A/N: Welcome to this strange little fic. I wrote this primarily for my own benefit. I can't say exactly where it came from, but I suspect it has to do with a friend who passed away. While feedback of any kind is not anticipated or expected, if anyone else can follow this and derive some enjoyment from it, that is fine too. A few hints: it is set in a vague post-series world where Dany is Queen. Dany, Jon, and Tyrion form a queer poly family in this fic- the happiest ending I can imagine for them. You can guess at other characters' situations from how they are mentioned, but this fic is not concerned with them, it maintains a very tight focus on the people who, when they're not in King's Landing, live in a small cottage in the woods... a house with a red door.
i.Ténèbres
"there is light in the darkness, if one can suffer the darkness."
Bitterly cold and weary, Jon walked in the front door. Daenerys wasn't there-she was in the capital—but Tyrion should be home. As he cracked open the door he could smell the fire burning in the hearth but the room was dark, a contrast to the brilliant heavy fog outside.
"Hello," he said to the gloom inside, shaking snow off his cloak.
To the left, was a partition that divided the bedchamber from the kitchen in the little cottage, and Jon turned left toward the fire, toward the bed where Tyrion was probably sleeping, although it was only late afternoon. The dragons were stirring outside. He could hear their snuffling and grumbling as they moved closer to the cottage hearth.
Jon pulled his boots off and reached out a hand to the bed, finding Tyrion. With a quick easy movement, Jon pulled aside the covers and laid down next to him.
"Well," said Tyrion quietly, beside him. "Has the Wall fallen?"
"No," said Jon, feeling an ache settle into his bones now that he was home, and warm, again. It was almost pleasant.
"I thought it must have, because otherwise you'd never come home."
Jon turned to his lover. "Perhaps it fell but I wanted to come home."
Tyrion's face was barely visible in the dim light, but Jon make out the distended slope of his forehead, the fall of lank hair. Pulling himself closer, he leaned over and kissed Tyrion on the mouth.
Tyrion made a low sound in his throat and moved closer to Jon, twining his dark curls around his fingers. Jon closed his eyes and put his head on his lover's chest.
It was so much easier now, than it was in the old days, the days before they trusted each other. In the beginning the three of them circled each other like cats, each desiring something from the other two without even knowing what that was. He and Daenerys had been the first to acknowledge it— Jon felt a twitch below his belly thinking of his and Dany's first encounter, the return of an insane passion he remembered only dimly, from a few moments with Ygritte.
He wished Dany was here now, in bed with them where she belonged. They were not complete if one of them was missing.
Many years ago he'd seen Tyrion again, for the first time since he was a boy, and though he loved Daenerys, the moment he heard that old familiar laughter in the great hall, he'd been lost. Resting his head against Tyrion's chest, hearing his breath rise and fall, Jon felt a rush of gratitude.
Jon woke up what felt like hours later, but it could have been as little time as a few minutes. Tyrion was speaking into his ears, a warm low voice, "You may want to move over. Our wife is coming home."
Then Jon felt more awake. "Dany? But isn't she in the capital?"
"She was due to come home a fortnight after you returned. But you overstayed your welcome at the Wall," said Tyrion, his tone like a maester's, chastising.
Sure enough, not long afterward someone opened the red door to the cottage and stood in the doorway with snow melting in her cloak, much as he had done. It was later now, and the last of the sunset cast a faint red shadow on her silvery hair. Jon felt his throat grow dry—it had been half a year since he'd seen her—but he didn't move to get up and greet her, nor did Tyrion.
It was their custom. In this cottage it was dark and warm and close and everyone spoke softly and moved slowly, never raising their voices. They'd been through three wars, all of them, and any of them was like to startle at the slightest break in the quiet of the Northern wood.
Dany took off her cloak and laid it on the hook next to Jon's. Her hair was braided, messy, falling over her shoulders. She took each of their faces in her hands and kissed them, before climbing into bed as well, the firelight outlining her face and reflecting in her eyes.
As she settled in opposite Jon, with Tyrion between them, she reached out her hand and laced her fingers with Jon's.
Jon tilted his head and met her gaze, and there was warmth there, as real as the flames in the hearth, and Jon smiled and she smiled back.
Once again the Wall had taken the better part of Jon. Tyrion knew it from the heavy way Jon took off his cloak, as if lifting an enormous weight. He only half shook off the snowflakes from his clothes; when he slipped into bed with Tyrion it reminded him forcibly of Ghost, the dog surely on the prowl just outside, the way he brought the cold and damp into their bed so unconsciously, like an animal running to his master. Tyrion didn't mind, especially not when Jon kissed him.
Every once in a while Jon kissed him like this, like Tyrion was a fair young maid rather than a fat, hideous little man of forty five. But Jon settled in beside him and buried his face in Tyrion's chest, not wanting to talk. Tyrion stayed silent. He'd learned silence now, for the house with the red door had taught it to him. That, and the tremors, and the pain in his ailing body, sharp as steel on bone.
But none of that mattered when Jon's dark hair flowed like water through Tyrion's fingers. The boy was asleep in minutes, and Tyrion let him, humming Seasons of my Love softly under his breath, watching the fire flicker.
"Our wife is coming home," he reminded Jon after a while. An hour had passed, the fire was dying, and the winter sun was setting wanly outside. The boy had stayed longer at the Wall than Tyrion would have liked, but now was not the time to mention it.
Our wife.
Those words were true enough, though they'd never had a fasting ceremony under the old gods or the new. Their union was blessed by no one. Yet they belonged to each other. What a surprise it had been.
He doubted them for a long time, but Dany and Jon were kind—no, more than that, what they'd done was beyond mere kindness—and they used words like love when they spoke to him. And so there was another cottage, here at the end of his life. And this one, his father could never take from him.
Daenerys Stormborn was at the door, draped in a long crimson cloak. She was older now, a woman and not a girl, her hips rounder and her face set with the authority of a queen. She'd ruled for well over a decade now, though she'd produced no heir and married no king.
She was quite a woman.
And yet, when she approached the bed there was a hint of her weariness too.
"Blood of my blood," she murmured. Quietly, the cottage was always quiet.
It was a Dothraki saying, fit for a ruler claiming her dearest subjects. As she cupped his jaw for a kiss, Tyrion liked being among her subjects. She greeted Jon the same way, before settling in beside him like an animal burrowing.
That was what they all were, was it not? The cottage was dark as a warren.
But Tyrion preferred it that way.
Jon and Tyrion were half-asleep when she came home. She saw them even in the darkness that met her when she pushed open the red door—which she'd painted, a remembrance of what had been stolen from her, and was now restored after so many years.
Her heart swelled painfully in her chest, and she stood in the doorway for a moment, feeling the chill at back become more and more impotent. She could tell so much from their postures. Jon was exhausted, as always, and Tyrion, as always, in pain.
For her part, she was half-sick with the lies and treachery of King's Landing, and the sight of them lying there, curled up like young dragons in that simple cottage house, was good to see.
Half a lifetime ago—and yet, not long ago at all—Dany didn't know these men. Her world was bound up in Jorah and Viserys and Ser Barristan and Missandei.
Not they were all dead but one, and the last was wed and occupied with many children.
For a long time there had been no one to replace them, however much she pined for the Stark bastard, as he was called, who was so slender and dark. Eventually she found he pined for her as well. His family, hungry as any other in the Seven Kingdoms, told him to wed the Queen, and he'd refused. But something about their tie to one another had always felt flimsy and forced.
She'd watched helplessly as Jon looked at her Hand instead of her. Tyrion in those days had been treacherous as a snake, a man she'd never trusted. Infamously ugly as well. But Jon looked at him like he was the sun and stars.
Slowly Dany came to know Tyrion in a different way. Over many glasses of wine, he told her of the exact way he killed his father. She told him of her brother and his golden crown, while he nodded gravely.
"Would you like to be married?" she'd asked him then, hoping the answer would be yes. Anything to get him away from Jon.
"More than anything," he said, looking away. "But there are no women that I know who would… Accept that arrangement."
She'd bedded him on impulse that night. How strange it had been, to watch this man she'd so greatly feared, fall apart in her hands.
Now she loved him almost as she loved Jon.
"Blood of my blood," she whispered as she settled in beside them.
Jon looked up at her and smiled faintly, a silhouette ringed in firelight. For once, he was not thinking about the Wall and its preparations and their Enemy, mostly beaten but still occasionally alive, on the other side. He was so brave, her nephew. Her lover.
She smiled back at him, squeezing his hand.
Tyrion woke in the middle of the night, sometimes. Force of lifelong habit, something he'd never been able to break. It was a surprise each time to wake up in that dim warm room and turn toward those young (younger), unblemished bodies beside him and find they'd graced him—him- with their presence. Daenerys woke in the night sometimes too.
He knew she was awake because her hand (hot, her skin seemed to conceal a hidden fire) would find him and pin him to the mattress. Softly, but still firm.
She hated when he tossed and turned.
He slept more deeply now.
Daenerys lost track of the days she spent at the house with the red door. Soon it was early spring, and the snows began to melt.
Sometimes Jon came with her, and they balanced on the sinking sand of the riverbanks like children, their cheeks glowing pink, Ghost trailing alongside her.
Once or twice when they reached the river she slipped off her dress and waded into the water. Snow-fed, the river was cold, but the pain that met her was bearable because it meant she could tease Jon.
But Jon was a son of the North, and respected the cold. No matter how pure and clean she looked in the sunlight, rising from the river, he would never follow her.
But he could steal her clothes, faster than she could swim back to the river bank.
She chased him and tackled him and they ended up in a sticky mess of sand and tangled limbs, but soon kissing roughly with tongues and teeth.
When they returned home, they stood in the doorway with their boots on and kissed some more, their lips swelling like bee stings, tasting of salt. When Tyrion locked them out as a jape, Dany knocked on the window pane.
Eventually he relented, waddling back to the doorway and making them beg one last time before he swung the door open and they traipsed directly to the bath, where Jon fucked her with an urgency that had been building since the river. Washed clean, they fucked again while toweling off, him taking her from behind, the only man who'd done so since Drogo, the only one she would allow to use her this way.
With Jon she was never ashamed of anything.
Once sated they settled into bed, where Tyrion lived.
Tyrion could not often join their games anymore but he did hold both of them very near to him, and Jon and Dany both laid their heads on his chest and listened to his rattled breathing. Dany looked up and met his black-and-green gaze, and it was filled with both irony and deep affection.
All three of them were naked and Dany realized in that moment she did not quite know where she ended, and Tyrion began, and Tyrion ended, and Jon began.
"I love you," she said to the air, but it might have been either of them who heard it.
"Missandei has been a fair judge of Meereen."
Dany was sitting outside soon after returning to the house with the red door. Tyrion was with her, and they were sitting in the garden, and she was worrying a flower like a young girl; its petals were wilting in her fingers.
Tyrion watched her passively.
"You want to leave her in power," he said.
Reading between the lines as always.
Dany sighed, looking down at the flower in her hands. Missandei had managed her overseas kingdoms since Dany had come to Westeros, a fact which set many tongues to wag in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros— for there were those who would have the world believe the Silver Queen, an impotent woman, could not secure her own rule across so many kingdoms.
The truth was simpler and more complicated: it did leave the Seven Kingdoms too open for a revolt if she flew to Meereen every season, but she did wonder whether Essos was hers in name only, though she trusted Missandei.
But she missed her old friend too, as well as the Great Grass Sea, the Pyramids of Meereen, and living in a place where there wasn't endless winter. They were now thawing from her second Westerosi winter. She was growing older now, and she missed the sun.
"I do," she said. "But I want to visit her."
"Then visit her," Tyrion said. Still watching her intently, he paused for a moment and then made an offer that made her chest constrict. "I can go to the capital in your stead."
And when I returned, you'd be dead.
Dany felt a raw edge in her throat. If the politics in the capital didn't take him, his illness would.
Although he refused to be treated by a maester, she and Jon knew he was ill. It had come on late last summer, after she stripped him of his title as Hand, as if that had been all that sustained him. Not a fortnight later he began to sleep like the dead. Then there were the other signs, his skin yellowed like old wood, he grew plump, he was sick but he tried to hide it.
"I have been Hand of the King twice, and yours once before," Tyrion prompted her now.
Dany tossed the flower back into the bush it came from.
"You wouldn't even make it to King's Landing," she said.
Tyrion leaned back, and smiled, a sad, rueful smile. "I see my Queen has little confidence in me."
"I have confidence in you," she said, and she was surprised at how hard it was to force words out of her throat. "But that city, it eats people, even the strongest, and you…"
"Are not at your strongest." Tyrion finished for her.
Dany's vision began to blur with tears but she did not move toward him.
"I see," Tyrion said. "That is likely wise."
He sighed. "When I was the Master of Coin, I remember a fierce warrior from Dorne saying much the same about my own father… Even the strongest do not live forever."
Dany sat down beside him. "I am afraid, Tyrion," she said slowly.
"Of what?"
"I am afraid that I will leave for Meereen, and when I return… I cannot leave you."
She saw him as if for the first time. He was still smiling but it was that kind of sublime and terrible smile he sometimes had now, shot through with immense pain.
She buried her head in his shoulder and wrapped her arms around him, and while his body was soft there were hard knots in his shoulders and knees and when she touched him he shifted away as though she was hurting him.
He wanted to comfort her, as well, the way he did so often in her early days of ruling, the nights they never spoke of, after Jorah died.
It had taken her almost six years to return the care he'd given, and she regretted every minute of the delay, so sure she'd been in those days that he'd wanted to control her, like his father had done to hers. So sure had she been that he was ugly inside as well as out.
She held him and touched his hair, hoping he would understand what she was trying to say.
He turned her face to his, and kissed her, his hands gentle in her hair.
"You have given me so much," he said lightly, when they pulled away. "More than I deserved."
But it was not a question of deserving, not for any of them. The war had ruined them all, and Daenerys herself had cut ties with nearly every former ally, losing Jorah and Ser Barristan, drifting away from Missandei and even Irri and Jhiqui. Were it not for Jon and Tyrion, she would have found herself alone these last long years. Alone, though high above them all, surrounded by false friends who sought her friendship for their own ends, and courtiers who flattered to their own gain.
But Jon had been her bulwark, nearly a husband, like Drogo.
And Tyrion was almost as much father as lover.
Like Jorah should have been.
For all the gods had taken away, they'd given freely. One man to replace Drogo, and another man still to replace Jorah.
But no child had ever come to replace the babe she'd lost.
The three of them—Jon and Tyrion and Dany—were peculiarly alone in the world, cast out or set apart from their families, and all childless. The bitterness of that still stung her. Alone of the three of them, Jon was the only one who had a real chance to wed and have children. But for some reason, he'd chosen to stay.
Wrapped around Tyrion, her head on his shoulder, she could almost fool herself that theirs was a true family, that they had hope yet.
"He offered to go to the capital in my stead," Dany said.
It was late, and Tyrion was asleep. She and Jon were sitting at the dinner table over half-glasses of wine and picked-at roast pheasant.
"He can't," Jon said.
Dany pushed her fork around the plate idly. She did not want to ask the next question but she'd come to the conclusion it was the only one she could ask.
"I know," she said. "Will you go then?"
Jon looked at her incredulously. "So you can go to Meereen and I can go to King's Landing? You know I am no politician. Send my sister instead."
I do not trust your sister, Dany thought, but kept it from reaching her lips. Sansa Stark was an able ruler in the north but she was too close to the treacherous Tyrells. Dany feared what sending Lady Sansa south might bring.
"And besides," Jon added, his voice dropping. "I'm not leaving him."
Dany understood. Often she would prefer to never leave the house with the red door, herself. But she and Jon were relatively young and healthy, and they had a duty: seven kingdoms to rule here, and kingdoms across the narrow sea beside.
Jon looked like he was fighting back something he wanted to say. Dany leaned forward, covering her hand with his.
"I talked to Sam," Jon said.
Sam was one of Jon's friends, and a brilliant maester.
"He says that Tyrion is dying."
Dany closed her eyes. Felt the weight of those words wash over her, crushing as a wave.
Of course she knew already.
He knew it, too, if she knew him. Once he had longed for the intrigue of court, and stolen away to Winterfort whenever he could find an excuse to do so. But for the past year he stayed at home.
He didn't want anyone to see him. How he had deteriorated. And even now he was asleep in their bed, sleeping away the pain that plagued him, wearing bruised and yellow skin.
Dany put her head in her hands.
When she opened her eyes she saw Jon's expression, it was shattered as she felt.
"What did he say the affliction was?"
"He doesn't know for sure, since he hasn't examined him in person," Jon said, slumping forward under the weight of his words. "But he said that what I described… that he sees it in men who drink. Before they die."
Dany smiled bitterly. Yes, Tyrion drank. He always had, less after building the house with the red door, less once he lived with Dany and Jon, but more—far more—when he had been Hand.
"Please don't tell him," Jon pleaded with her.
Dany let Jon draw her closer to him, and for a long time they sat the kitchen table, holding each other, looking out at the bedroom like it was an hourglass, sand slipping ever faster.
He was dying. Tyrion knew this. First there was the urge to sleep, which had been so overwhelming when it first set in. It was like he was trying to make up for years of sleeplessness.
Then there was the itching and the bruising. He'd never been beautiful to begin with, so when his skin was suddenly colorful as tapestry, all yellow and blue, and full of strange little nicks, it was just another affliction he'd suffered, another mark added to that column.
Then came the pain.
Oh, the pain had been the worst. It had stolen the world out from under him. His joints ached and his belly ached and his scars from Blackwater were fresh as though those blows had occurred yesterday.
He stopped having sex and even drinking wine, as penance, but something cold and foul was creeping into him, and as soundly as he slept, he still woke up gasping in the middle of the night sometimes, realizing with terrible, sudden clarity he could not stop whatever this was.
The Stranger was coming for him.
He did not want to alarm Jon or Dany, so he politely declined each of their offers to take him to a maester, for he knew what the maesters would say.
And truly, he'd lived all he could. Not in the ways he'd anticipated perhaps, but lived anyway. Never wed to a woman who truly loved him, with no children and no lands, he had nothing to show for the extraordinary adventure life had invited him to almost five decades ago. But, all the same, he had saved a city and ruled kingdoms in Essos and Westeros, he'd sat the Iron Throne, played the game and lost it, and sometimes—rarely—won it, and shook his fist at the Father himself. He'd stood by as every member of his family died.
Kinslayer, kingslayer, murderer, and turncloak, he was the least and the last of the lions, and after all that living, more than once he'd considered turning the crossbow on himself.
But there was Jon, and Jon had saved him. Dany as well, though he had saved her in return.
That night, after his talk with Dany in the garden, he forced himself to stay awake as Jon and Dany discussed Meereen. Dany proposed that Jon take her place in King's Landing. Jon countered, offering Sansa in his place.
"I don't want to leave him," Tyrion overheard, and he knew instantly that whatever else it was about, this was a conversation about him.
Eavesdroppers seldom hear good of themselves, he thought.
But he couldn't help himself.
"I talked to Sam," Jon was saying.
The maester.
"Tyrion is dying."
A chill stole over him.
It was one thing to think it in the privacy of his mind, it was another to hear it out loud in Jon's voice.
"What is the affliction?" Dany asked.
"He sees it in men who drink."
Jon's voice was quiet, but not so quiet that Tyrion couldn't hear the accusation in those words.
He felt a stirring of anger in his chest. Says the boy whose family is still alive. If you had a life like mine, you would drink as well.
Then, with the uncomfortable feeling that accompanied seeing something he wasn't supposed to see, he watched through the shadowy light as Dany and Jon held each other.
Both beautiful, they belonged together more than he had ever belonged to either of them, no matter how much they insisted otherwise, and they would go on after his death, carrying on the strange family they had built.
Suddenly Tyrion couldn't stand watching anymore. Rising from bed, he waddled into the kitchen.
When they saw him, Jon and Dany looked startled and ashamed.
"Send Sansa," he told them. "The Tyrells won't make trouble for you." His voice was soft and hoarse it almost couldn't reach them. "They should remember the protection of the Night's Watch and how it saved their precious harvest last fall. So they will not plot."
"Tyrion—"
"Please don't."
It was late and he didn't want their pity, he only wanted to feel them in bed beside him.
"I love you both more than I can say," Tyrion said. "But what you were proposing was foolish. You must go to Meereen and cement your rule, or in a generation you shall see Missandei's children— who have little cause to share their mother's affection for you— rule in your stead."
He looked to Jon. "I was once married to Lady Sansa, and I doubt, as you do, that she would play at the game and risk war, no matter how sweetly the Tyrells flatter her."
"Please," he asked. "Come to bed."
Shocked into silence, they followed him.
Even with both of them in bed with him, Tyrion laid awake for a while still. Jon was awake too, his dark eyes trained on Tyrion.
"Are you all right?" Jon asked.
"No," Tyrion whispered back, very quietly, almost a breath.
"But I am ready."
