Jon strained his eyes into the dark as Rhaegal's broad wings stirred the air into whipping torrents. From his vantage point on Rhaegal's back hundreds of feet up, all he could see was black below. No longer concerned by another threat from above, Jon guided Rhaegal down, hoping they would spot any white walkers before they themselves were spotted.
The air went from his lungs at the sight of Winterfell.
The walls were blackened and cold.
All the fires had been snuffed out.
The dead surged through openings and over walls like a horde of ants overwhelming a single grasshopper. Size and strength were nothing against an enemy with seemingly endless numbers.
Despite their preparation and plans, Winterfell had fallen to the dead.
His throat burned with bile. He'd lamented agreeing to send those unable to fight in a caravan headed west to the Ironborn's ships, but seeing Winterfell now, he realized they would have been no better protected had they stayed. In the end, it didn't matter how hard they'd tried to prepare and anticipate the moves of their enemy, they'd still failed. In the end, it seemed there was no safe way through this endless night.
Gods, let some of their people have made it out.
Jon shifted their heading toward the Godswood, speeding in a losing race against time.
"What was that." Arya demanded as the man and wife faded away and she and Bran were transplanted to somewhere else, somewhere colder.
"Azor Ahi." Bran said.
Arya frowned, she recalled the name from some of Old Nan's stories. Some hero of legend, but she couldn't remember the particulars.
"Why did he have Ice?" She demanded.
"He did not." Bran said. "He had Lightbringer."
"I know what I saw." Arya insisted.
"You saw what you need to." Bran corrected.
Arya let out a growl of frustration and grabbed the front of her brother's shirt.
"I don't understand." She snapped. "Stop playing games with me and explain."
"I can't," Bran said. "If I have to explain, you'll never understand.
"A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing." A warbling voice cut through their conversation.
Arya looked around and saw a wizened old man with white hair and milky eyes seated before a fire. beside him at a table sat Sam, though younger than she'd ever seen him.
"Maester Aemon."
She looked around and saw Jon in the doorway, his hands clasped behind his back. He had the look of a boy who thought he had the weight of the world on his shoulders but had yet to learn what that weight truly looked like.
"Lord Commander." The old man said in reply.
"Sam, I'd like to speak to the maester alone."
With the scuff of a chair sliding back, Sam was on his feet, gathering up his papers, and headed out the door.
Once alone, Jon made his way to the old man and took Sam's emptied seat, shifting to face the old man who starred unseeingly toward the fire.
"How are you feeling?"
"Oh like a hundred year old man slowly freezing to death." The maester said, the hint of a chuckle in his weary voice.
"I need your advice. There's something I want to do. Something I have to do. But it will divide the Night's Watch. Bitterly. Half the men will hate me the moment I give the order."
"Half the men hate you already, Lord Commander. Do it." Authority rang in the old voice.
"But you don't know what its is…"
"That doesn't matter." The maester interrupted. "You do. You'll find little joy in your command. But with luck, you'll find the strength to do what needs to be done. Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy, and let the man be born."
Arya looked to her brother, the words hitting her with the weight of a thousand years. She thought she was beginning to understand, and she also knew with sudden certainty that understanding was a burden she didn't want and couldn't refuse.
Jon kept his gaze fixed on the darker spot within the darkness that he knew to be the Godswood. Maester Aemon had warned him long ago that his path would lead to little joy. He'd always believed those words from the moment the maester imparted the wisdom onto him. He'd excepted his burden to be a heavy one. Never doubted that with the weight of leadership came a degree of certainty that one's path would be riddled with misery. That certainty was only solidified when he'd been murdered by his own men for doing what he believed to be right. Being brought back just seemed to be another cruelty. That was, until the gods returned deigned to return Sansa to him.
After the execution of the man he'd spent his whole life believing to be his father, the thought he'd never see any of the Starks again, but he especially thought his path would never cross with Sansa's. She would marry a king or prince or lord. Nothing would bring her back to the North or him.
Even when he had word of her marriage to the Bolton bastard, he knew she might as well have been a world away.
But then he'd looked down into the yard of Castle Black and seen a waif, almost unrecognizable beneath the years and filth of her journey.
He remembered his first meal with her after Brienne delivered her to Castle Black. She'd been starved and neglected for longer than he could bear to imagine, but still ate like the lady her lady mother had raised.
He'd known without her tell the abuse Ramsay had subjected her to. He'd seen too many things on the wall and beyond it to be naive to what some men were capable of. Her trauma was written in the way she shied away from the other brothers of the Night's Watch but not him.
And from that moment, nothing at all mattered more than insuring she never again had a reason to cower in fear from anyone.
He would be her safety and she was his joy.
It was a sick joke of the gods that even now his duty required him to sacrifice his joy to the dangers of this dark night to save the masses.
The maester warned him that love was the death of duty, but he hadn't found that to be true. No matter how much he loved Sansa, he could not turn his back on the greater good for the sake of one, no matter how precious that one was to him. Perhaps the maester had been right, but if that were so, then Ygritte was right too. Because his love, no matter how deep, was not the death of duty. So it only stood to reason, that he really did know nothing.
"Can you forgive me?" He whispered into the whipping wind, wondering if she'd live to answer the question, or if he'd live to ask it.
I received some concerns about Lightbringer being Ice, so I'd just like to clarify that Lightbringer more metaphorically Ice than literally. Azor Ahi is something akin to a reincarnation of the hero of legend, and the same applies for the sword. Sorry if that was a bit unclear, I hope Bran and Arya's conversation cleared it up a bit. I always felt like there were allusions to Lightbringer and Ice being linked in some of the dream sequences in the books, and I thought that was too interesting of a tidbit not to be used in the final season/story.