The light of the sky was a white that reminded him of home, which would be comforting had he not been in a ship hours North of King's Landing. Slate gray skies should not reach this far south; the sun loomed swollen and dreary on the horizon, beckoning night to relieve its duties.
But in the light there was also hope, albeit founded on a foundation as narrow as a raven's leg.
And hope he did, for the impossible had happened: Cersei Lannister had agreed to aid the cause.
Try as he might, he could not help but find himself thinking of the future now that he knew there might be one. He wanted simple things from this world and this was one of the few things he ever wanted for himself: Jon Snow saw himself at Daenerys Targaryen's side in all future scenarios. The wanting opened so much within him that it had become a sinkhole in his stomach, swallowing all other feelings and thoughts.
"I keep wondering, how many more days until there are no more days?" Jon's voice sounded weary even to his own ears. Tyrion, Hand of the Queen, and his family's former enemy, tilted his chin in contemplation. "How long will this winter last? How can I protect—my people?"
"My people?" Tyrion scoffed. He raised a brow, his eyes twinkling wickedly. "Is our queen the people you speak of?"
Jon said nothing, choosing instead to take note of the appearance of the first star in the sky. The temperature steadily dropped as the sun melted onto the canvas of the sea.
He would say nothing but he found his thoughts often returned with preoccupation to the queen.
In the dwarf's broad hands was a wineskin. He took a long swill of it and held out the drink to the King of the North. Jon declined.
"I once knew a man born entirely incapable of smiling." Tyrion Lannister was a man with an ability to appear out of thin air with a bottle of wine and a story that was either his own passed off as a sage's or one of a sage's he passed off as his own. "Some rare affliction or another, his father quoted the Maesters as having told him, affecting the nerves.
"He was a son of a lord of some small house hoping to rise above its circumstances by marrying into the wealthiest family in the seven kingdoms. I don't recall why my father even entertained the notion." The imp smiled his crooked tooth smile, a wistful glint in his eye. Jon remained silent. "Willas was the suitor's name.
"Cersei and her friends, of course, used to tease him so. 'But Willas, you have such a handsome face.' 'Come laugh with us, Willas.' But he didn't know it at the time and he could not laugh. He merely thought these were the whims of young women taking a liking to him. She had even convinced our father that she was interested in her suitor just to keep him around for sport. It lasted weeks, maybe even a month or two."
"What happened to him?" Jon Snow asked. He knew that Cersei had never married a Lord Willas. He was not one for his histories of the southern kingdoms but this was a knowledge all of Westeros had known. The great Rebellion of Robert Baratheon was one well known in Winterfell.
"Willas and I had become friends, you see," Tyrion examined the beds of his nails rather intently, "because he was a scholarly young man and well read. His family was known for academia rather than militia. As poor a lordling he was, Willas was the rarest breed of man; he was generous."
Tyrion smiled at some memory, the soft kind of smile that hinted at a sadness. He took a drink and settled the wineskin in his belt before he gathered his hands behind his back, returned to watching the waves crash into one another ceaselessly. "Seeing my great passion for the Targaryens and their dragons, he gave me one of the rarest editions of House Targaryen collection of stories from Aegon, his sisters, and their dragons. There were only twenty known copies in all of the known world remaining. Ten at the Citadel.
"Eventually, as she is wont to do, Cersei grew bored of her little games with the young man. Especially when she had found out that he had become her imp brother's friend and had given me a gift. 'I will marry you,' Cersei said to him one day. 'If you can do one thing.'
"Eager as he was to please his father as we are all prone to do at some point in our lives, Willas said excitedly, 'Yes, anything. Whatever you name, I shall try to give you, My Lady.'"
Tyrion's eyes glazed in sadness as he stared at steel blue sea, unseeing and unblinking. The smile had faded from his lips completely. He remained untouched by the sounds of Rhaegal and Drogon swirling through the dusk air, shrieking their might into the heavens.
The Hand of the Queen's dark blond hair fluttered against his forehead in the sea breeze, the only piece of him moving for some time. Small, quiet snowflakes dusted his cheeks and kissed his eyelashes before he blinked.
"'All I ask,' my dear sweet sister said to our Willas, 'is that you smile at me now. Just once. And then I will tell my father I wish to join our houses.' It felt like an eternity of watching him staring at her, trying so hard to change the thing he was born to be, before she began laughing in his face when the sweat began to bead on his brow."
Tyrion scratched at the scar on his nose before continuing. "When my only childhood friend left, shattered, she spread word Willas was a pillow biter and had fallen in love with me, her halfling brother, and showered me with gifts. Father was furious and burned the rare book Willas had given me. Cersei told me I would never know a day of joy so long as she walked upon the face of the world, for I had killed our mother and was a blight upon my family.
"I have two points here. One: sometimes I wonder if you suffer the same nerve malfunction as Willas. You could have a contest with Jorah Mormont."
Jon did curl his upper lip in a ghost of a smile, the black of his beard peppered with red in the sunset's palette. He often found himself not quite sure what to make of the smallest Lannister, whether they were friends or enemies or something in between. Perhaps his only enemy was the man that got between him and nearest open bottle.
"And two," Tyrion said, his voice deadening. This was the tone of Tyrion the Advisor. "Don't ever trust Cersei. She will play games with you until she grows bored and then she will shatter you and anyone that's ever loved you… I have never seen her so vulnerable in the moment she offered something for only an oath in return and you couldn't give that to her. Why? Why couldn't you lie?"
Tyrion's hand went to his belt, toying with the wineskin's cork and possibly the idea of drinking more. Gods, how the man didn't drink himself to an early grave by now, or where he even put all the liquid, Jon had no idea.
Jon could have offered Tyrion the words of Aemon Targaryen, the words that had given the shape to the conversation he had had with Daenerys in the Dragon Pit. Wind and words. He could have told him of how he bent the knee to the Targaryen in this very ship on a different journey. My Queen. The words Jon Snow had spoken hung heavily between Daenerys and himself, as real and vivid as a tapestry painting the things between them that had happened and the things yet to come and the other things, the unspoken ones; they spanned infinitely within his chest, a bright star flaring to life in the barren night sky.
"I chose her," Jon said simply. He felt in that moment they were the truest words that could have escaped from his heart. "I will have no Queen but her."
"And when she will not bear you an heir? Will you have her then?"
The King did what he did best and glowered down at the queen's Hand. His dark eyes gleamed against the darkening sky. "She is the only one. I don't care about any of that. I'm just a bastard wearing a fancy cloak and a title that I had no part of standing on a damned ship trying not to be scared."
Rhaegal was a streak of emerald in the sky as his great leathery wings folded. He came at the sea blurringly fast, talons on his feet outstretched. Before Jon could blink, he had unfurled his wings and caught a pocket of air and shot once more into the sky clutching a small whale colored black and white.
"And here we are," the dwarf said and raised the wineskin in a salute, the other of his hands on his cock, pissing between two rails off the bow, "two bastards in the presence of legends, pissing into the wind just to see which way it will blow. We can only hope Cersei will stay true to her word even if only to protect her legacy."
Jon Snow smiled kindly at the obviously drunken Tyrion. His cape swirled as he made to leave the deck, needing to feel his feet moving beneath him instead of standing still. If he were a ship, he would be in the midst of a maelstrom, unable to anchor, swaying to and fro.
"It is obvious to everyone but you, I think," the Lannister said over several Dothraki passing on their shift change, speaking in their guttural tongue. Jon watched them pass before glancing back at the fellow bastard, tucking his pecker back into his breeches. "You are truly in love with her, Jon Snow. Do you want my advice?"
Without waiting for an answer, Tyrion continued, "Wait until the Night King has been defeated. You risk her every time you rush into danger because she will do anything to keep you safe. Let her conquer the kingdoms before you conquer her heart. You both need to be clearhea-"
A vile spout of vomit over the same rail he had just pissed between cut off the rest of the Lannister's words.
She will do anything to keep you safe.
The bastard king's mind withdrew to a different day. Her outstretched hand reaching for him, so pale and small on the back of the black dragon. How she had looked like he had always imagined the beauties of legends, beyond his wildest imaginings. Tyrion was right, after all. She had risked everything and lost much protecting him.
Against their dark skin and hair, the queen Daenerys emerged from below deck behind the Dothraki, hers was a shock of silver hair and cream skin. She nodded to one of her blood riders and stood in place, as the last light faded from the sky. She will do anything.
Ser Jorah Mormont loomed behind her in his dark garb and made a point to narrow his eyes at Jon before moving to Tyrion's side. Jon noticed how she watched the redeemed knight, always with a hint of caution but mostly admiration. But it wasn't Jorah she had reached for first on the back of Drogon North of the Wall.
The Dothraki chuckled as the knight knelt over and slapped the dwarf's back. They said something that sounded like an insult to the heavens and nodded their heads in respect to their queen before assuming their various positions.
Danaerys locked eyes with Jon and her expression immediately softened. He didn't know what to do with that, or the unspoken questions floating inside the stream of his mind, but he could look at her and drink in the vision of her. His pulse quickened and he could feel his shaky breath escape between his lips.
The way she looked at him… the way her gaze trailed and inched and pulled the blood from his veins and put fire in its stead…
Something about Daenerys's face deepened or intensified, rather. His eyes dropped to her mouth long enough to see her pink tongue dart out and moisten her ample lips. He could imagine the taste of her mouth, stealing her breath with his lips. Her pupils dilated, the black swallowing the sea green, and he could feel that well in himself opening wider and wider. She would consume him whole like fire and he would let her; and he'd do it again and again.
Gods, he needed to walk.
Fuck Tyrion Lannister and his knowing things.
I know I've made this a bit confusing by making these prequel uploaded after you've already read the two chapters after this one. But I have to add in the epic boat scene. There will be a couple more chapters sandwiched and then I will continue the journey at Winterfell once I've completed this arc, rather than uploading an entirely new story.
Thank you for reading and thanks for understanding.