Chapter Fifty-Four: The Mother of Dragon

Off the Shore of Dragonstone

Daenerys Targaryen

Daenerys Targaryen did not much enjoy boats.

Oh, as a child, she had loved them. Loved the feel of wind in her hair, the lurching wood under her feet, and the stale scent of sea that seemed to invade every spare section of the ship. She'd loved laughing with the oarsmen, counting the birds that flew overhead, and trying every type of wine the captain offered her. Viserys chastised them all for it, and each time they tried to offer her a hard piece of bread, the dragon would come out, and he would rage until the sun rose. But that was no different on land than on sea, and so she never let it color her voyages.

Now, though, when she had felt wind in her hair at a height no man could ever cross, when she had known the feel of a warm body beneath her feet that roared bright red flames into the endless sky, as the fresh airs coursed past her…

She did not like ships. She doubted she ever would again.

They had been sailing for two nights, and the journey was far brighter than it had been before. Duskendale, too, had been a prettier sight. The ships had been waiting for them there, as King Rykker had promised. He was a petty king, to be sure, but a king nonetheless, and one who had been more than grateful to Dany for abandoning the crown. He had offered a fleet, if she wished it, but Dany had as much need for a fleet as she did for a throne. She asked for two ships and two crews, and Rykker had provided well.

Now, as Dragonstone loomed ahead of her, she could hardly bear the rocking of oak underfoot, nor the ever-beating drum that kept the oarsmen at pace, nor the sound of the captain crying their commands. Waves crashed against the mighty hull and splattered over the two crossing war hammers at the mast. They stained the sails too, and the blue field caught against the cold grey skies. The sight might have worried Dany, if not for the few beams of light that still shone between the fogs. Sunlight. It still lived.

Once, Dany had loved night. Now, the sight of the black sky was enough to send shivers down her spine. She was grateful they were landing in the day.

Jon's hand came to rest on her shoulder. His touch was grounding; it always was. When she looked to him, his smile was too. "Almost there," he told her. "Another hour's sail, the captain says."

It was true. Through the ocean fogs, she could see stone dragons twisting and twirling across the land on which she had been born. Some were blue, some red, and some black as pitch (black as Drogon, she thought, painfully), but all were covered with a thin white film. Ice and snow and cold. The Night King's magic had touched this land, even if he himself had not.

"An hour's sail."

"He's there."

"I know," she said. "I can feel him." She really could. She could feel the warmth beneath her palms, the heat flushing through her lungs. Even as the winter winds assaulted her, the warmth of Dragonstone – the warmth of a dragon – surged through her very soul.

Jon leaned just over the edge of the bannister. "Aye," he whispered to the wind. "I think I can too."

"He let you ride him," Dany said.

"He knows I love his mother." His smile was a shaky thing, but it was enough to make her smile.

Still, the thought bothered her. Like a little rat screeching behind a castle wall.

There had been others who had loved her in her life. Daario Naharis, who had been loyal to the bone, but who Rhaegal had never been kind to. Jorah Mormont, who had loved her as truly as any, but who never commanded Rhaegal. Tyrion, who may not have loved her as a man loves a woman, but who was loyal, and who Rhaegal had not submitted to.

Viserion had not bowed to any. Drogon had bowed to her. Rhaegal had bowed to Jon Stark of Winterfell. Why?

"It's more than that," she said.

"A wise assertion, my lady."

She spun to face the sudden voice and was met by a green shadow in the shape of a man. A short man, to be sure. His cowl was pulled over his eyes, shielding them from the bitter winds. She supposed she could not blame him. From what she had heard of his home in the Neck, there were many trees, but few winds.

"Lord Reed," Jon greeted him, warmly enough. "I hadn't seen you there."

"Few men do," Lord Reed answered. "The crannog doesn't produce many men of height."

"Nor does Winterfell, it seems," Jon said, laughing.

Lord Reed's smile did not stretch far past his lips. If anything, the man looked grim. "Queen Sansa was tall enough, and King Robb, if I recall it true."

"You met Robb?"

Lord Reed nodded. "He came through the Neck after Ned…" He sighed, hung his head. His cowl fell to his shoulders, and a scalp full of grey hair shook back and forth. "King Robb never saw them, but my people saw him. I'm told he looked a great deal like his uncle." He looked to Jon then. "And you like yours."

"Benjen."

Reed hummed. "Some." He looked to Dany. "You remind me of your brother."

That surprised Dany more than anything else he had said. "I had two brothers," she said.

"The older one. Rhaegar. I saw him on the Trident. You have his look."

"You were at the Trident?"

"I helped lead the Northern host alongside Ned Stark." He did not so much as glance at Jon when he said it. His narrowed eyes remained on Dany. "He fought well."

Nobly, she thought. Valiantly. Honorably.

"Did you know him?"

"Only in battle." He hummed again. "But I knew… his mission."

"His mission?"

The waves must have struck the ship hundreds of times before Lord Reed spoke again. The oarsmen called out their orders, an endless squalor of voices that melded together into a muddled mess of sound. The minutes moved by, and Dragonstone moved closer, and only when they were what must have been a mile nearer to the shore did he speak. "I learned… After, I learned. Rhaegar heard a prophecy."

Dany frowned, but it was Jon that spoke. "A prophecy?"

Lord Reed stepped back, returning his cowl to its place against his eyes. He offered them a thin smile and waved to the sands at the shore. "Perhaps now is not the time. Meet with your dragon. Temper your fears. And, when the time is right, meet me in the Sea Dragon's Tower, where the maester used to toil. If Stannis did not burn the halls, you will find your answers there."

How do you know of the Sea Dragon's Tower? she wondered. Dany had not seen it written of in any books, nor heard talk of it before she landed on the island's shores. A crannogman of the Neck should not have heard tale of it any more than she had. "Have you been to Dragonstone before, Lord Reed?"

"Once. After the war." He met Jon's eyes then. "Sea Dragon's Tower. As soon as you will it, my lord." He nodded to Dany. "My lady." Then, he took his leave. They would meet again on different lands on a different day. They would meet again come morning.

#

Their landing was as easy as their sailing. Oh, there were a few difficult moments. The captain had to be more careful around a few passing icebergs and ice patches – two things he claimed he had never seen south of the Bay of Seals – but the general journey was simple enough. Docking was more difficult than it ought to have been, with all the boats lining the shore, but before Dany could even begin to complain, she was standing on snow and drifting away from the icy seas.

Where she ran across the slick sands, Jon followed at no more than a brisk walk. He glanced back and forth, ever-watching for some enemy or another, but Dany cared for none of that. Rhaegal was near! Her last surviving son was near! Cersei Lannister could have leapt across the sands herself and dragged along the corpses of all the Targaryens of old, and Dany would have still run past to find her son. He was what mattered. All else was silk.

The island was silent as an unsullied scream. No birds could be heard from the high halls, nor voices echoing from chambers, nor hammers at work in the smithy or the mines. This castle died with Drogon and Jorah, and she thought it might never live again.

She followed the trail of smoke, hidden behind the great walls of the Stone Drum. She ran across the island, only stopping when her legs were near-collapse, and even then she merely slowed to a walk. Jon followed. Jon always followed her.

Half of an hour had passed before she came across the flames. There, behind a sea of white and red snow, sat her last living son.

Rhaegal was larger than she remembered him. There, with his leg twisted at his side, he stood taller than even Drogon had in the end. A winding green tail sat beneath mounds of snow, the tip breaking through as it beat back and forth at the sight of them. It calmed, some, when he caught her eyes. Bronze as coin and brighter than she had ever recalled them.

A beautiful screech tore from his mouth, as he tilted his head back and spewed a bright yellow fire into the morning sky. Ripples of green danced in the yellow, and it was all Dany could do not to drown in the sight.

She had named him for Rhaegar Targaryen, who had died on the green banks of the Trident. The name, it seemed, suited him well. For Rhaegal looked as valiant as any, even with the scars stretching across his wounded knee. His bronze eyes must have matched the skin of Rhaegar's son, and the red snow before him, the rubies from his armor.

"He lived," Jon whispered, as awed as she felt.

He lived. Daenerys Targaryen had not cried since she had been sold to Khal Drogo when she was a woman barely bled. Yet now, her cheeks were as wet as they had ever been, and she did not care at all.

Rhaegal did not flinch away as she set her palm upon his waiting wing. The heat of his skin felt like a gift from all the gods that had abandoned her. She wrapped her arm around a claw and set her face against his scales. Though she knew him to be hard as stone, to her he felt no harder than a featherbed.

Far from her side, Jon was pressing a hand to his chest. Rhaegal's wingspan had grown since she had seen him last. He might rival the Stone Drum, soon, or even Balerion. The thought made her proud and pained at once. It was Drogon who was meant to be Balerion reborn, not you. And it is because of me that he is not.

"We killed him," she whispered to Rhaegal's claws. "The Night King."

A single bronze eye settled on her, as he launched into another screech. This time, it was not a cry of pain or relief. It was a cry of victory, and she knew the sound all too well.

The Night King had taken Viserion and Drogon, but he had not taken Rhaegal, and he never would. None of them ever would.

They both leaned back against him. They might have sat for minutes or hours, just content in his company, before she finally spoke.

"I named him after Drogo," Dany said. It was little more than a whisper on the wind, but Jon turned to face her all the same. "Drogon after the khal, Viserion after my brother, and Rhaegal after the other."

"You loved him," Jon said. "Drogo."

She nodded. "It was hard at first. I was a girl, and he was a man. He was twice my size and twice as fierce. But it grew. We both did. Together."

He grinned, a mad grin with all his teeth. "I hope not. He was already twice your size."

It might not have been enough to make her laugh on a normal day, but it was enough then. She laid back against Rhaegal's ribs and laughed until it warmed even her coldest wounds. "You could stand to grow some."

"Two height japes in a day," he said. "Soon I'll have a complex."

"I distinctly remember you making the first."

He shrugged. "Maybe I have one already. I spent enough time with Tormund."

"The wildling?"

"Free folk," Jon corrected, softly. "He was the red haired one. The loud one. Tormund Tall-Talker, they called him."

"I remember a few more names too."

"Aye, he had a few. Too many."

"More than you, King-in-the-North."

He let loose a startled laugh. "Aye, Davos was a good man, but not so good a talker."

"Grey Worm was the same. In all the years I knew him, I doubt he ever spoke more than a few words at a time. But he was loyal. He was good." He was dead.

They were quiet for a while. Dany spent the time listening to Rhaegal's breaths. They came short and stuttered, as they always had since he was no more than a child at his mother's shoulder. Birthed from fire, puffing for air, and only ever breathing well when he was in the midst of the flames.

Rhaegal had not flown in many moons, if the state of his leg was any indication. She wondered how he had faired, while Dany had been tending to the politics of a people she did not know.

I should have been here. I should have been with him. She rubbed the toe of her boot into the snow and watched the flakes fall. The whole of Westeros would have died if I had been.

History would remember Arya Stark of Winterfell, but Dany would remember Drogon of the Dothraki Sea. The dragon who had chosen her, Balerion reborn, only to die amongst the dead. A tale for the songs that might never be written.

But Dany did not care for songs, and she never truly had. She had loved the mummer's plays of Braavos – the ones she had snuck into whenever Ser Willem looked away. There would be a mummer's play someday, and someday some mummer might play Drogon, she knew. For tragedy and for laughs and for drama, but they would play him. And, if what Jon had told her of their fight was true, they would play Rhaegal and Viserion too, high in the mountains of the Eyrie and brave and fierce as any mother could hope her sons would be.

Someone somewhere across the Narrow Sea would tell their story someday. And they would all play a part. Grey Worm, Missandei, Daario, Drogo, Irri, Jhiqui, Jorah Mormont, and all the rest who had lived and died by her side. Their stories would be told for all of time to come. Somewhere, children would grow to the tales of those who had come and gone, fighting for their futures.

It was a sweet thought, but bitter. She would trade all the stories in the world for the chance to see them all again. She would trade anything.

"Maester Aemon never spoke much either," Jon said, after so long, Dany had nearly forgotten he was there. "In all the time I was on the Wall, he hardly spoke to me at all. He taught me to lead, and he told me about his- your family." He let loose a long-suffering sigh. "Too many good people died in this war."

She didn't know why he mentioned him then, but that hardly mattered. "What was he like?"

"I've told you about him before, I think. He was a good man. Loyal." He stared off into the snow and clenched his sword hand. Clench, unclench. Clench, unclench. "He taught me to be a man. To kill the boy."

"Jorah did the same for me," she said. "What did he tell you of my kin? My father, my brothers, my mother…"

Jon sighed. "Little. He made sacrifices, he said."

"Sacrifices?"

"Three times, he said." He spoke far too softly. "He never said when, but… the Rebellion was one. He stayed on the Wall."

"While my family was slaughtered." She shut her eyes and listened for the beat of Rhaegal's heart. Unlike his breathing, it was quick as it ever was.

"He was an old man. Even for the Rebellion. Blind. He couldn't have helped," he said, defensively. When she failed to respond, he went on, "He wanted to meet you. More than anything. Sam said it was all he talked about in the end. You and Aegon Targaryen. Egg, Sam said he called him."

"His brother," she whispered.

"Aye. The King."

"Were you there?" She did not finish the sentence, but he must have known anyway.

"I was at Hardhome." He choked on the words, but still went on, "Sam was there. He wasn't alone. That's all any of us can ask for."

"Were you?" She stared pointedly at his chest, and he seemed to understand that too.

This time, he took even longer to answer. Long enough that Dany came to lie against Rhaegal's chest, and his wing came to settle over her. Long enough that her eyes nearly fell shut before the first word slipped his tongue. Long enough that she almost missed it when it did.

"Aye," he said, softly. He nodded once without looking to her at all. "Aye."

It was all that needed to be said. She set her head in his lap, and he dropped a hand to her hair. She could no longer see his face, but his touch was more than grounding enough. Especially as he rested her own hands on Rhaegal's side, and as the great green wing finally covered them both and warmed their frozen bones.

The black of night came to claim them as the hour of the wolf rode in. Somehow, in this place of bloodshed and terror, she felt more at peace than she had in the many years before it. More than she had been at peace in Drogo's hold, on Drogon's back, against Jorah Mormont's chest as they flew from war.

"We're safe now," Dany said.

And as much as Jon had to have known how much of a lie it was, he said nothing against it. She had never loved him more.

A/N: Okay, so I accidentally lied in the last AN, because I forgot I split this chapter. My bad? Next week, I promise! The confrontation is a lot more predictable now, of course, but still!

Uh maybe don't ask how Rhaegal is alive when there wasn't any livestock to eat. Also don't ask where the Vale children on Dragonstone went. I don't want to talk about it. (This might be the darkest fluff chapter in the history of my career as a writer).

Anyway, like I said, I ended up splitting this chapter, because Dany and Jon wanted to bond. If I'd kept it, it'd have been insanely long, so look out for a Jon next time! That's a predictable big one.