12 years, 8 months later
The doors of the room open, and two guards walk in with her slipping in wordlessly between them.
"Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Stormborn, Reborn of the Light, Queen of the Known World and the All the Seas, Sovereign of the Skies, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons."
They recite her titles with the confidence of men who have done it dozens of times before.
"Leave us," she instructs and waits until they are gone.
Tyrion takes a moment to study the woman standing in front of him. She is dressed beautifully in a light violet sleeveless dress, but with flowing pieces of ombre tinted fabric hanging down from her shoulders that turn a dark purple as they flows down the sides of her body. It's as if she could take flight if she wanted to. Her hair is braided once again, but the braids are tighter and more numerous and swirl about the back of her head where they are twisted into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. He guesses by the size of the bun that she must have cut her hair much shorter than she used to keep it. There are no loose strands framing her face and it makes her eyes appear larger and that much more striking. Her skin is golden brown, almost unnaturally so given her complexion, evidence of so many years spent under the burning Essosi sun. Everything about her appears light, a stark contrast to the last memories he has of her.
She, likewise, eyes him up and down. He has aged considerably. His beard is trimmed neatly and his hair is grey. It is difficult to look him straight in the eyes too long without her composure slipping, so she walks past him and scans the room instead.
"So you've returned, the Queen of...everywhere." He says plainly.
"Temporarily; I've little interest in spending any more time here than is absolutely necessary."
"But there were things that required your attention in person?" He asks, though it is more a statement than a question.
She nods and stares at him, her gaze piercing and unrelenting. It is a relief to be speaking of business matters as it allows her to remain detached and deliberate.
"Like deposing Queen Sansa in the North," he ventures.
"Among other things, yes."
She is uneasy when he looks at her in judgment. There is a rage that builds within her when she thinks that he finds himself entitled to be critical of her. But she also feels strangely deferential to him, like a little girl looking up at a long lost father, desperate to believe that he still believes in her. Desperate for recognition of all that she's managed to achieve in spite of the fate that had befallen her.
"You don't approve, I take it?" She asks him, but her tone is dismissive.
"You did it in her ancestral home, in front of all the Northern Lords, with her own brother standing next to you and little warning. Your reasoning may be sound and objectively, the end result is what you should have done, even from my perspective. But there are ways to do a dirty deed and have both parties walk away feeling clean."
"Quite an interesting take, coming from the way you dealt with me? Though I suppose it may not apply given that I didn't walk away at all," she replies, intending to sting him.
"There is a hypocrite in all of us," he admits.
"Understand that I owe you no explanation. But nevertheless, I wish you to know that I chose the manner of delivering the news so that my rule is transparent. I had previously made it perfectly clear to her that she had to make a choice, and she elected not to exercise any of the options provided. As it stands, she remains a Lady, hardly a punishment that fits the crime. And no Lord sitting in that room was left doubting my intentions or thinking me unclear, or worse yet, weak and ruling by proxy."
"Probably not." Tyrion agrees.
"And he is not her brother," she states unnecessarily.
"No, I suppose he is our King now, designated by you, in a land far away. Though I don't quite comprehend the intricacies of how this arrangement is to work given your intention to be here...temporarily," he notes, with a raise of his eyebrows.
"In the same manner that I rule all my kingdoms," she insists.
"I would venture that the other Lords would be quite pleased to learn of the unexpected side benefits," he remarks sarcastically, reminding her why she liked him so desperately in the first place.
A tiny, fleeting smile crosses her lips before she goes on.
"Are we maidens gossiping over our embroidery now?"
He nods slightly, allowing himself to be amused by her.
"You're not together, I take it?" He guesses.
"No," she says without hesitation. "He will rule here as I do in Essos - fairly and firmly but it will be on my behalf. Not beside me, but under me, as were the terms of our agreement when he made the decision to sail across the sea to seek my assistance."
Despite not having laid eyes on each other for over 12 years, they both know that this description, while technically correct, leaves out most of what matters.
"Do you know what I've always thought of unions between men and women that dissolve only to reappear again?" Tyrion asks, but doesn't wait for her response, "they are like books that we have read before - the particulars of the plot may be different, but we already know the ending."
"I suppose I should never step out of my armor then," she says, with the mild playfulness of a person who has had enough time to be able to make jest of the past. But he's not anywhere near that point.
"I meant-"
"I know what you meant," she cuts him off sharply, returning to her earlier serious disposition. "I did not seek out to return here. I was entirely satisfied to never set foot upon these shores and leave you all to live with the consequences of your decisions and wage war against each other as you've done since the beginning of time."
"But he came to you, as I said. I once thought him smart and capable, but it seems more that his successes have come as a result of a recklessness borne of an indifference for his own life."
"Imagine that, this bloodthirsty madwoman you feared enough to have murdered, let him walk away unscathed, and gave to him the Seven Kingdoms."
"On her terms," he supplies.
"Yes, on my terms. And why should it be any different?"
"History is written by the winners," he acknowledges.
"And which are you, Tyrion? A winner, for successfully ridding yourself of me? Or a loser, for making a fatal mistake?"
Her eyes are blazing as she challenges him, but her tone and demeanor remain calm. He had started to wonder when they would get to the crux of the matter, and though he has thought of little else in the last few weeks since he was told that she was on her way here, he feels hopelessly unprepared.
"Was it a mistake?" He challenges her.
"You counselled my lover to have me murdered. Poor counsel, but merely the last of many." She shoots back.
"Would you be the woman today if things had played out differently? Would you have de facto control over the whole known world, even the parts you have no interest in, as you say? Would you have achieved it largely by way of peace? You did get your shining city on the hill in the end, we were just all wrong about the side of the sea where it sat."
"It would be so easy if it were that simple, wouldn't it?"
"Is it not?"
She purses her brows and looks somewhere just beyond him, intently.
"There was a child," she says quietly, then meets his eyes before continuing, "I assume by way of your reaction that he hasn't told you that much."
Tyrion's eyes close and his head tips forward in silent agony. In the brief moment before she speaks again, he begs whatever Gods are willing to listen that it's not true, that he imagined what she just said, that he's not a monster.
"I did not know either. They couldn't save her, it was too late, or she didn't have a purpose as they told me. I came back to the dead only to discover that a part of me that I didn't even know had lived was dead. Clotted blood and tissue, passing out of me, slippery in my hands. She would have been perfect, not like Rhaego..." she trails off.
"No, I did not know," he says softly, "and if you believe nothing I had ever said to you all those years ago, or will ever say to you again, trust this much - if I had known, I never would have considered the course of action that I ultimately took."
He is earnest and his eyes are shiny. She doesn't doubt that he speaks the truth to her. Nevertheless, some things are beyond forgiveness.
"After I found out, I dreamed of her every night, desperate to make sense of it all. Only death can pay for life. You are fortunate that you will never know what it is like to live every day believing that your child paid with their life for you to live. Some part of me still lives simply waiting to join her in the afterlife, wherever that may be, so that I can stop searching every crowd for a face that I've never known."
"Wars are not to be waged or won on the backs of children. Whatever vengeance you came here to exact against me, I deserve it," he says quietly. The sense of regret inside him threatens to overpower him. He doesn't understand how she continued on without bringing her hundred dragons and torching them all alive. He doesn't understand how Jon Snow had managed to look him in the eye and even heed his counsel in the last year, knowing that he played a part in convincing him to essentially kill his own flesh and blood. He wonders if he is cursed to always be in the thick of tragedies involving mothers and their dead babies.
"Maybe we are more alike still than I thought. I thought of nothing but revenge at first. Except that vengeance and justice are two sides of the same coin, and every time you flip it, your odds are about equal as to which side it will land on."
He notes how much more philosophical she is now than she had been in the past. He wonders if it is a result of age and introspection, or if she's replaced him with a better Hand, who had provided her with not just the practical advice about ruling nations, but enlightened her to look beyond what was right in front of her, regardless of how tempting that may be.
"Where does that leave us?" He wonders.
"You told me once that you believed in me. That you feared it made you sound silly or foolish but that you really believed that I could change the world for the better."
"I did," he confirms.
"Perhaps. But what you couldn't believe - you or Varys or Sansa Stark or Jon, none of you - is that a better world was indeed possible. You talked about it, but it was just platitudes. You could not conceive, within the confines of your own minds, how a world would function without a ruler who wasn't brutal, without men conspiring in the shadows, making the trade of information into an art form. Think what you will of me and my actions - but what choice did I have? Varys was attempting to poison me, and as soon as you had an alternative King in mind, you set about removing me and replacing me with someone whom you barely knew, whose only qualification was birthright."
She finds him looking up at her with a kindness she has not seen in too long.
"You know better than anyone that there is more to Jon Snow than birthright," he tells her gently.
"Be that as it may, all the things I had done - freeing slaves, walking through fire, assembling an army, fighting on behalf of the North at great personal cost, none of it mattered. In your mind, I was mad and cruel, because I had to be that way, for you to continue to justify your own actions."
"I believed in you!" He insists, "I had nothing to gain by wishing you mad."
"Ruling the Seven Kingdoms became an impossibility for me the moment that Sansa Stark told you about Jon's lineage. And I was the only one to recognize it as fact. How long do you suppose I would have lasted on on that throne before somebody murdered me to replace me with a man they previously saw as nothing more than a bastard of little consequence? A moon? To your credit, you managed it far sooner."
In all the years she'd been gone, he considered what had happened from many angles, except this one. Could it be true, that he had conceived of a narrative in his head and he made her fit that narrative to justify his own actions? Had she gone mad, or had they needed her mad to make their preference for Jon Snow palatable? In his heart he suspects it may be both, but nevertheless the price was only paid by her and that is what continues to hang heavy in the air between them.
"There have been many people over the course of my life who have held me in utter contempt. Half of my family, for a start. But I don't believe any of them had such a poor impression of me as you now. Why come and speak with me at all?" He wonders.
She takes a long breath, as if to steady herself.
"Because I want to look you in the eye when I tell you that you can no longer be Hand of the new King. I have told him so and now I stand her and tell you the same. I shall not have you killed or exiled, but I cannot, ever again, have you in a position of power, or worse yet, a position of influence. Lest you be tempted to make the wrong choice once more."
Their eyes are trained on each other. She is merciful, to do this, he thinks, and yet he is hurt that he will no longer play a role in her life and ashamed that he ever thought it possible that he could. From the moment he'd met her, it was as if she was the centre of the universe, every other man and woman rotating around her, stepping forward and back to serve and then fade away. He had been foolish to consider himself special, an object of permanence in a world that is fluid.
"Stay in King's Landing, or go to Casterly Rock, or sail the seas if you wish. You will be granted enough coins to give you a life of comfort. But you cannot be whispering the ear of the man whom you already managed to convince once to drive a dagger through my heart."
"I don't suppose I can change your mind?" He tries, but not forcefully.
"You can't," she confirms.
He lets out a long breath, deflating his lungs and sagging his shoulders. He is lucky to walk away with his life, and some would even consider it a stroke of luck to be free of all of one's obligations and duties. He is surprised at his level of disappointment, which he recognizes as being absurd given that for the majority of the last 12 years the mere thought of her had him fearing for his life. Today, he is beyond begging, and he knows it would be pointless. She has chosen her path forward and if nothing else, he respects her certainty.
"My Grace?" He turns to her before reaching for the door, for the first time openly acknowledging her as his ruler.
She turns around to look at him, one last time and the tension between them fades away, now that they have fallen back to their old roles.
"May I offer one last piece of unsolicited advice before we part?"
"A rhetorical question, no doubt," she replies, but allows him to proceed.
He digs his big toe in the dusty floor and draws a horizontal line, stretching across the front of his body. She glances down, then back up at him quizzically. For a brief moment she remembers placing the honorific pin upon his chest, in large part because he saw life as a puzzle that she lacked the patience to solve.
"It is a thin line between a man and a woman. Blurred by duty, and decimated by love," he asserts, erasing it with a swift sweep of his boot, "You are still young and you stand on top of the world. Why not allow yourself to be happy now that happiness is within your reach? By Gods, you deserve it."
She considers for a moment the purpose of laying it all bare before an old friend-turned-foe. The truth is that she'd never managed to replace him, in all these years, and it has resulted in a disconcerting loneliness. She has her maids and her assistants and her military commanders. She now even has Jon Snow, back in her life, peculiarly distant and too familiar all at once. She spends much of her days inside her head, thoughts swirling. It has turned her more careful and cautious, qualities that have made her into a formidable Queen, yet she yearns for a friend's thoughts and counsel.
"I love Jon Snow. I have loved Jon Snow since I was twenty-two years old. I no longer think it a weakness to admit that I will probably always love him. And once, I thought that he loved me too."
It's the first time that she's spoken these words out loud and it is liberating.
"He did."
"If you don't put faith behind it and fight for your beloved when their very life is on the line, then your love is just as empty as the howling wind." She tells him softly, and it leaves him at a loss for words.
"I wish there was some other way," she tells him and he knows that she means it. She takes a few steps forward until she's almost closed the distance between them, pushing down the urge to ask him to stay, to believe in her once again, to be the Hand of a just and righteous Queen. But she knows that moving forward depends on closing doors on relationships that have left gaping wounds too deep to be repair.
"Goodbye, Tyrion Lannister," she says, laying a hand softly upon his shoulder before she walks past him and out of room. He knows that he will never see her again.