WARNING: There are mentions of sexual assault in this chapter. None very skippable, so I'll put a summary in the end notes for anyone who might feel uncomfortable reading the chapter.

Chapter Fifty-Five: Sand

The Sea Dragon's Tower

Jon Stark

As a boy in Winterfell, Jon had always loved the stories of the Targaryen kings. Old Nan had talked him to sleep with stories of Aegon the Conqueror, Daeron the Young Dragon, Aegon the Unlikely, and Jaehaerys the Old King. He and Robb used to play at kings in the courtyard, battling with stick swords the way the blacks and greens had fought with their dragons. Best of all was whenever Maester Luwin would teach them some new tale of some dragon of old, and Jon would make his way to the library to steal any of the books the old maester spoke of.

But it was not the kings who stole his attention the most, nor the dragons they rode. No, it had been Aemon the Dragonknight that had stolen into Jon's dreams each night, and Aemon the Dragonknight who came to stand for everything Jon had ever wanted to be. Not a bastard, but a noble hero. Not a treacherous Blackfyre, but a loyal man of trueborn blood. Not a monster, but a man.

And now, in the Sea Dragon's Tower, he stood where Aemon Targaryen had been born. The place where a legendary hero had first graced the world, and where the most noble of the Kingsguard had taken his first breath.

There had been no time to visit this place during the war, and there was hardly any time now, but for the moment he could appreciate the history. For a moment, he could stand in this hero's shadow in this mythical place and think of the man he'd always wanted to be.

There, in the barred bed against the wall, Aemon and a hundred other Targaryens might have taken their first breaths. There, they cradled a dragon's egg to sleep and awoke with scales and fire against their palms. There, Dany might even have been born in the midst of whatever storm had earned her her name.

Here, there had been legends made. And now Jon Stark stood among them all with a Targaryen by his side and Howland Reed across the room, staring out from the Sea Dragon's eyes.

He thought that that might have been why he felt so uncomfortable, but when Lord Reed turned to face him, he knew it was nothing of the sort. For all the man lacked in height and brawn, he had more than earned in that stare of his. It might have turned dragons to stone, if he willed it. Stone, or ice.

"The last time I was here, this isle was in ruins," Lord Reed mused. He had not turned away from the window, nor glanced at Jon's face. Jon could not say what it was he was looking to; the beaches was little more than a thick blanket of snow. "Not much has changed since. Colder, I suppose."

"Lord Reed-" Dany started.

"Howland," he corrected. "After all I did for your family, I believe I have that honor, my lady."

She frowned. "All you did for my family?"

Finally, Howland turned to face them. He looked more grim than he had in the Red Keep, when Dany had announced her refusal of the crown, and Lord Reed stared to Jon with a face like ice. His stare had not changed much since, it seemed.

"As I said," Lord Reed said. "Tell me, how much do you know of the man who ruled this castle, my lady?" He looked to Jon. "My lord?"

"He was a cold man. An evil one," Jon answered, clenching his fists at his side. "Dutiful, though. He saved my life on the Wall. Saved all our lives."

But the lord only shook his head. "Not Stannis, and not Robert either. Rhaegar."

Jon's teeth ground at that, and for a moment he reminded himself of the king who'd cared, back when no one did at all. Back when they'd sent ravens across the kingdom, until one reached this very castle. Back when they'd seen him as a hero, instead of a murderer. He'd ruled this castle as much as any other, and they'd thanked him for it.

But Stannis was dead. They all were.

Dany was already answering by the time he had wrestled back his control. "-strong. My brother used to say he was brave as any man, and fierce as any dragon."

"That he was," Lord Reed said. "We used him to call him the last dragon. I've not been more thankful to be wrong, my lady."

"He stole my father's sister," Jon said. "Raped and killed her."

Dany's hand slipped from his own. Though his fingers twitched for her, she did not answer them. "Rhaegar was-"

"He killed her?" Lord Reed said, his head cocked. "I hadn't heard."

Fire ran hot to Jon's cheeks. "You were there. Father never said, but Old Nan did. You were with Lord Stark when you found her."

"He found her, yes. Alive."

That sputtered out any residual anger or shame. Instead, there was only the bewilderment that flooded him like tide of the Blackwater so often flooded the shore. "What?"

"She was at the Tower of Joy. In Dorne. I stayed with our fallen, after I… after Ser Arthur Dayne fell." His fists clenched around the table's edge. A dozen papers fell from the desk and struck the flakes of snow that had settled on the floor. "Ned went to his sister. From what I gathered, she did not live long, but…"

"What?" Jon demanded. "But what?"

"She lived enough to see you."

He was vaguely aware of Dany stepping away, asking a dozen questions in as many seconds, but Jon only continued to stare. Swallowing, he asked, "He took me to a fight with Kingsguard?"

Jon had never known when he'd been born, nor where, but never once had he imagined – even in his wildest imaginations – that he had seen the Sword of the Morning, Ser Oswald Whent, and even the Lord Commander, before he was old enough to have known a nameday. Never could he have thought that Lord Stark would have taken him so close, nor been so reckless with a babe that could have been no older than a year.

His mother must have abandoned him on the birthing bed for him to follow his father to war. Or perhaps she had not abandoned him at all, and she had fallen ill there instead. Mayhaps that was why Lord Stark had never dared speak of her. Mayhaps his mother was not a comfort woman or some secret source of shame. She was a woman he'd loved whose life had been cut short because of Jon. The first of many.

He thought of Ygritte, and it was all he could do not to flee the room.

But no sooner had he thought her name than Howland Reed was shaking his head. "He took you nowhere. He found you there."

Jon frowned. "My mother then? She took me there?"

Lord Reed did not look away from him, but nor did his gaze settle for a moment. It seemed to look past him, transfixed on some passing horror that had never passed at all. "Your mother bore you there, Jon."

"No," Dany said, once, and then twice, and then again.

"Ned brought you down from the tower, my lord. He did not bring you up."

"This is a jape," Dany said.

"It is no jape. I had hoped the papers would be here, but it seems paper struggles to survive war as much as men. Else I imagine the maester might have moved them. We'd left them here, beneath the-" And then, he was bending, moving papers and boxes, shifting a thousand things, and flipping through a thousand others. Words slipped from his tongue like sparks from a sword. Each one more jarring than the last. Each one more painful. They all blended together into some veritable slob of betrayal.

And Jon… Jon felt nothing. Nothing at all. All that was was a numbness deep in his bones. A stinging sense of wrongness like pins beneath his skin. A thousand needles driving past his every piece of plate and leather, picking him apart and leaving his every drop of blood to spill to the unforgiving earth.

Perhaps it had all been a dream, this life. The Night King had claimed him in the battle, and Arya's killing had only been a shade in a dream. This past moon had been naught but a moment of weakness before the sword drove through him and brought him to the Night King's side.

Father was not my father. Robb was not my brother. Arya is not my sister. Dany is my-

He fled the room, one foot at a time. Step by step by step. When he made it to the battlements, he leaned his head between the stone walls and loosed every morsel from his stomach onto those great and proud steps. Rhaegar Targaryen had walked those steps.

My father… my father...

Something soft as a feather, or some woman's touch, came to caress at his back. He could hardly feel it through his leathers and his panic, but it calmed him some. Just enough that he could take a shuddering breath before he came to retch again.

His whole life, he had built his dreams around the name "Stark". He had crafted his existence around a castle he would never have. Had forged his identity around a name that would not be his. Had fashioned his morals around the man who bore the name, and he had mourned brothers and sisters that he had thought were his own.

If none of that was his, who was he? Who was Jon Snow, but the bastard of Winterfell? Who was Jon Stark, but a brother to Sansa, Arya, and Bran? What was a man, but his name?

He had never feared his mother raped. Never once in all his years had it even crossed his mind. Ned Stark was a good and honorable man. He would never have touched a woman without her say, would never have dreamt of it.

Rhaegar Targaryen was no honorable man. Rhaegar had taken a woman barely bled into his bed and forced a son on her. A woman scarcely old enough to marry, and he had taken her so many times, she'd died of it. Died of him.

Jon was the product of that. The son of a raper. The son of a monster. The son of a man who had thrown aside a wife of his own and two children for a woman of four-and-ten. A kingdom had fallen, in part due to that man. No, in all due to that man. Grandfather and Uncle Brandon – still his uncle, still his grandfather, and it was all he could do to keep that straight – had been burned because of Rhaegar. Alliser Thorne had taken great care to remind him of that, whenever the man found himself too far in his cups. Lord Rickard burned and Uncle Brandon strangled.

Because of his mother. Because of his father. Because of Jon.

He found more in his stomach. It found the floor.

"Breathe," a voice whispered. Dany. She sounded as distraught as he felt. "In and out," she told him. "In and out."

It took him a long while before he could. And, in the time it took him to gather himself again, Howland Reed had taken a seat beside him on the stairs, his head pressed into his waiting palms.

"In truth, I had not thought this would be your reaction," Lord Reed said, peaceably.

"My father was a raper," Jon hissed. The soft touch left his back, and he missed it more than any he had ever known.

"Rhaegar loved her," Daenerys said, "and she him."

"Aye, did she?" He swallowed down the bile in his throat. It tasted of rotted meats and curdled milk. It tasted of a lifetime on the Wall and ashes in his mouth. It tasted of dragon breath. "Did she love him when his father burned her own, killed her brother? Did she love him when she was dying of a son he'd left her with? Did she love him when he took her from Winterfell, from her brothers?"

"Rhaegar couldn't have known-"

"Aye, he couldn't have! When he left his wife to Tywin Lannister, he couldn't have known!" His hands were fisted at his side, and his teeth were grinding the way Stannis' used to, a lifetime ago. "When he left my au- my moth- her to go die in a field, he couldn't have known!"

"This all is more complicated than it seems, my lord. Please, I beg of you, let me explain."

"Explain, Lord Reed," Jon said. He swallowed down the ashes in his mouth. Sansa is not my sister. Arya is not my sister. Robb was not my brother. Bran was not my brother. Rickon was not my brother, and I killed him all the same.

"It is the same for you as her. Howland." He shook his head. "And it is a difficult thing to explain, my lord."

"I'm no lord," Jon hissed, suddenly angrier than he had ever been. Rage flowed through him like fire in his veins. Dragonfire in his veins. I am a Targaryen. No, a bastard Targaryen. The Blackfyres are my blood, and they tore apart Westeros for a seat on a throne they did not deserve. Bastard, bastard, bastard.

"You were a king," Howland told him. "This does not change that."

"It changes nothing," Dany said.

It changes everything. It stunned him that she could not see that.

I love you still, he wanted to tell her, but he held his tongue and sighed. "Dany, you're my- we're kin. Blood."

"And?" she said. "Targaryens have wed for centuries. This is no different."

"I am a Stark!" he said, so strongly that he almost believed it himself. It stunned him as much as it did her. For a long moment, he found himself staring at the sickness on his fingers and wishing himself back in King's Landing with his sisters. Cousins.

He heard the squall of a bird and the beat of wings that he knew to be Bran's. Heard him find his way to Howland's shoulder, heard him cry the cry of the one he'd thought was his brother. Cousin, now. A cousin he'd failed.

A hand settled on his shoulder. He tried to push it away, but it stayed all the same, "Lady Sansa was kind to legitimize you," Howland told him, "and it was the dutiful and just thing to do, but she made one mistake." Jon looked to catch the man's eyes, and he saw naught there but pity. "She gave you the wrong name."

"No," Jon said. "You're lying. I am not- I look like my father! They all say it! Craster knew me by my face."

"You look like your mother," Howland said. "Ned happened to share her look. It's a lucky thing he did, else Robert might have killed you in the cradle."

"Eddard Stark saved a Targaryen," Dany breathed, barely louder than a whisper. It was almost a question, coming off her tongue.

But Howland only shook his head. With his move, a thin black feather came to fall from Bran's wing. It landed before Jon, fluttering in the wind. When Howland spoke, his voice was soft as silk. Soft as the feather. "Ned saved a Sand and called him 'Snow'."

Jon startled at that. Am I no Snow either? Not a Stark or a Snow, but a lie in man's skin.

"Snow!" Bran said, as if in retort. "Snow!"

Dany was undeterred. "And yet he carries the blood of Old Valyria, same as I and my father."

"The blood of the First Men with it." He gazed at Jon's hair, his skin, his eyes. "The Valyrian shows little. Though the dragon seems to see it all the same. Or did you never wonder why it let you ride it?"

"Rhaegal…" Jon muttered. This was no jape. For all that Tormund, the Hound, and the others had ridden on dragonback, it was Jon who could control him. Jon and Dany. Only them. In all the dragon's years, it was only those two.

"Named for your father." Howland, it seemed, was not so grim as to keep from cracking a smile. "Fitting. What were the others?"

"Drogon," Dany answered, reverently. "Drogon, Viserion, and Rhaegal."

"Good names," Howland said, as if any of them cared for the names of her dragons when Jon's entire life had been flipped upside down, and everything he had ever known had been a lie. Ned Stark, the most honorable man in the Seven Kingdoms, had lied to him for more than half of his years, and he'd never bothered to tell the truth. Not in life nor death.

He thought of the day he saw Lord Stark last. Next time we see each other, we'll talk about your mother. They never met again, but Jon had never doubted that the man would have kept his word. Now, it was not nearly so clear. Could the Hand of the King truly aid the son of a man the King usurped? He'd have been killed for it. They'd both have been.

But Howland went on, as if Jon was not crumbling inside. "Have you thought of what to name the next?"

"Next!" Bran cried.

Dany's hand had returned to his thigh, but now the fingers tightened. "What next?" she asked.

"The dragon," Howland said. "You may need more than one to keep the North alive in the winter. Fire will be important."

Dany stared at him, her brows crinkling. "I cannot hatch more."

"Salt!" Bran said. "Rock!"

Howland smiled and nodded to the bird. "Have you tried?"

Dany might have gone on, but Jon no longer had the patience for the Lord Reed's games. "None of this matters. Why keep the secret all this time? Why not tell me? Why not tell everyone?"

Howland smiled a shadow of a smile. There was something old in it, and something grim. Something as dark as the dried mud on his spear and as cold as the world around them. Though Howland wore more grey hairs than brown, Jon had never before thought him so old as he looked now. "I have great respect for your uncle," he told him, "and for your mother. When I was a boy no older than you, she saved me from a clan of me, all bigger than her, stronger than her, and surely better trained. But she did it because I was her man, a son of the North. She asked for no reward, nor honors, nor any other. She could have let me die that day, yet she chose to save me, at great risk for herself." The smile faded, and all that was left was the sorrow. "I owe her a debt, my lord.

"So I kept her secret, and I protected her son. I stayed in the Neck, where none could come to question me, nor trick me into speaking where it might be best to say nothing at all. And you lived. You thrived. A debt repaid."

Thrived. Jon clenched his burned hand. "Why tell me now?"

"Why not? There is no seat to be had, nor threat to be seen."

It dawned on him then, like the cowl of a cloak suddenly thrust over his eyes. Only, now, he could truly see what had been hidden. "You thought I would usurp the throne."

A single slow nod. "I did not know you then, my lord. I could not say if you were a Daemon Blackfyre or a Brandon Snow. A Brynden Rivers, or an Aegor."

Bran perked up at that, but Jon didn't care. He did not know how to feel, nor did he know what to say. You know nothing, Jon- Sand. Sand. He was a Sand. Not a Stark, or a Snow, or even a Targaryen. A Sand. No, a Snow still. Born in Dorne, but raised in the North. Raised by the Starks, with the Starks. Legitimized by one. Falsely legitimized by one.

"What am I?" he asked. Somehow, his voice did not waver.

Lord Reed met Jon's eyes, and there was nothing on his face but pride. "You are the men that raised you. Ned, Benjen, and all those you must have known on the Wall. Not your mother-" He looked closer, squinting harshly all the while. "-but not your father either." He leaned back, satisfied. "You are Jon Snow."

"Snow!" Bran agreed.

Snow. Not Stark. Snow. And my own brother – cousin, cousin – says it.

"Jon," Dany said, suddenly. But when he turned to face her, she was looking away. To Howland. "Is that his true name?"

"Yes. At birth they called him Aemon, but he is no more Aemon than your brother is king. Birth, you'll find, means little of late," Howland said, as if it was nothing at all. As if it was just another meaningless detail in a story that bored him. As if Jon's life was just something to be told and forgotten, told and forgotten.

Aemon Snow.

"For the knight?" he said. This time, his voice truly did betray him. It came no louder than the whisper of a mouse.

"I never knew," Howland said, "but I always thought it more. Rhaegar was said to have named you before you were ever born. He was no man to do these things without reason. Visenya or Aemon, Ned said. Said your mother never knew which. She passed too soon."

My mother never saw me, he thought. There was an ache in his heart that stung like a thousand knives.

Howland rose, hands on his knees and shoulders stretching to ease some secret soreness. "I've spoken much, and I imagine you both have much to think on. We can speak again in Winterfell, before I return to the Neck. For now, think on what I have said. Think on who you will be and what you will do." He nodded his head to Dany, and then to Jon. Aemon. "My Lady. My Lord."

And then, he left, and Bran with him. His green cloak dusted the floor where he walked, taking with it too many long black feathers, as Jon was left to stew on this secret – this news that had been hidden for decades. News that was never meant to come to light. News that his father – his uncle – had gone to the grave to keep.

Jon looked to Dany, and she looked to him. Neither said a word. Neither could find one to say. Instead, Dany slipped her fingers into Jon's – a silent message that she was still there, by his side, no matter the struggle or strife. And Jon squeezed back, because he was too. With her. Always.

And if he stared at the stone walls stunned for several hours more, Dany did not say a thing to stop him. Never had he loved her more.

A/N: Before we start- the summary I promised: Howland reveals that R+L=J, and Jon isn't happy about it. He and Dany fight over the guilt of Rhaegar, as Jon thinks about what happened to Lyanna, his uncle, and his grandfather seemingly because of him. Dany sides with Rhaegar. Both are calmed by Howland, who reveals that Jon's real name is Aemon, and asks why Dany hasn't made any more dragons yet. Jon is horrified, but finds comfort in Dany, while the writer assures everyone in the comments that he'll keep his promises and stick to the tags.

Alright, so we've been waiting a while for this one, huh?

I had a bit of a retcon here, but hopefully you'll forgive me. Rhaegar having two sons named Aegon was just too fundamentally stupid for me to accept. In addition, I am keeping with canon that Rhaegar and Lyanna married, however, Howland couldn't know that. Sam knew, and Bran, but Sam is dead and Bran is a bird. Howland never knew, so he just assumes Jon a bastard. Also a marriage can't actually be annulled if it produces children so he was absolutely still a bastard in the show and I am protesting.

Anyway, it's time to check in with our final Gendry chapter, as the team says their goodbyes to the Riverlords as the team makes their way North, and as we continue closing down some emotional arcs and character lines.