Daenerys
Once upon a time, she remembered telling her brother that all she wanted was to go home. But they had all lied to her. Westeros was not her home. It had never been her home...not after her father's crimes, and her brother Rhaegar's foolishness, costing them seven kingdoms. Wandering this strange land, she felt just as lost and weary as she had been before the walls of Qarth. It was not hunger that ate at her or thirst...but failure, and the death of hope, and the unrelenting disappointment in that she had let down so cruelly the men who followed her across the Narrow Sea.
Thorne was dead. Denys Velaryon dead. Aemon Estermont gave in once again to his cowardice, and most of the remaining lords they brought were deserting her also, one by one. Not Yara Greyjoy, but the strange terrain of the Kingswood was just as foreign to her as it was to Grey Worm and her Dothraki Khals. They had no way of knowing where they were, only that north was the Blackwater, and once they reached the Blackwater, perhaps they might reach King's Landing as well, then sail away. To where? Dragonstone, and rule a measly castle until Sansa gathered enough ships and strengths for a lengthy siege? What of the Iron Islands, to live out the rest of her days as Queen Yara's guest? Yara wore her crown because Daenerys gave it to her, and she would not ask her to hand it back. Nor would Yara do so, no matter her loyalty. She thought about Pentos, the Iron Bank, sailing all the way back to Mereen...could she face Daario again? Would the slavers respect her, bow before her and call her Queen in light of such utter failure and defeat? The slaves she freed may love her still, but would they trust her to protect them, when she could barely protect herself?
Two days after the battle, one of her surviving Dothraki riders came to her, the skin of his left arm still maimed from the fire.
"Knights to the north, along the great river," she translated to Yara, across the fire of the pathetic camp they held, compared to how they had been the greatest army the realm had ever once seen. "They've reached the Blackwater." She remembered a time when Missandei had done the translating for her.
"We'll fight them," Grey Worm said, even though she could see the defeat in his eyes as well, a bruise upon his cheek sustained in their chaotic retreat. "We'll push through their men, we'll run or swim back to the ships, or we'll die fighting for you to the last man, my Queen."
"There's no escape," she said, knowing full well how meaningless it was now to lie to herself. "The Dornish Army will crush us, even if we reach the river. We've been losing men, near twenty or thirty a day...not even counting the ones deserting us."
"They're fools and cowards," Yara swore. "They're not deserving of you."
"They'll never kneel to me. No lord will ever kneel to me again."
Breaking her fast, the Greyjoy woman walked over before her to do just that.
"This queen kneels to you," she said, head bending down towards her feet. "This queen swore an oath, and this queen believes still her oath."
She would feel gratitude, if gratitude had yet any practical meaning left. But seeing Yara's example, Grey Worm ran over by her side and followed her example, bending the knee, having lost none of his warrior's composure even through their last defeats.
"I will fight and die for you, my Queen. You freed us, you gave us new lives...a chance to make our own futures, a chance to love and live as we wanted...it is more than any of us ever thought possible..."
Yet you deserved more.
Seeing what remained of her armies congregating, kneeling before her one last time, at the sight of these last professions of devotion, Daenerys Stormborn knew what was expected of her. She stood upwards, proudly, regally, forcing every morsel of self pity from her face until all she was the very image of defiance itself. The Last Dragon looked around her, Dothraki, Unsullied, Ironborn...some remaining knights and soldiers and most minor of lords, she took a deep breath to deliver them one last speech, one last call to fight.
"Blood of my blood," she said in Dothraki.
"Freemen, of two worlds," she said in High Valyrian, then the common tongue. "We have been beaten. We have been betrayed. We sought to fight honorably, but the enemy chooses a different course. Yet, victory is victory, and defeat is defeat all the same. They'll write stories about the Starks...about how their Queen won herself her kingdoms...honorably or not. But we have yet songs they'll sing for us, our stories are far from over!"
The exhilaration remained, how she could still captivate these last faithful men and women who followed her, how she could still draw her own inspiration from their belief in her, their faith in her.
"What will words will they sing, when they tell the stories of Daenerys Stormborn, and the mighty Dothraki of the great grass seas, and the fierce Unsullied of Dragon's Bay...of the loyal and unchallenged will of the Ironborn? Will they sing of our defeat, our surrender, or subjugation? Or will they sing of our courage, our determination, our bravery, our refusal to surrender...our willingness to die to the last man and woman..."
Her men. Her warriors...many of them limping, maimed by iron, burned by fire, yet standing proud, tall, ignorant of their pain, their wounds...their own very lives...so that they could fight for her one last battle to the end.
"Many of you followed me across the Narrow Sea...to this strange land, of strange and horrible peoples. You defeated an army of the dead! You won your Queen a throne, you saved the realm from a Lannister tyrant! Whatever happens tomorrow...what you've accomplished, none will forget! You've placed in my hands your lives...I regret I've failed to live up to your expectations, your trust..."
Her voice choked unexpectedly, when she uttered the word failed. Meaning to continue, looking into the eyes of her last true believers, still ready to die for her one last time. For the first time since before her brother died, she found herself lost for words.
"...you followed me across the Narrow Sea," she found herself repeating, almost in a trance now, "and I failed you."
I brought you here to die.
Another pause. Some confusion growing, as they all awaited her to finish her last rallying cry.
"...I will fail you no longer." The words came from her heart, yet it felt like she held no control over what was uttered from her mouth. "Tomorrow, I will surrender myself before Queen Sansa."
Grumbles, looks of shock, of betrayal, and anger, as her words were translated into Dothraki and high Valyrian.
"I will give her my life, and plead for yours. I will place your lives upon her mercy, because I do believe her merciful, and I will do whatever I still can so that you did not follow me here in vain."
"My queen," Grey Worm protested, Yara looked just as shocked and echoing him, "surely you don't mean it!"
"I do. The war is lost. Far too many have died for me already, for a dynasty long passed. I will waste no more lives upon this cause..."
"We won't do it," Yara argued. "We won't surrender to her."
"You will," Daenerys said, straining to exert what authority she remained in her chest. "I am your Queen. This is my last order. That you surrender yourselves...that you surrender me. That you may all live, that you may all return home...that you may all make good lives for yourselves...after your Queen is but a memory."
They were disappointed in her, she could smell it in the cold night's air. But they'll forget their disappointment, once their lives passed hers by, and perhaps they may all find new purposes, beyond war, beyond death...beyond blood and fire.
"This is your decision," Yara asked, still unrelenting, wishing she could fight everyone, fight herself even, if her vow didn't prevent her from doing just that. "What makes you think she'll spare us?"
"She's the Queen now. Tomorrow morning, she'll be your Queen. I gave her this war to fight, because I slaughtered the people I swore to protect. If I surrender my crown to her, it will only be because I trust her to not make the same mistake as I."
If there's yet blood to be shed, let it be upon her hand, not mine.
"Torgo Nudho." Grey Worm entered her tent, after giving her time to mourn the end of her time upon her throne...the end of everything she had ever been. He was her last. If he died, who would remember her? Who could recall from their own eyes all the good things she had done...the Breaker of Chains...the Mhysa of the Bay of Dragons?
"My Queen," he said, defeat heavy upon his soul as well, "we surrender tomorrow. If the new queen is merciful, then...we won't forget you. We'll sing your songs forever, wherever we go."
She embraced him with a ferocity that shocked him, allowing herself to cry upon his shoulders for a time, though she quickly forced the tears back.
"Where will you go?"
"Naath," he replied, his eyes distant.
"Missandei," she said, understanding. Her devoted...along with Ser Jorah. Had they lived, she'd no doubt they'd be with her until the end as well. Was it any type of mercy, that they would never see this last failure?
No. They'd be alive. It'd be mercy for me, not them, that they don't live to witness my failure.
"We'll protect her people," Grey Worm said, his own eyes swollen. "We'll do so in the name of our Queen, the Mother of Dragons...Daenerys Stormborn. Your name, your House...it will never be forgotten there."
"I don't think it'll be forgotten here either," she said absentmindedly. For different reasons. "Do it in her memory too. She deserves it more than I."
"Whatever happens," he said, "I thank the Gods for letting her into my life. And you...I'd lose a thousand more wars for you, than fight another battle as a slave."
She smiled at him, and looked away, because any more would truly break her, and he knowingly left her tent, and her life.
Sansa
Most of them were in tatters, but one last black flag bearing the dragon emblem flew high and proud, its last Queen standing below it. They were few, and pathetically so, and as she rode closer and closer to them, the disappointment and agony in their eyes unmistakably revealed to her, Sansa had to remind herself that this was the woman who burned King's Landing, and who would have subjugated the North and burnt it along with the rest of the realm had Jaime Lannister not been true to his final vow. Her hair was in shambles, her robes dirtied and barely fitting, and Sansa found herself glad she had sent Jon Snow back to the capital, because whatever her crimes, it would have broken his heart to see his queen like this.
Her remaining lieutenants glared at her, Grey Worm and Theon's sister. The Dothraki were unreadable, and she supposed this was for them their way of life, war, whether it be winning or losing, though it was not defeat they preferred.
You wanted this so much. I did not want this at all. No one wanted me to have this, not until I had it. If the Gods are real, they are worse monsters than you or I.
"Queen Daenerys," she proclaimed, her throat having never been stronger from all the use she put it through now, "I am to understand you seek a surrender."
"I do, Queen Sansa." Behind her, all her remaining soldiers lined up in a broad field on the edge of the Kingswood. "I only ask you spare the lives of the men, and women, who followed me into war, and now to your mercies." When no one spoke, they could hear the currents of the Blackwater in the distance.
She expected her to ask this. She suspected this was the only reason she surrendered in the first place. "Many lords have abandoned you since the battle. You'll be happy to know they've all hanged. Loyalty will not be a whore to be bartered and exchanged for cheap under my reign."
Even through her disappointment, her rage smoldering in submission, Sansa could see in the Dragon Queen's eyes a hint of approval.
"So be the fate of all traitors," Daenerys said softly, coldly. "But the men behind me do not betray me. With my surrender, I hand you their loyalties...and their lives."
"Your surrender is accepted by the realm," Sansa started. She felt relief around her, from all the lords and men behind her, and more than a few before her, that the war, the fighting and death, was finally over. But as all her men and women threw down their weapons upon Daenerys's signal, as her own men rode forth to collect them, she wasn't finished. "The realm also accepts that you had no choice to surrender. As such, the realm will dictate the fates of those you surrender in light of their crimes, and the justice due to them."
"Your Grace," Daenerys said, pleading, addressing her properly only after she realized her own goals were not to be that easily accomplished, "whatever they did...they did upon my orders."
"It doesn't erase what they did." Looking down at all her captives from atop her horse, she summoned forth first one who troubled her heart. "Yara Greyjoy."
Theon's sister stepped forward, yet refused to utter the words which accepted her defeat. Her eyes remained bold and unsurrendering, and Sansa hated her for it, because it was the same stubbornness, the same refusal to let go of their old ways, that clever trick of words to cover up what was piracy in fact, that had damned her Theon, damned Winterfell, damned Robb and her mother and the North in the first place.
What man could you have been, she wondered even now, had you been able to let go what you were, and embrace who you could have become, earlier, before it was too late?
"You sailed the Narrow Sea," she addressed her, listing her crimes, "plundering the cities of the Vale before your Queen called you back to march against me."
"It was war, yer grace," Yara replied, speaking her title as if it were poison. "You know that as well as I."
"Aye, it was war," she answered her in kind. "But you killed not soldiers, but innocents. That is not my war, and that will not be how war is to be conducted in my name, under my reign."
Let the lords behind her heed her words as well, as she would not be so merciful to them as she would be now.
"Your brother Theon fought for me, and he died for the North, for the Starks, in Winterfell. In his memory, I will spare your life." She looked over at the Ironborn men who followed her, who would follow the old ways, who would continue to savage her lands and her peoples. "Your fleet is forfeit, and belongs wholly to the Crown from this moment. Your people in the Iron Islands will be allowed small vessels to fish and travel. Anything further will be punishable by death."
"You can't," Yara protested. "That's our way of life!"
"Find a new way of living," Sansa said, dismissively. A nod, and newly lorded Mortimer and Beryn Dayne rode forward. "The Iron Islands now answer to House Dayne of Casterly Rock. As for you, Lady Yara, I sentence you to exile in the South. The lords and ladies of the Reach have been most hospitable to me, and I fully expect the same of Prince Martyn's lords in Dorne. You will remain in either kingdom for the rest of your life. You may walk upon the shores of the sea, but you will never step foot upon a boat again. You will never sail. If you do, you will die. Should you flee, perhaps to Essos, do so knowing the justice of the Crown will pursue you across the Narrow Sea, to wherever you may go."
For a moment, Sansa wondered whether she would leap at her, her own life be damned. But she backed away.
"Is that all, yer Grace?"
"Should you ever choose to bear an heir, they may inherit the Iron Islands, after coming of age. House Dayne will return your lands to them. But any children you bear shall be raised as wards of the Crown, from their birthing to their majority."
I'll raise good heirs to the Greyjoy name, in your brother's memory.
She nodded, but did not kneel, and walked back to stand by her own queen. With the sentence passed, she felt the hate dissipating from her heart. She did not hate Yara Greyjoy, she hated what she represented, and what that culture did to Theon. Even the Dragon Queen standing prostrate before her she realized that she no longer hated. Not when she had found so much more to hate through her awful war...her lords...her choices...herself.
"Grey Worm."
The Unsullied captain stepped forward, eyes brimming with just as much anger as the Greyjoy woman, though his hatred, thick as it was, was less directed at her.
"Khal..."
"Madri," the Dothraki chief said, stepping forward beside Grey Worm.
"Your men protected Winterfell with ours and defeated the dead. Their deeds will not be forgotten. Yet, you aided in the slaughter of King's Landing, killing innocents and surrendered soldiers alike. Those deeds will not be forgotten either."
She gave a nod to Paxter, who jumped off his horse and gripped tightly the Unsullied captain's hand.
Addressing him as well as Daenerys, she continued. "You are a great commander of men, and you know your soldiers. You know which ones have more blood on their hands, and you will pick them in an honorable manner. You will both lose your sword hands...along with fifty of the men each of you will choose to suffer the same fate with yourselves."
"You can't," Daenerys started pleading.
"We are nothing without our hands," Grey Worm said, angry and desperate. "Take mine, kill me...you can not let me pick out my men for such disgrace!"
"Lord Jaime Lannister was once the greatest swordsman in all seven kingdoms," her voice threatening to break again, her eyes afraid of wandering and finding Brienne's somewhere beside her, "...yet Lord Jaime Lannister's greatest days came after he lost his sword hand. I pray you may be so lucky as to follow his path."
Upon her signature after the last battle, she had proclaimed him the last Lannister Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden of the West, first Master of War and Lord Commander of the Queen's armies until his death. Would it always be this easy, she wondered, to change history itself by the stroke of her own pen?
Sensing defiance still, she continued. "Or, you may both live, Grey Worm and Khal Madri. You may keep your hands as well. And you will watch as every single one of your men die."
They looked to each other, unsure, while Daenerys translated her words to the Khal.
"It's what my lords would prefer," Sansa said when they did not reply, her heart trembling though not her hands nor lips, hoping, praying that they would choose life for their men. "They have many ideas. Sword. Rope. Water. Fire. If you decline, I place justice for King's Landing fully in their hands."
They both looked to Daenerys, who nodded her assent, understanding they had no other choice.
"We accept," Grey Worm said begrudgingly.
"Good," she said, truly meaning the word. "You will receive care from all the maesters available to you. Once healed, the Dothraki and Unsullied will be allowed free passage back to Essos, or lands in the North, if you like...provided you leave your weapons forever in exchange for the plow."
"The Queen is fair," Daenerys proclaimed, as if she further needed to convince her followers, "as is this surrender. I regret many of you must suffer still for my mistakes. But let this be the last blood that must be shed for the sake of all our peoples. What my ancestors began, so shall I end."
She let the Dragon Queen have her moment, her chance to address her people one last time, because she had little time left remaining. The new queen watched the old, seeing and understanding how difficult it was, the finality of Daenerys Stormborn turning away from her people, for her to step forward below her horse, and lower her body, until one knee touched the ground.
"Though they'll be no more Targaryens to come," Daenerys said, pain echoing through every word, "from this day forward...and all days to come...I hereby relinquish any claim my blood has to the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms."
Sansa could sympathize. There had been a day when she thought herself the last of the Stark line, that she had failed her family so utterly and completely, so as to erase it from history and all its books for all times to come.
"There must always be a Stark in Winterfell," Sansa said, less as a queen, more as a woman, a person, to her. "Though he will not pass down the name, he will pass down the blood of the dragon in the North...for all days to come."
The Queen who Rode motioned the Queen who Knelt to step forward, and Sansa leaned down to whisper into the ear of the woman she finally defeated.
"May they remember your name in the North better than they remember your name in King's Landing."
Daenerys
Tyrion visited her first.
"Your Grace," he said formally, head laid low. It was good he still called her queen, but he had once addressed her his queen. "Forgive me, I failed you."
"I failed you too." Her life was forfeit. He had tried, she saw that clearly now. And just because he failed, did not negate his efforts when he had once believed in her. She could hate him, she could curse him, but what was the point now, wasting her last days in anger? "I should have listened to you in the end. I should have known to listen to others when we began."
"Dragonstone was the dagger that destroyed us," he said.
She nodded, their mutual understanding too late. "I sent Sansa away. I should have done the same for myself. Instead, I sat on a stone chair and berated Jon Snow until he knelt, all the while believing this country could be won by others in my name."
"I know," he admitted. "A tour of the south, the west, the Vale, along with the North...let all the lords see you, know you, and believe in you...King's Landing may not have welcomed you, but they would have, and a whole country would have marched on Cersei for you...just like the whole country marched against you now."
"I would have thought saving this country from the dead would have done just that," she remarked, unable to purge all her bitterness at the North's lack of gratitude. "The nobles would have never accepted me, like they accept her...the dragons would always pose too much of a threat to their power. But the dragons cursed me. I never saw this land through its people, through the eyes of the smallfolk, the villages, the farms and mills. The lords would never have loved me, but they wouldn't have had a choice if the lies they told me as a child weren't lies...that the people truly cried out for my name day and night."
He sat next to her in regret, and she remembered sitting like this with him in the Great Pyramid, when they both believed in so much to come.
"There were so many other ways the game could have been played." His mouth twitched. "Sansa has ordered that you be treated to all the courtesies and comforts due a queen, until we reach King's Landing."
If their roles were reversed, would she had done the same for Sansa?
"Where they'll kill me."
"I get to live and rethink and regret my mistakes, every day, for the rest of my life," Tyrion said. If he was trying to comfort her, he was failing. Again. "Have you heard, the new Queen is demoting me?"
"Master of Law," she said, having overheard the lords talking, now that there was little else left her to do. "Can you change the law to make me Queen instead," she asked. And the dwarf actually stared at her in disbelief, until she laughed, and he laughed too. Was that how far she gone she had been, that her former hand believed her no longer capable of a joke?
"She told me, if I truly believed in what was once our cause, that I could serve it still. 'Break her wheel', she said, 'but with laws, not fire. Help me make this a country of laws, so that no queen or king or lord or dragon may find it so easy to inflict suffering upon others.'"
He had no compunctions now speaking frankly to her. Had he been so afraid in those days before King's Landing? Could he have lumped her in with all the rest of them then? Would she have listened?
She set her hand upon his, feeling him jump at her touch. There were so few people she could make her peace with left.
"Do it then. Tell me you will do it, that you will break the wheel for her, for me, so I can go to my grave believing in something."
Tears in his eyes, he rose and knelt before her on the hard tent floor one last time.
"I swear it then, in sight of the Old Gods and the New, that I will break the wheel, that I will make this world a better place, that I will do whatever I can to atone for my mistakes and yours. You saved me once, when I was at my worst...and that's a debt I still have yet to pay. They'll never build statues of you in King's Landing, where you don't deserve them. Or Winterfell, where you do. But may they sing songs of you in the villages and the countryside, in times to come."
The sight of him rising was blurred by her own watery eyes, and they hugged, out of all things, clutching each other tightly, before the Half Man staggered from her tent, clearly in search of the strongest wine the Wolf Queen had.
"It can't be poison."
She was about to scold her, for possessing the gall to intrude so brazenly into her tent, before remembering that she was her prisoner now, and would be until her death.
"You have to die of course," Sansa continued, standing tall, this grim, glum woman who would take her throne, who did not even seem happy about it. "You understand why. And the sentence must be delivered before all the lords to witness. Other than that, I'll allow you your choice in how it's done."
Was this what she was reduced to now? Her legacy, to end as a creature to be pitied by others?
"Does it scare you," she asked, sitting upon her bed, "to order a death of a queen?" She wanted to stand, to face her directly, so that Sansa could not look so down upon her so easily, but her legs were so tired now.
"It has to be done, to end the war." There was no joy in her voice, and Daenerys wondered whether she was just that good at hiding her own pettiness. "I've seen enough death for a hundred lifetimes...we both have."
She does look the part, Daenerys admitted, no more and no less than herself. That had been her mistake, to underestimate her. To think that she could get rid of her by throwing her to strangers. And she hated it, how it came so easily for Sansa in this rotten land, the love and acclaim and vows of loyalty, and wondered with a child's rage why it couldn't have been so for herself. Was it her father's sins, that she would never come to escape his shadow? Was it the fault of the lords and ladies, their obstinacy, their own selfish desires? Or was it her own fault, that she thought too much of the throne and too little of the people who follow it? In the back of her mind she remembered the bells. It had to be done, she had thought then, she told herself every night. To save the realm, to secure it from tyranny for all time. Yet she had lost, hadn't she? Did that mean all the innocents of King's Landing she had killed truly in vain, that she could never create a world where their deaths were justified? She could not bear that to be the truth, she would break if it was.
"You'll be better than the lot of them," Daenerys admitted. "You won't be a tyrant, I'll grant you that."
She thought she saw a smirk in her lips. It was there, and it stayed. "I wouldn't be so sure." Walking up to the bed, Sansa took a seat next to her, the same place Tyrion had sat. Could she attack the new queen, she wondered, choke the life out of the wretched woman, and reclaim what was hers? No. It's over. It's entirely over.
"Before the Battle at Gardener's Crossing, I ordered the lords I didn't trust at the front of the line, the first through the narrows, where we knew you would send the Dothraki. Jonos Bracken, Warryn Beesbury...Warryn knew it, and said as much so. He tried to rape Lady Tarly in the camp. I spared him because I needed his men then, but not by the final battle. Lady Tarly would not have been his first, I've no doubt. I told him, I whispered into his ear, that if he survived the battle, I would order him gelded with a dull blade, then sodomized by a flaming hot poker until he died. They all died, all those lords I put there."
"Good," Daenerys said coldly. She approved, of course she did. And it gave her small comfort that only a woman as ruthless as herself could beat her.
"I imagine the rest of my life will be filled with horrible deeds, with ordering the deaths of others. We didn't need the wildfire. The battle could have been won had we charged Yurik's throne, hid behind the hill, then attacked your Dothraki from the flank. But the lords desired revenge for King's Landing. So we flung it upon your men. Your Unsullied, your Dothraki...they're not innocent...not after King's Landing. But they still fought with us in Winterfell. I ordered them burnt anyway, and I would have ordered them slaughtered to the very last man had Grey Worm not agreed."
"It's not easy, is it? Pleasing the men. Making them fear you...making them see your strength."
She wanted to give up, to lie down and dive into the bliss of sleep, her last resort. But she would not break before her.
"No," Sansa admitted, betraying a tenderness in her eye towards her, their first tenderness since they had spoken since Winterfell. "And I'll have to fight it the rest of my life. We both suffered, you and I. Jon, Arya, my family, everyone's family. If I'm to be Queen, if I'm the protector of my realm now, I'll do it. I'll have it so people no longer have to suffer like we did, not if I can help it. So that the rapers and the killers and the plotters meet their justice, a justice so gruesome that other wicked men and women will be too fearful to follow in their example. And I will continue to do horrible things for the rest of my life to make it so. That's the story I'll have to to tell myself, every night, so that I can sleep, for the rest of my days."
"I hate you," she whispered slowly, word by agonizing word, to Sansa, who showed no reaction, considering it was open truth. As she continued she heard her voice breaking, her emotions finally threatening to emerge into the open. "I shouldn't hate you. You shouldn't have hated me. We...we could have accomplished great things together, you and I."
She imagined a word where they had not been enemies. Where her father had not burned the Starks, and there had never been a rebellion. Where she sat upon her throne, proper inheritance be damned, a just and strong queen, and Sansa Stark beside her as her Hand, punishing the wicked men in the world who would crush them both. Who could go against them, the greatest reign the realm could ever know?
"We could have," Sansa said, eyes meeting hers, her voice still soft, a woman's, not a queen's. Jorah had been right, after all. How had she not been able to win her over in Winterfell, or after? Had it ever been possible? "If I wasn't who I am, and you weren't who you are."
It was inevitable, her tears. But if she had to cry, better it before a woman than a man.
"I left a man that loved me, for this. I left a city that loved me."
Daario loved her, with all his heart. Daario was valiant, was violent, Daario would die for her, would kill any man or woman who crossed her path. Daario came without family ties, bloodlines and feuds and grudges that transcended generations. She thought it a weakness at the time.
"All my life, when I was a child, I wanted to see King's Landing. Get away from the cold, and the snow...I imagined my mother's castle...the southern septs, their flowery dresses, their valiant knights. This is our punishment, I think. For forgetting what we had. For wanting what we didn't need."
"Do you claim you don't want it, or do you truly don't want it?" This girl who would replace her, who would take her birthright, her life, she deserved to know into what hands she was placing her legacy.
"I truly don't," Sansa stated. But then, they both knew that wasn't the full truth. "I wasn't meant for it...not this throne. I never asked for it, but I suppose I deserve it...not for my good deeds, but for my sins. I have it now...I truly have it...and I'm stuck to everything it entails so long as I draw breath."
"The Gods are cruel, aren't they? They rip us root and stem from our hopes and our wants, and torment us with what we can't have...high and low alike."
"Fuck the Gods." Her words and her tone would shock her bannermen, of which there were certainly many now. To Daenerys, it only confirmed the mask the wolf had always worn.
"Is that what you said to your High Septon, when he blessed you as the chosen of the Gods?"
The grin she received in return was one she could only receive from a fellow queen. "I won't patronize you. You know better than anyone what you lose, when you wear a crown. I did dream of one though, while you slept."
The woman had the audacity now to place a hand on hers as she continued to speak treason, but Daenerys found her heart so sapped that she could not even bring herself to continue hating her. Was that the true cost of defeat, that she would be robbed of even the ability, the right, to direct her hatred towards those who deserved it?
"Perhaps Jon could have taken it back, had you not waken," Sansa continued. "He would have given it to me though, I think, that's Jon...he wants not for himself. It's his weakness. And it's also why we all love him. And I would have taken it, and worn a crown, but in my own home, over my own people. It seemed so easy then."
"I never had a home," Daenerys said. The woman next to her had suffered much, she knew. It had been the thought of home, the hope of home, that carried Sansa through it all. "You did go back home, and home was a real place for you. That's why you fought for it. That's why you fought me for it. When I suffered, I thought of home too. This land. But this land is a strange one, I never knew it, it never knew me. In the east, Essos, Pentos, the Dothraki Sea...all strange lands as well. Yes, many loved me there. I surrendered to you, so I could save what I could of those people I brought here, what's left of them anyway. But there were many more that hated me, that saw me as you do...a conquering stranger. I do think sometimes though, I never should have left. But I'm glad I did. Even if I did not find a home, even though I lost the throne I coveted more than my own life...there was no one I loved there."
"Jon."
They both smiled at his name.
"I met a man who loves me. I met the last man I'll love. " She looked at Sansa, and summoned what remained of Daenerys Stormborn. "I met the man who will end my life."
Understanding, then horror, dawned in the new queen's eyes.
"You said I can choose how I go. That's my choice...Your Grace."
"You can't," she protested, as if she were still a subject of hers. "It'll break him."
"He'll live though. I heard you already made him a Stark. You'll give him one crown or another. Men will continue to worship him. He'll find new friends, new lovers, and one day, when he's old, and his hair is gray, and his legs limping as he walks, he'll wonder if he even remembers my face. I love Jon Snow. But he's not the one who deserves pity. Not from me at least. He'll kill me, but he's the only one left who'll do so with love."
Sansa nodded, and rose to leave.
"I won't order him. But I'll ask."
They both knew that would be enough.