It seems (mostly) agreed that dragons are genderfluid or just no particular gender, so I've gone with that.
In a way, Tyrion Lannister believed that he had always been waiting for a dragon. They were his oldest dream- or perhaps, put better, his youngest dream. The one that waited above his crib, above the stone reaches of Casterly Rock, above the imagination of the child that lived there. The youngest dreams, forged when the imagination can be forged like melting iron, before it freezes into the steely mind of an adult, are usually the strongest. The only dreams, sometimes. A person can spend their entire life dreaming, every night without fail, and yet only truly dream once- that is the kind of dream that will remain, like a scar or a burn on the cheek. The kind that a person will live their entire existence in perpetual worship of.
This was not true for the 'imp', however. The multitude that loathed him would say that he is far too small to dream of something as enormous as a dragon, but the multitude that loathed him had rarely tried to know him. If they did, they would see that Tyrion's mind could encompass far greater things. Perhaps that was his only similarity to the creatures- their wings sought far beyond the clouds, far beyond kingdoms and the puny men inhabiting those kingdoms, but his thoughts could well have sought further. At that young age, he could see himself, beyond the far beyond of those very same clouds, those very same kingdoms, and he could scarcely believe that he was seeing himself there. All of a sudden, Tywin Lannister, Cersei Lannister and a thousand Lannisters before them had been very small, and he, Tyrion Lannister, had been very grand. Conquering the Seven Kingdoms on Balerion the Black Dread, repopulating Valyria and many other impossibilities beside had been close and comfortable on the extinct wings of his childhood's dragons.
When childhood left him, the extinct wings became all the more extinct, weighed down by a dose of skepticism far too strong for dreamers. Even as he recalled those dragons, the ones that belonged to him at Casterly Rock, Tyrion Lannister would never call himself a dreamer. He believed in no grand scheme- only the schemes that he brought into being himself. He believed in no God. On the other hand, he did believe that life was shit, and that what prevented it from being shit, at least momentarily, was wine and women. Since it was his own responsbility to drink wine and fuck women, he supposed that he also believed in himself.Momentarily.
Oh, but don't you remember, imp? You believe in someone else, now.
Tyrion's face was adept at brooding- it was more at home in a scowl than a Baratheon was in a whore- but the expression that calloused his face at this thought was more towards disappointment. Disappointment was not foreign to him either; the world, the Lannisters, the Starks, the Boltons and particularly himself were equally persecuted by it. If it were himself that was subject, then he often found the feeling accompanied by embarrassment. Humiliation even. Not that he had once again been made a victim, but that he had allowed them to make him a victim. Falling in love with a whore, for example. Underestimating the slave masters that he'd appeased in Meereen.
The memory of his reaction to that, however, was sharper. By no means worse, but sharper. He'd labelled it embarrassing at the time, almost as a joke, but in hindsight his words' vile saccharinity lingered like poison on his tongue.
"I've been a cynic for as long as I can remember... I said no thank you to belief... and yet here I am. I believe in you."
The disappointed scowl became a wince.
By all the Seven Kingdoms, I truly am pathetic.
Tyrion glanced over his shoulder, hoping that by some vague chance a goblet of wine might be found within arm's reach. There was nothing, and not for the first time of late. It seemed that the stores of Dragonstone where by no means a match for his excessive alcohol consumption, and despite similarly excessive protestations, there hadn't been much movement in adding to these stores. In a conversation with Varys, he'd even heard it said that the Queen herself had overturned his requests, with the rebuke that her claim to the Iron Throne was worth considerably more than her Hand's drinking habits. She spoke of similar sentiments in their many discussions, telling him that she would prefer her advisors to be sane of mind if they were to do their job and give her advice, but he was always found a way to weasel his way out of one more promise or commitment. The topics of these discussions were often distraction enough, with their continually changeable battle plans, finances and the like.
He could tell that it made her impatient. His Queen was never short with her Small Council, as she understood intrinsically what her appearance meant if she was to fulfll that title, but with him the frustrations might boil over. Just briefly. The roll of her breathless, lilac eyes. The sound of her pale fingers tapping on the cold table-top. It might've been a compliment that she deemed him trustworthy enough to drop her walls upon walls of facades, if only for a heartbeat, but seeing his leader nervous did nothing to inspire confidence. They were waiting on their nerves, and the wars still not won. Tyrion was anything but naive, and he knew that the wounds and tears were inevitable, and that they would stain his Queen's footsteps to the crown of the Seven Kingdoms, just as it had every monarch before her. Soon enough, she would be forced to utter a colossal, singular word of Valyrian, and watch as the armies that stood in the way of her imperishable ambitions were burnt and perished themselves. But before then, they would discuss, scheme, occasionally admonish, and scowl a great deal.
In Tyrion's case, he would also remember. Not just the embarrassment of the fast blossoming hope in his chest that he'd revealed to her without a second thought, but the way that the same blossoming flowers had withered away before, and turned to ivy, suffocating over his heart. The way that it had happened so quickly, at the twist of his hands, at the end of a crossbow.
He almost didn't want to believe it were true.
But he was forced to believe it every day. On the wings of those extinct dragons, flying above Dragonstone. He couldn't see those wings just then, but the eternal promise of them is as tangible as the rush of the wind they leave behind when galloping into the sky, sometimes with their Mother on their back, sometimes not. Winter had arrived, and the days were always overcast, but that day there was a glimmer of sun. Not sunbeams, but a quiet call of yellow through the clouds, on the cliffs, on the castle. From this spot on the top of one of those cliffs, he could see the castle in its entirety, and indeed most of the island. He could see the many dozen windows, and the gaping jaw of the strategy room, where the Queen resided in far more than she did in her personal chambers.
Tyrion's scowl deepened once more. The wind was blowing strong, as usual. Dragonstone was ready but not quite ready, as usual.
Why did he like this spot? Certainly because it was as lonely as he wished. As silent as he dearly wanted his moments of rest to be. In the throneroom, it was all spat fire and roaring blood, but there, it could just be the rush of wind, the omnipresent sea and his thoughts, for once only omnipresent to himself. Here, it could just be beautiful, not beautiful and deadly. With a dragon, could the two ever be separate?
Probably not. There wouldn't be much point in having one without the other, would there?
He had already been away for close to an hour. The cliffs were sheer and steep, but secure, much more secure than the bedsheets as he twisted and turned in his aging nightmares, much more solid than the stone beneath their feet. He was not at home at Dragonstone, no more than he was at Casterly Rock.
But Daenerys Targaryen, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynat and the First Men, Protector of the Realm, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Mother of Dragons, The Unburnt, Breaker of Chains and Lady of Dragonstone was. She might not be at home, at least in spirit, until she was perched on the throne that so many had invested so much in, but it was the home of her fathers. So long as he made no intolerable mistakes, his home would be where his Queen was. For the forseeable future and nothing, he repeated to himself, beyond that.
It amused Tyrion to think that he had almost as many titles as Daenerys. Not just Tyrion, but Imp, Demon Monkey, and Kingslayer,if the popular belief surrounding Joffrey's death was to be believed, and all the other insults whispered in Westerosi taverns, and probably a few of Essos too. Unfortunately, his were not quite so hyperbolic.
He glanced back down at Dragonstone. She was calling him again, if not with her voice or the screech of her children, then with the sight of the castle itself. With the thought of the Queen who, for the time being, needed him. He felt guilty if he abandoned the castle for as long as this. The questions would come for him with the certainty that he wished he could have invested in himself. What if my counsel is required? What if she makes an impulsive decision? What if sh-
Above him, an ancient roar rumbled in the sky, like the crash of swords in battle. Tyrion looked up, stunned for a moment that felt as long as a childhood. The recognition of the shadow, a shadow surpassing the clouds and everything else beside, came slowly.
This was by no means the first time that he'd seen them, or their tails as they soared and ruled over their promised kingdoms, a closer birthright to a dragon that it could ever be to a family, a Lannister, a Grayjoy. The impossible, by now, should've become arbitrary. The Lannister had even watched them age, at least in the short time that he'd served as advisor to the Queen; only recently had they begun to be called "fully grown". To them, the age that he'd watched, while months for him, was probably no more than a second. He could scarcely comprehend seeing them when they'd been but hatchlings. Seeing something so prehistoric captured in a net of youth, before they could breathe their breath of flames, before they could soar or rule, almost hurt to think about. Another dream that Daenerys Targaryen had irresponsibly flung into his pathetic reality.
He yanked his mind away from what should've been fantastical, hoping that the dreariness of Dragonstone might pull him back from the clouds. The resolve to return to the castle was broken when the roar came again, and he glanced up to see one of them plunging downwards, out of the clouds veil and into the world of the living once more. He watched as it circled and dived, curved and slashed, and sub-consciously he knew that it should've been with more disbelief. Daenerys had told him of her dragons, as if constantly watching them weren't enough. Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion. This was Viserion, its cream scales and golden horns evident even from afar. She had taught him this was the gentlest of her dragons, the most attentive. The most intelligent, perhaps. It was also one of the two dragons he'd met first, in the dungeons of the Great Pyramid.
Met is a definite overstatement. This was one of the dragons you escaped from, he told himself.
The first mistake that Tyrion made, seemingly, was to turn his back. Being transfixed with the dragons was nothing short of expected, and once he'd found himelf back at the thought of returning to Dragonstone, he made to head back down to the beach. As he did so, his mind fell back on Daenerys, on her request for his audience the coming evening. What it might entail. What obscurred their path to Kings Landing, unless something greater saw fit to rear its head, was their lack of alliances. More than that, it was the damaged eyes that every Westerosi on the godforsaken island saw her through. The Targaryens before had ensured that those eyes, that perception, would fester and distort like the dragons they'd chained through the years, until her and her kin were seen as nothing but a mostly forgotten dynasty with nothing to offer but the whisper of singed memories.
The sound of gushing wind and the trickle of rocks, for Tyrion swore that he could feel the whole world shake as the creature landed, brought him to a standstill. He could hear it. More than that, feel it, behind him. Viserion, no longer dancing a violent waltz to anyone who would observe, but stood only ten feet behind him. And he felt it as deeply and fiercely as any man would- nothing that he'd be presumptuous enough to call a connection, not the kind that flickered between the dragons of the sky and the dragon of robes and beautific pale hair, but the fear. The fear of prey as it faced something so gracefully dangerous, so callously wonderful, as Viserion. He was not even fit for a place in this creature's stomach.
He resisted the urge to fall to his knees. In another conversation of the dragons, Daenerys had affirmed the ancient fable of their pride, the arrogance that could hardly be called unmerited. They were born to rule, to conquer, to exist on the ranging wonder of all below them. But they should not be kneeled to. Another of their contradictions; they demanded and commanded respect, but if it was given to them mindlessly, there would be no respect. They were quick to impression, and stubborn enough to continue in that impression of a person for hundreds of years. Not that anyone who failed to endear themselves to a dragon would last very long.
Tyrion's eyes fluttered over the tail, the golden tapestry of scales along its sides and back, the enormous head with the tapered fangs sharper than any sword. Viserion was looking, staring, directly at him. Behind it, Dragonstone stared too.
"... Good afternoon," he said, and then felt like a fool.
The dragon said nothing. It didn't so much as shift. The terrible eyes continued, on and on.
"I trust that you've been eating well? As happy to serve as I am, I'd rather not beserved as your lunch." He laughed nervously. "You'd get more from Varys, I'm telling you."
Still nothing. It was as if Viserion was waiting, yet waiting for what? For the moment when Daenerys would call on it to breathe a new kingdom into life? For him to leave, so that it could continue whatever myth required its attention next?
He glanced to the side, wondering if it was fit for him to leave. It didn't seem possible to escape the feeling of idiocy that would accompany excusing himself to a dragon. It seemed rather like trying to step out of the way of an earthquake. And, when Tyrion took the risk of a step back, Viserion rumbled. A deep, guttural rumble heated on the charred remnants of history. Tyrion stopped where he was, and the rumble stopped.
So. He was to stay then.
"I'd ask what you wanted if the answer wasn't most likely my life."
A burning silence collapsed onto the ground between them, leaving Tyrion far more uncomfortable. He observed, with much wariness, that Viserion's attention was still strained on him. He'd done astonishingly little to deserve the attention, but it was his nonetheless. If it had decided that a dwarf would make a tasty snack, he couldn't do much to dissuade it. His skills of diplomacy didn't extend that far.
He also knew that dragons were intelligent creatures. Just as intelligent, some said, as humans. He hadn't been eaten just yet; it was very much in Viserion's power to do that. For all he knew, diplomacy might be what the dragon was seeking.
It had never crossed his mind to ask Daenerys what her thoughts were on the matter, but he suspected they would be much the same. They were her children, and she treated them as such. As intelligent, fierce and proud. Far more than an equal of her own kind, if indeed humans were her kind. Their meetings were far too heavy, chained with the unremitting burdens of kingdoms and games and power, to accomodate the flights of fancy that he might ask her on level ground. They talked all the time, but he couldn't recall a conversation.
It occured to him that there might never be a conversation between them, a real one, if he didn't appease Viserion's wishes. Whatever they were.
It was that, of all things, that persuaded Tyrion to move forward.
"What are you looking for, hmm?" His words came out short, breathy, nervous.
Viserion grunted. It was all too aware of his approach. Tyrion sought to make the steps as inoffensive as possible, hardly drawing an inch in his stride, but the dragon was watching all the same. Not resisting, but watching. It was more than enough to send a shiver down the Lannister's spine.
Soon enough, he came within a metre of the dragon. This was the smallest of them. The smallest, he thought. Viserion's head was larger then his whole body, larger than his whole body two times over, and its body was larger than the laughable, stagnant legacy of everything he had ever known. His family, his gold, his name had been reduced to the kin of a half-hearted footprint on the beach of Dragonstone. He didn't dare intrude closer for fear that the footprint would be washed away.
Tyrion blinked. Viserion did not.
"You absurd, terrifying thing..."
An inconceivable impulse hissed in his fingers, pulling him closer like a horse reigned in. He lifted his hand, against all sanity, and it neared the dragon's nostrils.
Viserion hissed and he pulled back. His eyes almost fluttered closed. As soon as he did so, the hisses stopped, but the whole time, the dragon did not move. And it did not stop staring at him.
Tyrion looked into the dragon's eyes. They contracted and dilated like those of a snake, he knew. Daenerys had said that contracted eyes were a warning- a warning that the intended should back off, unless they wanted to become a newly lit human torch. Viserion's eyes were not contracted. They were wide. Wide enough to reach into, like a pit, like a bottomless goblet. Drinking him in.
The impulse called to him again. Tyrion had put it down to his nerves at Viserion's presence, but now, as he stood practically within touching distance, he couldn't deny it. There was something in the air around him. A smoke, intense and strong, smothering everything in its presence. Its scent. A magic, bleeding from the dragon and surrounding him. He couldn't think straight. The dragon had looked for him. For some reason, above any other, Viserion had looked for Tyrion Lannister. He was being inspected. Observed. And, somewhere in the overbearing smoulder of its scales and cloudless eyes, a request was being made of him.
He was far too human to interpret this request. Not for the first time, he wished that Daenerys Stormborn was by his side.
"You... you want something from me..."
Viserion's head tilted ever so slightly. Tyrion shivered unintentionally. Was that an assent? Could a dragon understand what he was saying? Perhaps it was less a case of a dragon understanding what he was saying, and more of understanding him. The strange, not quite smoke still filled every nook and crevice of his lungs, and each exhale reeked of his inability, his failure to grasp the language that the dragon ordered he be fluent in. But Viserion itself knew Tyrion Lannister, and all the moments and doubts that made him, completely. That much he could understand. But anything else?
"I don't..."
And then, as securely as the pull of the tide on Dornish shores, Viserion snorted. The eye-contact that had the imp of Casterly Rock ensnared in its grip was broken, and the dragon turned away from him, dismissing him without a second thought. Tyrion backed away rapidly, feeling the ripple of frenzied instinct on the air, the contraction of titanic wings and muscle, the tremours of a power that the cliffs didn't know how to contain. The dragon pushed off, and it gathered itself in the roaring wing, ascending, ascending more and more, back up to the clouds that welcomed it back with grey veils and tumbling silence. The clouds which, for some reason, Tyrion suddenly thought looked lonely.
Lonely. Of all things. The word had come to him as an aftertaste, like the fading kiss between a man and wife as they parted. He felt it when Viserion took flight and all he could do was watch as it did so, and the magical carresses that had surrounded him, that he'd been allowed to stumble into, became a recent and coldly present fever dream. Despite being exposed to it for just a second, his body, beyond control, only yearned for it to return again.
But it wasn't just he that felt it. He almost saw it. The loneliness in the dragon's smoke that, inexplicably, belonged to someone else.