The second and final part of this AU. Hope you like!
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The trust between them can best be described as…tentative.
After saying goodbye to their child, they found comfort in each other during the initial weeks of mourning.
Dany would wake up screaming from nightmares and he would be there to comfort her, wipe her tears away and hold her as she slowly calmed down.
She never shared what she saw, but it wasn't too hard to guess. Sometimes she would moan his name as she twisted and turned in the sheets, other times she would call out for those she had lost so long ago.
The names wrenched from her throat with such pain that he could only imagine the horrors that plagued her dreams.
One time, as she was falling back asleep, she confided in him how these nightmares began right after she had remembered. During their year apart she had woken up many a night covered in sweat. But it had stopped once she learned she was pregnant.
After that, she began seeing dreams of a little boy with dark curly hair.
And now she saw the same boy, with blood pouring out of his mouth. Sometimes the boy would morph into Jon, other times she would see herself reflected in him.
"Perhaps yet another death for us would have been less cruel." She muttered into his chest, hands fisting his t-shirt as though she was trying to claw his heart out.
We still have each other. He wanted to say. I still have you.
But what were they now?
Two broken pieces don't make a whole.
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She was the one who suggested therapy.
Once the dust had settled and the burning grief of losing their child had somewhat subdued, they were adrift again.
They slept in separate rooms, did overtime at work, avoided each other during the weekend.
Jon was trying to give her the space he knew she desperately needed.
Dany was trying to figure out where to go from here.
Some days she wanted to get up and leave, run away again, from him and everything he represented. A fresh start, and this time there would be no chance of another child.
But she couldn't. Not after what she knew now. Not after they had shared, what they had gone through.
She wouldn't be able to find her peace of mind somewhere else, alone or with someone new unless her memory was completely wiped out and she forgot all the demons of her past.
But she couldn't do that. She would have to learn how to live with them, conquer them, defeat them.
Perhaps therapy would do them both some good. Perhaps it wouldn't help at all.
Either way, she had nothing to lose. It couldn't hurt to try.
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They had separate sessions, she insisted on that.
When she first began talking to Dr. Rita, she found herself failing to adequately describe all that troubled her.
Not only because of how traumatic it was to talk about, but also because she couldn't actually reveal major aspects of their history together.
She couldn't tell her about the past lives, about the time he had been a soldier and she had been a nurse, the time she was a small child and he was her teacher.
The time she was a ruler of seven Kingdoms and he was her downfall.
No way for her to say all this without appearing like a true lunatic.
Mad Queen indeed. She thought with a wry twist of her mouth.
So instead she said, "It's complicated. I can't leave him. Try as I might, there's no way for me to run free with reckless abandon. I'm tied to him by the red thread of fate and sometimes I feel it will strangle us both."
Okay so maybe that didn't sound all too sane either.
But Dr. Rita looked at her with those patient, gentle eyes as always. She never made her feel crazy.
In a soft voice, she asked, "If you're both drowning, isn't it better to let go of each other than hold on?"
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One day, out of frustration, she picked up her phone and canceled the session.
Jon raised his eyebrows.
"What's the point? Dr. Rita is a wonderful woman and a great therapist but we won't get anywhere if we can't talk freely. If we just keep round and round in circles."
She flopped down on the living room couch. "It's useless."
He grabbed a chair and sat down in front of her.
"Then talk to me."
"What?"
"Pretend I'm her. Or someone else, anyone other than Jon."
She opened her mouth to protest but he said, "Just give it a shot at least. Can't hurt to try."
That had been her constant mantra. It couldn't hurt to try.
Oh well.
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"What hurts me the most, is that he was the one who did it." She spat out through gritted teeth.
Jon was right, it did work. It was cathartic to work through her sorrow and rage with the very same person who induced it.
Though right now he was someone else.
Right now he wasn't Jon, he was a nameless, faceless person she could pour her heart out to.
"Why couldn't it have been literally anyone else? His deadly little sister, one of those Wildings that followed his every command, or even a bloody Northern soldier I don't know?! Why did he have to be the one to plunge the dagger in my chest?"
Logically she knew why. He was the only one she trusted to get close enough. And a fine way he had repaid that trust.
But logic and her emotions did not go hand in hand during these sessions so she simply aired out her grievances without any rationale.
Her throat became constricted with the effort to not cry, to hold the tears at bay. But she couldn't, and soon they were streaming down her cheeks.
She could tell he was having a hard time maintaining the façade, holding onto the appearance of the nonchalance of a casual outsider.
"Would it have made things easier?" he asked.
"Of course it would have! Even if he knew, even if he sent the assassin himself, at least I would have died knowing that he didn't have the heart to do it himself. He couldn't kill me himself. But when I felt the pain from that sharp blade, I wondered, did he ever truly love me?"
Her voice was barely a whisper. "Or was everything a lie right from the start?"
Jon couldn't do it anymore.
"It's wasn't a lie. I did love you. I loved you so much but I couldn't show it to you. I couldn't do you justice. I failed you and I'm so sorry."
He moved forward and tentatively wrapped his arms around her, giving her a chance to push him away.
After a moment or two, she buried her face in his neck, the echoes of 'why, why, why,' thrumming against his pulse.
In response, he could only manage "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
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Sometimes he caught her staring intently at the crackling flames in the hearth.
Dany would sit in a trance by the fireplace, eyes glazed over and mind lost in another era.
He stopped her just in time as she absently reached forward to touch the blazing inferno.
Jon grabbed both her shoulders and shook her out of it.
Still dazed, she asked him, "Why did I do it Jon?"
"Why the blood of innocents? I don't understand. I don't know why I did it. I promise I didn't want to. I never wanted that. Never the blood of innocents." She repeated over and over.
"We are not those people anymore Dany. I can't wield a sword and you can't touch fire. It's been centuries. We need to let go. If we look back, we are lost."
That seemed to pull her out of her rumination.
"There's a reason we've been given a new chance Dany. Either we embrace it, or we let the past eat us alive."
She looked back at the flames, scorching hot and unforgiving where once it had only been warmth to her.
No longer the Mother of Dragons, no longer a magical being.
Yet I am still here.
She turned her gaze back to Jon, his brown eyes brimming with conviction.
And so is he.
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Bit by bit, they chipped away at the wall standing in between them.
Jon and Dany continued their sessions with Dr. Rita, and the ones with each other at served a different purpose.
Dr. Rita knew something had changed when she noted a shift in her language.
After several sessions of only talking in terms of "he", "me" and "I", one day she finally said, "And we are trying to do better."
The first time she spoke of them as a unit.
Remarkable progress.
She smiled up at Dany, and her beautiful client returned it, cautious hope in her eyes.
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They fell into a pattern.
Where before they would take measures to avoid each other, now they made a habit to spend time relearning one another.
It was an unspoken rule to dedicate a few days every week to not speak of the past.
They had time allocated to work through their demons, and then there was time to heal and move forward.
Dany told him about the new manager at work who was a total tool. Jon jokingly offered to rough him up.
They visited museums, parks and went to the movies. They held hands during long walks on the beaches, and on days she felt bold they would even kiss under a moonlit sky.
A high fever made Jon bedridden and she nursed him back to health, ignoring the strange sense of dejavu and gnawing fear at the back of her mind.
It wasn't easy. It took practice and effort and sometimes they would fall apart.
But they helped each other get right back up, brush off the dust, and move forward.
She finally knocked on his door one night, her stomach coiled with anticipation and heart beating wildly in her chest.
He opened it wide and simply looked at her. No words needed to be exchanged.
Turns out, it was quite simple to get lost in each other once more.
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In the beginning, she didn't want to believe it. Didn't want to consider that it was happening again.
But as the days turned into weeks, it became harder to ignore the obvious signs.
She was pregnant once again and she was terrified.
So was Jon.
As their child grew, so did their fear, a thousand different scenarios running through their minds. So many ways it could go wrong.
When her due date arrived, Jon kissed her brow and told her, "We're going to make it through Dany."
No, he promised her. He had to believe in this, in them.
It was a long, painful delivery. Hours upon hours of fighting and screaming until finally, their daughter came.
Her loud wail sounded like music to Dany's ears. Her beautiful baby girl, with a tuft of silver hair and shining violet eyes.
"She looks just like you," Jon said with a watery smile as he held her in his arms. Breathing, alive, and theirs.
Dany could hardly believe it. And yet here she was.
They had overcome every obstacle, passed the test of time and fate itself, to arrive at this moment.
They deserved it.
Dany placed her daughter's tiny head against her chest, and Jon slid into the bed next to her, holding them both close.
A sense of immense peace filled her as she felt both their heartbeats drumming in tune with her.
Yes, after everything, we deserved this.
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