05x06, 'Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken'
So much has happened in such a short space of time.
Jorah stares into the darkness. He's wedged like some poor salmon in a fisherman's net with a dozen other men; Tyrion is at his right side. For someone so small, he takes up a lot of space.
They're captives now. Slaves. The irony makes him want to laugh.
But he can't. Because there's a lump the size of a peach in his throat.
His father is dead. Slaughtered like a pig by his own men.
Tyrion's matter-of-fact way of relaying the news—though not without sympathy when he had realised that it was information that had not yet reached Jorah beyond the continent—could not prevent his imagination from running rampant with various grotesque imaginings of how his father could have met his grisly end. A part of him itches to return to Westeros to hunt down these oathbreakers and exact justice in his father's name himself.
Not that his father would ever approve of such an emotionally-driven reaction. And certainly not when Jorah has broken plenty of his own oaths.
But it doesn't lessen the powerful grief he feels.
He'll never get to see him again. Never have the opportunity to make amends. To make him proud.
Any semblance of warmth disintegrated between them with his mother's death and perished with his selling of slaves, but Jorah has always clung to the hope that it could be mended. That one day he would return to Westeros, stand in front of his taciturn father, and show him the ways that he had tried to atone for his past mistakes. Show him how remorseful he was for the stupidity he had exhibited, for letting him down.
He'll always remember the tickle of his father's whiskers against his cheek, an almost unheard of action from the stoic man. As a lad, Jorah had craved those moments when his father's stern veneer cracked for just a moment.
Validation. Love. It's what he's searched for his entire life, perhaps in the wrong places. First with Lynesse. Then with Daenerys.
Daenerys.
Just the memory of her name brings a powerful wave of painful nostalgia.
It was foolish to fall in love with her. Doomed from the start.
And yet.
I won't watch you burn.
Is that what you fear?
The look on her face.
The way she'd reached up.
Kissed him right at the corner of his mouth. Warm. Lingering.
His skin had tingled and burned through the night like that funeral pyre. Until that morning.
Then I saw her. Daenerys. Alive and unhurt, holding her three baby dragons. Have you ever heard dragons sing?
No.
It's hard to be a cynic after that.
Just the memory of that haunting song brings goosebumps. It sings through his soul now, a balm of sorts. A song of hope.
His dream of seeing his father again is dust. But his dream of being forgiven by Daenerys is still in reach.
He has to stretch for it.