Her
When she'd taken Yunkai and its people had welcomed her, pulled her into their numberless arms and carried her away on a tide of joyful chaos and freedom, she had felt like a queen. Not a conqueror. A queen.
Running through the halls of Winterfell, flanked on either side by a Stark – one a red-haired woman and the other a red-eyed wolf – she'd never felt less like a queen. Huddled women and children reached out to her, wisps of her cloak and her skirt pulling slightly before slipping through their fingers. They clamored for comfort, begged her to do something, anything, but there wasn't anything she could do. They were no longer fighting the Yunkish.
It had been hours now since the fighting began and she wasn't going to wait to die any longer. There'd been no word from anyone. How could a queen help her people if she couldn't determine the mettle of the monster at their gates?
When they'd left her rooms, Sansa Stark had assured Lord Tyrion that she'd bring the Queen back immediately. Cloaks were haphazardly adorned and hoods uplifted. Nevertheless, she'd grabbed the Queen's new sword and, stepping shoulder-to-shoulder with her, placed it firmly, stealthily into Daenerys' grasp. Before they'd run off down the hall, Sansa had ducked into another room. There'd been the sounds of shuffling fabric, drawers opening and closing, and when she'd emerged she was clutching an elaborate, jewel-encrusted dagger.
"It must be simple enough," she said, picking up her skirts and walking briskly. "All you really have to do is aim correctly."
Ghost leapt inches off the floor before picking up speed. Daenerys wasn't as familiar with the corridors so she simply followed after them. "That had more or less been my strategy."
The grayness of the light was nearly blinding when they exited the darkness of the castle's halls. It was unsettling, the slow and graceful way the snow was falling now. Flakes fell and landed in Daenerys' dark eyelashes and it was like she was looking at the world through lace.
Following Sansa up a winding maze of stairways, she kept her head down against the cold and the wind, burrowed in her hood. Because she wasn't looking and they were hurrying, she bumped heavily into her new sister. Abruptly looking up, she saw Sansa's hands fly up to cover her mouth as she looked out across the ramparts. Ghost began to growl.
It was like something out of a nightmare, something from the Shadows of Asshai. She'd forgotten her gloves but she felt faint and needed to grip the frost-covered stone walls to keep her balance. The baby inside her kicked and she wondered if it could sense the danger. Daenerys Targaryen thought, when she'd flown North of the Wall to rescue Jon Snow, Jorah Mormont, and their men, that she'd never seen anything so disorienting and horrible. She had been so, so wrong.
The scene was bloodless but for how long? Living screams, undead shrieks, and everywhere, everywhere the clashing of steel. Jon's carefully drawn battle lines were obscured, rubbed and indistinguishable by the onslaught of ragged dead, all in varying degrees of decomposition. Only her Unsullied seemed to be still grouped together, a tactic that was making it easier for the enemy to pick them off, one by one. The Dothraki were riding their horses perpendicular to the fortress walls, trying to take out their numbers by a different direction.
"Lyanna Mormont is out there," Sansa whispered jaggedly, pointing across Daenerys' line of vision. Mounted atop a horse, the fierce little lady of Bear Island was nocking arrow after arrow and letting them fly. Her uncle guarded her, his sword strokes deft but slow-moving.
"Ser Jorah!"
"And there's the Kingslayer, over there!" She pointed a little further into the mass of wrangling bodies. Jaime Lannister was rallying men around him, his sellsword at his side. The scrambling Northerners running to his voice weren't hurling insults about the man's dishonor now.
"Where is Jon?" asked the Queen, one hand flying to her distended stomach and the other gripping tighter to the wall, her neck craning. "Where is he?" Sansa Stark did not answer, but she did grab the Queen's hand. They stood there, linked and immobilized by sour fear and the potential death of everyone they loved.
"The Godswood!"
"What's happened? Why is it burning? Are we under attack from the rear?"
"No!" shouted Sansa. Grabbing her other hand and wrenching Daenerys to face her, she yanked on her for emphasis. "It's a trap! Whoever lit the fire would have meant for it to be a trap."
"What do you mean? It's on the other side of the castle. Gods forbid they make it through the castle."
"The dead can only be destroyed by fire. The Godswood is uphill. If they were forced there somehow-''
"Their army would be extinguished." Daenerys couldn't let go of her sister's hands. They were solid and the grip was reassuring. She looked back out across the snow-covered fields, littered with the inglorious fallen dead. It would only be moments before their lost soldiers were risen again and fighting for the other side.
"But what would make them run to their extinction?" Sansa asked, a searching tang in her voice. On the other side of the fighting, which shifted like an angry animal, the Mother of Dragons saw something that made her blood an ice-littered river. They were on horses, or things that must have been horses at one time. Sightless, probing eyes glowed blue and stared beyond, beyond the fighting and into her soul. She knew they saw her, although it was a great distance. They were the Night King's men and they were waiting to clean up the mess after the battle.
Daenerys' head turned slowly, the plane of her shoulders straightening and her eyes freezing with resolve.
"More fire."
Him
There hadn't been anything for him to hold on to and he'd nearly slid right off. How did Daenerys Targaryen do this with such poise and confidence? Maybe it wasn't anything more skilled than simply knowing you were born to do it, a skill preconceived in her blood. As Jon Snow's feet dangled pitiably astride the flanks of his dragon (and it is, he thinks, meant to be his), all he thought was that he might've spent more time paying attention to Ser Rodrick's horseback lessons.
His mother, supposedly, was quite skilled on a horse. He thought of her, and what she might think of this situation, as he carefully removed his right glove and placed his hand against the dragon's leathery hide. He pretended he was petting Ghost and not something that might get it into its head to throw him into the air and kill him, hoping like Seven Hells the motion was soothing.
There was a command she used to make them fly, but Jon didn't know it and his tongue stumbled over Valyrian like a blind foot solider, so he did the only thing he knew how to do. The heels of his boots dug slowly, like they were churning good, delicate soil, without any of the haste he would have used on a horse. The metallic thrum of battle was reaching a crescendo behind them, but the dragon – Rhaegal – stretched his neck languidly, all magical elegance, at his urging. He was in no rush. Whatever was on the dragon's mind, it wasn't pressing.
Weightlessness was jarring. Somehow, he'd thought it might feel like a respite from the destruction encroaching them, but it didn't. It felt like he'd lost all control. The higher they rose and the smaller everyone below them became, the more certain Jon Snow was that he'd left his men to die. All of them. Every man in Westeros. All for some experiment that might result in him splayed out in the snow, dead of a broken neck.
Up and up, so high up they rose above the snow and frost, high enough to plateau into silence. It was so quiet he could hear the dragon breathing. A rattling it was, like a consumptive's. Fire and smoke, swirling between a massive cage of ribs, waiting for the signal, any signal, to release. Jon Snow ducked lower, allowing the dragon's neck to face the brunt of the wind. Rhaegal's scales were firm but not immovable, and he grabbed a fistful of them with his left hand. So many feet above the ground, reaching for his sword one-handed was perilous.
His body leaned, a subconscious movement, but he had to grasp the dragon's scales tighter as he felt it lean with him. Perhaps his legs had applied additional pressure to it's abdomen because the creature hadn't seen his movement. Tucking his sword awkwardly against his side, out of the way but still easily accessible should he come to blows with an unseen foe, Jon Snow felt the dragon right itself in its flight. He needed to see what was happening on the ground before he could decide what to do from the air, so he leaned inward again. Rhaegal's body imitated the action and they began a wide, circular flight pattern.
It was a difficult thing, holding himself upright, and it only had half to do with being airborne. What he saw below, no matter how shrunken from a distance, was devastating. It was slaughter. It was loss innumerable. It was all he'd ever feared in miniature.
Jon grappled with his sword and tugged lightly on Rhaegal's skin, urging him lower but not too low. An inventory needed to be taken. Once they'd sunk as low as he dared, they began another circle. Arrows zoomed blindly beneath them, the sound of clattering bones echoing in a tumult. There was a thick fog of smoke, seemingly dissipating and regenerating on its own. Northmen were covered in blood and muck. The Knights of the Vale were easily recognizable – they were the ones chasing after frightened horses whose instincts only told them to retreat. The Unsullied were holding their formations and the undead were feasting on them. Closest to the gates of Winterfell were the Dothraki, their screams no longer fearless.
The long neck guiding him stretched, pulling taut and strong like a tugged rope. A seismic rumbling rolled beneath him in a wave. Rhaegal belched fire, sure-throated and strong. For the first time since Jon had been at the witch's mercy, he felt heat puncture its way through the wall of cold. Was this a dragon's battle cry? A song of distress to his brother?
Men looked up, all of them. The dead ones as well. Whether they saw him or not, he didn't know. Not at first. His circle was coming to its conclusion when he heard it. Dull and slow-growing, the call reached his ears just after he saw the fighting resume. The delay gave it an echo, but the message was still clear.
"The King in the North! The King in the North! The King in the North!"
Thank the Gods the men couldn't see how terrified he was, how light his grip was on this creature, how badly he needed his wife to tell him what to do. But he could pretend to be a fearless leader. He'd gotten used to that by now.
As the frenzy below sped back up, reinvigorated by the illusion of whatever hope a king on a dragon could give, Rhaegal's call finally received an answer. He hadn't read the tone of his call but he could translate the response. Even high up, he could sense the unmistakable motion all at once. A ghostly reply, it caused Jon Snow to jerk his grip on the dragon's scales. The low roar of it struck him with such hateful intimacy, he thought at first it was only in his mind, something meant for him alone. A flash of ice darted across the sky behind him, parting the water-fat clouds and cutting through the plummeting snow.
Rhaegal's brother had come for him.
Her
He was a beautiful man. She had always known that. It's why she'd hated him so instantly. Beauty on a man is treacherous. But when she'd heard Rhaegal's call across the sky and when her eyes had followed to find him, what she saw physically hurt. Her dragons were a miracle – ask anyone and that's what they'd say. Someone to fly alongside her? It was so far beyond anything she'd allowed herself to dream, further even than the Iron Throne. It was something worth protecting.
"It's Jon!" shouted Sansa, pointing an elegant but insistent finger toward the sky. The men in the thick of it sent their emboldened cheers skyward, not knowing how small the sound would seem when it finally reached Jon's ears. They didn't know how insignificant men looked when viewed from the sky, how the wind could suddenly seem so much more tangible, so living. "Is he safe?" Sansa's question brought Daenerys back to earth.
"I think he wanted a better view of things," she began, before dropping off, squinting her eyes into the distance. "But we can't be sure he's alone up there."
"What do you mean? You're right here." It had been to think that ignorance would protect anyone.
"Sansa. Do not panic. What I'm about to tell you will frighten you but I need you to think of your people." She reached out both arms and gripped Sansa's shoulders firmly. "My third dragon – Viserion? The Night King has him, and he could be above us right now. He's been riding straight for us. For all I know, he could be taking aim at Jon right now. I have to go to him."
For a moment the two women just stared at each other. Sansa swallowed thickly. Daenerys could see the muscles in her throat move. She blinked once, twice, visibly chewing on this information. A loud crack caused them to jump and look in the direction of the disintegrating Godswood. The branch of a weirwood tree had splintered and fallen from the rest of its body, heavy under the weight of fire. The dance of the flames was mesmerizing, like flickering hips.
"What would you have me do?" Sansa's voice nearly commanded.
What would I have her do? What should I have her do? What is there to do?
"You've got to go back." Back into the castle. Back to the people. Draw them out. Evacuate before the flood. Air, she needed air. Her cloak was wet with precipitation and it was holding her down like a stone. She needed to be light enough to fly.
Chains rattled behind them. The click-clicking of it tapped against the glass of the darkening night. Drogon snorted angry globs into the air, pawing the ground and straining his neck in frustration. He'd been silent but alert when they'd come upon him. The absence of his remaining brother had caused him some alarm. Daenerys and Sansa stalled. Alternating between them, they took turns tossing out an idea while the other rejected it. How do we fight fire with fire? The dragon's movements had slowly intensified the whole time. He was pacing.
"But I can help you! I'll go crazy in the castle-''
"No." Daenerys' came out louder than she'd intended, but she couldn't help it. It all suddenly made so much sense. The puzzle pieces of strategy finally fell into place. "If Jon rides Rhaegal, it'll draw out the Night King. I'll fly up behind them. And you," she paused here, pointing an elegant but insistent finger at the Lady of Winterfell. "You go back through the gate and lead any person not able to yield a sword or aim a bow out here and walk them as far beyond the burning trees as you can before they attack."
"Your Grace, forgive me, but you want me to walk women and children through a battlefield?"
"Better a battlefield than a funeral pyre, Lady Sansa. It's an escape route. They've got to all get out before we drive the battle into the castle."
The Queen turned away without another word. She wasn't sure of herself. She could be gambling the lives of the living. City walls and towers had crumbled beneath her all across the Eastern Continent. Dragonstone had come alive under her rule. Her dragons had flown North of the Wall. All her little miracles, perhaps for nothing.
And she'd never fought another dragon before.
There was a vacuum of sound on every side of her, so when Sansa's skirts finally rustled and her slippery footsteps receded behind her, it sounded like the dull roar of the Great Salt Sea.
Him
All of his instincts and all of his training and Jon Snow's fate came down sibling rivalry. If only he'd ridden Drogon, the odds might be more unevenly stacked in his favor. But he'd known the largest dragon responded to no one other than its mother, and he might have been stupid but it all mattered so much more now, so much more than stupid heroics.
It was hectic and terrifying. He tried to urge Rhaegal to fly faster and higher without flying too close to the fighting on the ground or the civilians huddled in the castle. He felt like a hunted animal and that wasn't far from the truth of it. His pulse quickened and cold sweat was pouring down his neck. The swirling snow obscured his vision and the clanging metal of swords made it difficult to hear. Because Viserion and the Night King had given chase first, all of the advantage was theirs. He'd had no choice but to fly and their predator had clung tightly to the shadows and clouds ever since. Frequent bursts of scorching hot blue flames shot at them from points he couldn't determine. They seemed to be moving with more speed and precision than he could make his dragon fly.
The creature was panicked. Gods, what Jon Snow wouldn't give to be able to go back in time, just days, and fly a few practice rounds. As it was, he utterly regretted the decision to strand himself, with no skill or confidence for flying, so far from the battlefield. The King in the North was trapped. He would probably die up here before he ever saw battle. An ignoble end to a life he tried to live well.
Air suddenly wooshed beside him, blowing his hair into his face and eyes. Rhaegal shrieked and made a sharp turn to the left without any provocation from Jon. Ducking and flying lower, he brushed the hair out of his way and ventured a glance upward. Blue eyes, full of ice and death, stared purposefully through him. The Night King sat astride a dead and decaying dragon with all the urgency of a milkmaid riding a cow. Expressionless and emotionless, both creatures seemed to be chasing them thoughtlessly. There was no hatred or malice coming from them. Considering how indefinite he'd learned "alive" and "dead" could be, it wasn't easy to tell which category The Night King and his steed belonged to, and it was difficult to see the thing so bent on destroying humanity acting so lifeless. All thought of the hard ground beneath him was erased, replaced by his mind's mighty struggle to remember the word. What was the fucking word?
Frustrated and desperate, he gripped Rhaegal's scales hard – too hard, most likely, and leaned sharply to the left. It was an unexpected move and the blue shadow of Viserion continued flying straight for a few flaps before realizing the chase had shifted. Jon felt a bittersweet twinge of success, finally managing to outsmart his enemy, even if only briefly. It was in that split second of clarity that the blocked tunnels of his mind finally opened, and he located what he'd been searching for.
"Dracarys!" He screamed the word, like it had shot out of his mouth, and then he screamed it again. "Dracarys!"
Rhaegal reared his head back, weaponized. His flying had been erratic before, and his body loose and fleshy. Called to action, the dragon stiffened like a raw nerve. His wings propelled them toward Viserion, just as the other dragon was turning its body to meet them head on. Red flame bloomed forth into a blue garden. When they met, it looked like water crashing on the beach at Dragonstone. The heat of it forced Jon lower into his position. He clung to his dragon, watching in awe as nature took over. One solitary little word and the dragon no longer needed any guidance.
Of the many battles he'd fought, the many swords of which he'd been the intended target, it was the most helpless he'd ever felt. And before he'd experienced it, Jon Snow would have never guessed that dragon fire could be so loud. There wasn't just the roar, the writhing sound of burning. It was the clacking of razor sharp teeth, the angry whirlpool of flapping wings. Even the stretching of jaws added a layer of terrifying sound to the ferocious symphony. But he saw nothing. Nothing. Cowering under a neck of pure muscle, he could only hear and feel how their fight was going.
In life, Viserion had been the smallest of Daenerys Targaryen's children; in death, he was a monster. Any soldier worth his armor knew that fire was hottest when it burned blue. Rhaegal was outmatched, in both strategy and tactics, but he kept spitting up fire anyway. Jon felt him flying backward like a boat paddling in reverse to a shore miles away. He ventured a look, raising a useless arm as protection. The Night King's icy blue eyes stared straight through to the core of him, reducing him again to the Bastard of Winterfell.
But the Night King's steady assurance was arrogance, a lack of faith in his opponent. A weakness. It was because of this weakness that Jon Snow saw her before his ghostly enemy did.
Like a frightening warrior goddess, Daenerys Targaryen rode into his field of vision atop a black nightmare, her silver hair flying behind her like strands of whipped gossamer, shouting in Valyrian and snapping the Night King out of that arrogance. Viserion reared, a wind-born startled horse, shooting blue flame straight upward into the sky. The strength of Drogon's wings sent them all higher into the air, as though on a wave. Rhaegal screamed and Jon ducked lower. When Viserion righted himself, rage overtook him. His head and neck swung indiscriminately, beyond the Night King's control, angry and hurt and vomiting fire in every direction. Jon Snow saw his wife's mouth widen and distort before the sound of it reached his ears.
"Look out!"
"Dracarys!" he shouted, but it was too late. Rhaegal took off, dipping severely out of the way. Heat bypassed Jon Snow just over his shoulder, his grip loosened from all the snow and the sweat. If this was it, he wished the Mother of Dragons could remember him better than falling. There wasn't time to think. He simply let go.
The Wardeness of the North
There was a time when she'd recreated Winterfell, in snow, with her hands. She had done it entirely from memory, and the recollection of it had comforted her at the time. Seeing in her head all the hidden courtyards, the Great Keep, the First Keep with its walls covered in lichen, the blackened tower with all its great, paralyzing height. And the Godswood, before it burned. The hot, sulfurous water coursing through the stone walls might have been her blood. Snow kicked up into her shoes and she saw it all like she could see through the gates. It had stood like a monument since the age of the First Men. And now it wouldn't.
There was a tightness in Sansa Stark's chest, a rock of exertion and panic. There were so many people within her castle's walls, so many things to do and with less than no time. She wiped the snow and the wet from her eyes. She felt like a flying mote of dust caught in the din of warfare, something elemental but useless. Eddard Stark's daughter was not going to be useless.
As she leaned a cloaked shoulder into the heavy ancient wood of the gate, a caw in the air made her jump and look in its direction. Ravens, dozens of them, alighting from the rookery. Dark wings, dark words. Who, in the middle of all this, could be thinking of the ravens?
The Maester's tower wasn't out of the way, and as the Lady of Winterfell she felt it her responsibility to know what information was being sent out all over Westeros, even (or especially) in a time of crisis. The castle had been in flux for so long, and they'd only just re-established a foothold at Winterfell before Jon was off looking for a Targaryen alliance, so Sansa shouldn't have been surprised by the disarray of the hallways and quarters. Her hand flew up to her nose and she recoiled at the abrupt stench of bird and mold. Black feathers hung in the air like ominous snow.
Samwell Tarly's voice called out to her. He stood stoop-shouldered amongst the dark precipitation.
"What is this?" she asked. "You're meant to be with the women and children."
"Forgive me, Lady Sansa. I thought it might be best to warn as many strongholds as we can. Before…" His voice trailed off and his hands wrung nervously in front of his coarse Maester's robes. They let the sentiment go unfinished. Both of their imaginations were wandering along the same desolate path. A jolt suddenly dawned on her and she took three wide steps forward.
"Have you sent anything to King's Landing?"
"No, my Lady. I wasn't sure how such a message would fare, strategically speaking."
"Do it." She commanded. Pausing before the rookery window, which faced south, she nearly forgot there was a battle coursing the grounds, ready to overtake them at any moment. "Send Cersei Lannister a raven. Tell her Winterfell has fallen. Say no more."
Wordlessly, Sam fumbled for a piece of parchment and a quill. His fingers were stained with ink. "Of course, my lady. And the battle? Is there news of Jon?" His open face betrayed itself, and she could see dozens of horrible outcomes playing before his eyes.
She had no answer for him, and instead told him, "Be quick about your business. We're planning to evacuate by order of the Queen. We'll need you in the Great Hall."
It was difficult to walk through the main castle with her chin held high. Scrawny Northerners who would normally have given her a wide berth stampeded over her in their efforts to get from one place to the next. It was no quieter here than it had been at the crest of the battlefield. She knocked once at the queen's chambers and entered before receiving a response. The silence gutted her. Her shocked intake of breath echoed against the doorway.
Standing shoulder to shoulder, like soldiers in a line, were Tyrion Lannister, Ser Davos, and Missandei. They didn't acknowledge her entrance. They didn't even turn. They just kept staring straight out the wide-open window, flecks of snow making small mountains at their feet as they shared a jug of Southron red. Missandei took an embarrassed sip, handed it to Ser Davos (who took a whole swig), and he passed it to Tyrion Lannister who craned his neck back to nearly drain the bottle. Whichever of the many things was worrying them the most, a single bottle wasn't going to do the job. She cleared her throat.
"We need to evacuate." Her words fell flat, atrophied. They instigated nothing and no one. "Lord Tyrion, we need to evacuate the castle!" The desperation in her voice was gruesome.
"Lady Sansa," he began, only turning a shoulder toward her. "I think we'd all rather die inside, where its warm, if its all the same to you."
Picking up her skits, she took three loping strides in his direction, yanked the half-empty bottle from his hands, and threw it to the ground. It shattered like bloody ice. "Are you two the Hands or are you a pair of useless old men? Our Queen has ordered me to evacuate the castle. My brother, your King, is currently flying a dragon. What good will you be when we take the Iron Throne if the only strategy you can come up with involves a bottle of wine?"
Missandei wiped her stained lips with the back of her hand. "What would our Queen have us do, Lady Sansa?"