Chapter 2: The Vagabond Crow

Summary: Jon Snow is living beyond the wall, but the ghosts of his past keep haunting him.

Beyond the Wall, Jon Snow's dreams are plagued by nightmares. Most often he dreams of the only real father he has ever known, Ned Stark, grim faced and silent, standing just out of his reach, eyes full of judgment.

Queen-Slayer, Kin-Slayer, Oath-Breaker. There's one thing left I taught you as father, that you have not betrayed?

That accusing gaze seems to say, and it leaves him always defenseless, flayed alive by the truth he will try to forget in daytime hours.

He awakes always sweaty, guilty, angry, a cloak of anguish settling above him as Ghost howls somewhere outside and far away.

And he will feel like screaming too, most often, because all he never wanted it was being a Stark, a true born one, and his father was the man he looked up, whole his life, so he cannot explain to himself how he got to this point.

Once, when Jaimie Lannister first came to Winterfell with King Robert's party, it had been easy for him and Robb to despise him, because their father made it very clear what he thought of men who turned their cloak on their king. Some things were sacred, and while it was bad enough that the Lannister man had done that while wearing the white cloak of one who was sworn to serve and protect, the true abomination, in the old gods' eyes, it was to assassinate your legitimate sovrereign, hiding your true intent like a serpent until you struck in betrayal.

Jon Snow had them wholeheartedly agreed with his father's assessment of the situation.

It truly seemed like an impossible thing that years after, he would be committing the same crime.

How did I ever become this? A man who slays his queen while he looks into her eyes, full of trust and love, and swears words that make a mockery of his fealty?

When he thinks of that, he gets angry with himself all over again, the fury burning hotter and wilder with each time the memory stirs awake in his mind.

He does not understand it at all if he looks behind, because it seems so obvious it was wrong and utterly dishonorable under every aspect.

He knows he was angry with her that day, trying hard to separate in his mind the queen from the woman. He had felt personally betrayed by the slaughter of so many innocents, because he had believed in her, her goodness and her vision, and last couple of weeks he could barely recognize in that feverish shell the strong, capable leader he had met in Dragonstone.

He had wondered if she had deceived him, or if, more likely, the battle of Winterfell had left her damaged- he knew there were men that did not return quite right from battle, hyper vigilant and exceedingly aggressive or fearful.

He had not known how to reach out and fix her , not when he was still firmly entangled in that fierce rejection of being a Targaryen. One moment he felt like he wanted her in arms so strongly he could not breathe, and by the next moment he would remember she was his aunt and keeping it in the family it was such a Targaryen thing he just... could not have that, inside him.

He had allowed Tyrion's words to settle like a spell over him, that day- a man who, like him, was in love with her and felt how wrong all of what had happened was, saying things he feared to be true, things that felt like a punch in the gut. Arya's harsh judgment of Daenerys too, had held its weight, when he was already so uncertain, full of horror.

Then he had been to see *her*, half hoping she would contradict everything he felt with some greater truth, or a glimpse of the woman he thought he had known.

But Daenerys was been as unrecognizable as ever, soft and ethereal but eeringly at peace among the ashes, at home in the carnage, speaking of a future that frightened him exactly because he thought, for a moment, he could be fine with that vision she painted, if it meant he could have her.

So he had ... murdered her. He had assassinated his queen.

The enormity of his crime had nearly suffocated him as soon he saw the realization dawning in her eyes, felt her body folding like a too fragile thing in his embrace.

He had felt at once horrible, despicable, and when Drogon had come, his anger and his grief ready to destroy everything in his path, Jon had not moved out of his way.

Kill me- he had thought- it is your right. I deserve it.

But Drogon had just looked at him with his terrible spite and poured his rage elsewhere. Most likely more out of defiance and hatred than any respect of the blood in his veins ( Jon had always had this feeling around the dragons, that while Rhaegal regarded him with some curiosity, Drogon had a keen interest in intimidating him, simply because he was not allowed to eat him at once).

Afterwards, he had left Tyrion lull him again in the illusion that what he had done was a necessary thing evil, a deed that had saved the realm from many wars to come.

As if it was enough of a excuse, to murder your queen because you no longer shared her agenda.

Now with months to stew over all had happened, far away from everything and everyone, all Jon sees is how easily he had allowed himself to be swayed.

Surely he could have given Daenerys time to show her true colors, or himself more chances to sway her away from her dreams of conquest. There was good in her still. He could have tried at least to appeal to that.

He could have tried to stay true to his oaths longer.

He could have tried to depose her upfront.

Instead, he had picked the dishonorable way.

He had picked murder, and he had allowed himself to dance like puppet on the strings of a man Daenerys had pretty much every right to execute, conveniently just in time to allow him to get away with his treachery while condemning him for his.

Maybe Daenerys was not the only one to go insane those days.

Jon Snow is ready to admit he had acted the fool.

He still tries to tell himself Daenerys was far too gone to be reasoned with, that he saved lives at the price of his heart and his honor both.

But then his mind returns to Tyrion's expression in their last meeting, like the man had not spoken of madness or of a woman they could have spared or mourned, but of a Westeros that could maybe be better if free of her shadow.

He feels ... used, dirty.

And while he can't defend what Daenerys has done to Kings Landing, he thinks of all kings that came before her, Robert included, that razed cities to the ground even after the enemy' surrender to prove a point, at times, and that were not held to any high standards simply because they had vowed nothing different.

He wonders if Daenerys could not have healed, if she was given more time, more trust, and a chance to think her survival did not hinge solely on her ability to wield terror and destruction as weapons.

He will never know, and that, he finds, it is the most distressing thing of all.