Author's Note & General Disclaimer:
This is a work of fanfiction. The characters that I have so blatantly borrowed are the creation of GRRM and any references to show plot points or characterizations belong to D&D, those mean boys who like to tease happy endings before offering us Red Weddings and death by zombie hoard.
So anyway, here's another #GameofThrones story for all you lovely people…to help deal with the long drought until S8. If you previously read my fic Winter's Child, this is the promised prequel, but you certainly don't need to read that one to jump into this one.
Dedicated to Smashing Teacups, because she's kinda THE BEST. Go read her Jorah/Dany fics. You'll see :)
This is show-verse only (with a few book references thrown in for those paying attention). All canon events in D&D's version can stay except for #Jonerys #boatsex which was cute and all but…#nah
I think the first part of this story will appeal to a wide audience. But please be advised, my dears, this story is for Jorah/Dany shippers (oh yes, we are legion). Hoping to post a chapter a week. No promises but that's my plan. Also (*glances at outline*) this might turn into an epic. Just want to warn you early. Okay, deep breath…
As always, thanks for reading! Xo
Daenerys
It kept falling from slate-colored skies, more and more by the hour. Gale-blown clouds raced down from their cold, arctic origins, as if trying to escape the fierce weather they brought with them. Those dark clouds billowed through, heavy with storms that stressed but did not break, spitting snow into the noisy, cluttered melee below.
Gray flakes mixed with white, but the gray ones stung with heat when they landed on a bare hand, or uncovered cheek. They left a black stain of ash as they melted. It was all remnants of dragon fire and the long, tall swaths of burning forests in the Wolfswood, north of the ragged battlefields.
Drogon and Rhaegal had set fire to the countryside that morning, in an effort to slow the army of the dead. But morning had turned into afternoon and now evening approached with rapid insistence. Still they came, still they fought. In the bleak skies above, in the icy mud below.
Daenerys was perched on Drogon's back, holding fast to his black scales while peering beyond his wing and shoulder, her knees digging into his leather hide as she lifted herself higher, her gaze frantic, desperate and darting towards the shadows of low-hanging clouds, attempting to see through the swirls of snow and ash up here in the frost-bit thermals.
They'd danced for hours, spewing ice and fire, dodging open jaws and outstretched claws, but that last bank of clouds swallowed Viserion and his rider whole. Just like that, the Night King vanished.
"Can you still see him!" Jon Snow yelled to her from her left side, astride Rhaegal's back.
"No," she muttered to herself miserably, before hollering over the screaming winds between them, her voice raw and strained in the cold air. "No, I can't!"
"He has to be close!" Jon answered, his deep voice raised to battle cries. "He'll be rounding those clouds to come at us from behind!"
Maybe. Or maybe he'd grown tired of this game of dragons. For it was just a game to him. Daenerys knew he was toying with them. His army below was inexhaustible but a Vale cavalryman or one of Jon's wildlings could slaughter hundreds before falling. Up here, the numbers were tilted in their favor—two against one. Yet still, they faltered. Still they couldn't bring down the Night King and his mount.
Viserion. The dragon's name flickered in and out of Daenerys's head. She didn't allow herself to linger on the familiar sounds of the syllables or think of the Night King's dragon as her own child any longer. She couldn't, not when he breathed iced fire at her, screeching murder under his master's hand. Not with those blue eyes, dead to the land of the living, intent upon her demise. Aloft and in the midst of battle, she swallowed back a moment of uncertainty.
It was one of many. Since she'd landed in Westeros, it had been all uncertainty, war, death and bitter, bitter cold.
But she was Daenerys Stormborn, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons, the warrior-queen, the conqueror of Slaver's Bay, rightful heir to the Iron Throne of Westeros. A small voice in her head whispered, Not anymore…
More thoughts flickered and bubbled to the surface, inappropriately asking for attention when she needed her mind clear and her instincts sharp. But they insisted. Jon Snow's presence up here in the rafters of the sky, astride Rhaegal, kept the revelation fresh in her mind. Jon Snow's true parentage had been revealed only weeks before. Jon Snow was Jon Targaryen and everything she and so many others had believed for so long was a lie.
A bitter, bitter lie.
With effort, she suppressed it all. There would be time to untangle the rest later. For now, there was only one truth. Only one battle that needed attending. As the Onion Knight was so fond of saying, the true war was between the living and the dead. And the living were losing ground every hour.
Daenerys urged Drogon to bank left, into the clouds. He was tired, she knew. She felt a hitch in his stride as he dipped the left wing flat. She placed her small hand on his massive neck, to steady him. To promise that it would all be over soon.
Oh, gods let it be over soon.
Her own bones ached from hours on Drogon's back, first burning the Wolfswood, then tangling with the hoard and finally tussling with Viserion and his new master in the freezing air. She had touched down only once in the past two hours, when two dozen frost giants made their move on the moors above Winterfell, where the Knights of the Vale and her Dothraki warriors were cutting up the bone-and-ragged-flesh hoards that kept coming, like a damn flood through that hole in the Wall.
Clearing the giants was necessary, as they needed the horses. Their advantage, if they had one, might be lost if all their soldiers were on foot. The Lannister army had lost nearly half of their riders this morning, down by the river, in a blast of ice fire from the undead dragon that burned fiery and hot, despite its blue flame. The initial attack from the dragon had been bad enough but the heat of the flames softened the winter ground, which had been a deep and unsteady swamp all summer. Ten thousand hooves, ten thousand footsteps—the lowlands turned into a morass that swallowed the horses and had the Lannister army fighting and slogging in fields of mud.
"Dany, watch out!" Jon's clear voice carried in the frigid air, though when she turned, she could no longer see him or Rhaegal. The fog of these icy clouds was thick and weighed down by the burden of more clouds above them. A flash of something in Drogon's path caught her eye and she turned back, just in time to see Viserion's outstretched talons coming down from above.
"Drogon, dive!" she cried, ducking her silver-blonde head just below the razor sharp clutches of Viserion's grasp. Drogon felt the air current of the dragon passing above him and spun sideways as he dove, catching Daenerys off guard. She could not stifle the scream that escaped her lips as she tumbled from her perch on Drogon's back, grasping wildly for a handhold, catching herself on the scales beneath his right wing.
Viserion hissed his vicious disappointment while Rhaegal screeched a reply far above. As Daenerys climbed back up Drogon's back with her clumsy, trembling fingers, she saw specks of green and gold, tangling above in the clouds. The screeching, screaming and hissing continued, as two dragons that had once loved each other more than anything else in the world tried to kill each other in the skies of Westeros.
As she climbed, Daenerys blinked back tears of frustration.
As the ground came up to meet them, Drogon leveled off, gliding over the massive battleground below. This close to the ground, the sounds of battle were discernible—the shouts of ten thousand men, the rushing stampede of one hundred thousand undead, mash of flesh and break of bone, ring of steel and crackle of fire.
With considerable effort, Daenerys climbed the last few scales to her prior perch. Thoroughly exhausted, she laid herself flat against her dragon's back, her cheek resting against his leather skin, her white-knuckled grasp on his scales lessening only by a degree. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, catching her breath and trying to focus.
She had been in battle before. She had never been one to sit in her pyramid or in her war tent and let foot soldiers win her wars for her. And through them all, she had been brave and strong and every inch the conqueror that her family name demanded.
Fire and blood, fire and blood. Her father, her brothers and her ancestors whispered these fearsome words in her ears, always.
But I want to plant trees and see them grow. I just want to live in a house with a red door. Please. Young Dany's voice pleaded. The young girl in her head always returned to her at the most inopportune times. She couldn't be that girl right now. Don't you understand? We have to fight. We have to be strong.
But with her eyes closed, Daenerys's mind didn't see the battlefields outside Winterfell. The images that faded in and out were all from far away and long ago. A lemon-scent at the window. A white horse in the Great Grass Sea. Blue eyes meeting hers in the Red Waste.
You must be their strength, Khaleesi…
A few moments more and she would have recovered enough to turn Drogon upwards once more, up to chase the Night King until the bitter, bitter end.
But Drogon, weary and wishing that his mother would whisper instructions to fly far away from the unceasing, doomed battle, was skimming too close to the ground this time. A dead woman with ice-blue eyes, who had once upon a time broke bread with Jon Snow at Hardhome, took an iron-tipped spear and threw it with an aim that was strong and true.
Drogon had seen Viserion fall and did not intend to meet the same fate. But after hours aloft, he was tired and slow. He twisted in the air but the iron spear pierced his left wing just the same and sent both the dragon and his rider hurtling towards the fields of blood and mud below.