At Dragonstone, Daenerys anxiously gazed out the floor length windows of the map room, glancing frequently at her dragons below. She could barely take her eyes off of Drogon and Viserion, who were equally disturbed. For hours they had been standing sentinel at the cliff edge below, braying and pacing, ever since Rhaegal had flown off without them. Something was wrong, and Daenerys felt it, too. Tyrion stood by the fire, long ago having abandoned any attempt to assuage her.
Finally, she let out her breath as she spied the missing dragon flying in from the distance. Daenerys worried that he seemed to be lumbering in awkwardly, but pushed that thought aside, grateful just to see him back in one piece. She rushed outside, Tyrion trailing behind her.
She swept onto the wide green expanse in front of the castle to stand between Drogon and Viserion, and Tyrion stayed closer than she expected, clearly concerned at her distress. As Rhaegal approached, her eyes went wide as she noticed the reason for his encumbrance - Jon Snow barely clinging to his back.
For a moment, Daenerys was filled with rage and jealousy, as Rhaegal landed before them, and gently deposited Jon on the grass. At first she had eyes only for Rhaegal, but once she confirmed he was largely unharmed, she noticed that Jon seemed to rouse to consciousness just in time to land on his feet. Battle worn and swaying, he was pallid from blood loss, a large gash evident on his shoulder. The last thing that Daenerys could have anticipated was Jon's arrival thus, without the rest of the raiding party that he had gone north with. Only her shock kept her silent.
Jon looked up and seemed to notice his surroundings for the first time, as well and Daenerys and Tyrion standing before him. He gave them a wry look, and slurred, "I found your dragon", before collapsing to his knees. Daenerys and Tyrion rushed forward to catch him under his arms, as he succumbed fully to the darkness.
A few hours earlier, Jon had lost all hope for survival. He had stood almost knee deep in the sea of frozen white that surrounded him on all sides, mechanically hacking away at the onslaught of weapons and limbs hurling at him from all directions. Occasionally he encountered a fox or a bird, or some other unrecognizable animal, eyes the same sparkling unearthly blue as the decomposing once-human bodies that attacked him. He cut them down, too.
He prayed that his companions had made it back to The Wall. Only he and a few brave souls had traveled from Eastwatch by the Sea beyond the safety of The Wall to raid the army of undead. Jon was still not sure how they had succeeded in sneaking up on edge of the frozen, silent troupes. Once they came within sight of the army, the whole mass of wights came to life, with the singular purpose of killing them. Only the raiding party's position at the mouth of a narrow path had given them any hope of outrunning them.
Jon had been holding off the never-ending waves of wights at the bottlenecked ravine between two cliffs, allowing most of his party to escape with one of the monstrous creatures tied up in a sack. He had lost track long ago of who had survived the mad chase. Jon and Ser Berrick Dondarrion, who had also stayed behind, were a lethal combination. Ser Berrick's flaming sword distracted the wights from their purpose, allowing Jon to cut them to burning pieces that would not rise again.
Now, he and Ser Berrick were tiring, and the pace of their counterattack was slowing. They could not keep the zombies from getting past them, some hurling past them to follow the figures that had disappeared into the swirling snow, some staying to surround the two fighting figures. Now, the burning undead corpses were getting closer, singeing his clothes and face, and the attacks were occasionally landing to cut through his thick winter clothes. The sheer cold and terror combined to keep him from feeling anything, but he knew that it was too late now to run. Soon his attacks would get even slower, the snarling unseeing faces would engulf him and tear him limb from limb, and those terrifying blue eyes would be the last thing he saw.
Just as Jon was contemplating a resignation to the inevitable, he heard a squawking roar from above, louder than any thousand birds, more ferocious than a bear. He could not risk looking away from the fight, but his heart surged as he saw what he could have only dreamed of - one of Daenerys's dragons swooping in to join the fight. The magnificent beast paused to flap his massive wings in place just in front of where he and Ser Berrick were fighting, breathing a column of fire onto the oncoming wights. Jon didn't know why the dragon had known to come to their aid, or how he knew that this was the one she called Rhaegal, but it was enough to jolt him out of his trance.
The two sword fighters doubled their efforts, momentarily bolstered by their new ally. They cut through the wights that surrounded them, but as the dragon looped around to swing down for another pass, the path cleared by Rhaegal had already filled with more wights, and the first of them had reached Jon and Ser Berrick. The undead did not fear the fire that consumed them, and so they continued to barrel forward, many perishing to clear the way for those rushed past from behind. Rhaegal rained fire again, but the look in Ser Berrick's eyes confirmed for Jon that the dragon's help would not be a total reprieve. They could both try to run, but they would likely not make it, tired as they were from the fight.
"Run!", yelled Ser Berrick, as he continued to mow down wights around him, "you must go now!"
Jon hesitated, unwillingly to let his companion die for him, but Ser Berrick was determined. "The Lord of Light showed me I would die here in this battle. Now I know it was to save you."
Jon did not accept this line of reasoning, as in his experience, the Lord of Light was not very clear in his intentions, but before he could respond, Ser Berrick grabbed Jon and shoved him away violently.
Jon kept his feet, but outside the protection of the arc of the knight's burning sword, Jon was twice as vulnerable to the wights, who he knew would be slowed but not stopped by his sword. Cutting his way back to Ser Berrick seemed fruitless if the knight was determined to push his away. And so, given no better choice, Jon sheathed his sword and ran for his life.
Jon did not stop to see that even the combined efforts of Ser Berrick and Rhaegal did not stop some wights from slipping through to follow in his trail. Even as Jon raced as quickly as he could, they were gaining on him with their inhuman speed and determination. He was surprised to see Rhaegal sweep around to fly right at him, the next blaze barely missing him as it roared hotly past him, and the ground shaking as the dragon landed beside him. Now protected by the wall of fire behind him, Jon stopped to gasp in a breath, and turned to see the wights flooding over and through the ravine toward him. With that, he took hold of Rhaegal's great spines and launched himself onto the safety of the great dragon's back. Jon lost his breath again as Rhaegal soared upward, and the world went to black as he faded to unconsciousness.
Back at Dragonstone, Dany entered Jon's chamber and with a nod sent away the servant who was just finishing a redressing of Jon's larger wounds. The gash on his should had been stitched up, but with rest and nourishment, Jon had much recovered already, and would soon be wanting to travel again. She sat at a chair that had been left by his head. He did not know that she had sat there for hours while he was still unconscious, when they had not known if he would wake again.
Jon looked up at her, and answered the first question he imagined she would have. "I don't know how it happened."
"I know," she replied in soothing tones. A raven had come not long after Jon's arrival, from Eastwatch by the Sea to where the rest of the raiding party had retreated. They had reported the overall success of their mad mission, but that Jon and two others in their party had been lost, fighting to protect their escape. Daenerys had come to accept that if Jon had known some magic to call her dragon to him, he would have done so much sooner into the raid, protecting his companions as soon as he could.
"Did they make it?", Jon asked, ascertaining that Daenerys must have news of the raid.
"They did," she replied, "but, they are not sure if Ser Jorah will survive." Tears filled Daenerys's eyes and threatened to spill over. Jon was not the only warrior to barely escape with his life.
"I'm sorry. I know you care for him a great deal," Jon reached out to pat her hand sympathetically, and Daenerys was not surprised that he would be trying to comfort her, even weak and as in need of care himself as he was.
"He was my most trusted friend, my only friend in the world for a long time," she clarified. Looking down at the brave if battery soldier before her with admiration, she knew did not want him to mistake her feelings toward the older knight.
Daenerys looked at him meaningfully, "I can't stand to lose anyone I care for today, Jon Snow."