted like ashes on her tongue.
"Until the sun rises in the west and sets in the east...," she swallowed.
"Until the rivers run dry..."
She could not resist to look again into his eyes, hers pained and his in confusion.
"...and the mountains blow in the wind like leaves..."
She finished in tears and her hands tracing the line of his strong jaw.
He sat in stunned silence as she felt her other hand tugged and suckled on by the spectre of her son...
Goodbye, sweetling...
It was agony to part her fingers from her son's soft touch.
If I look back, I am lost...
Daenerys Targaryen then rose with a heavy heart, no longer daring to even think of them, much less behold them with her own eyes, lest she lose herself for good.
Only the sound of her footsteps accompanied her as she strode toward the entrance...away from that place, away from her ghosts, and out into the cold.