Everything comes and goes in waves, as the cool water laps at her body - that feels battered, broken, in need of that relief.
The pain that slays her is the memory of a blade that cuts into her and her eyes disbelieving as they looked up to the face of the one whose love she had all but begged.
It is the face of an almost sister, almost best friend, almost certainty right before she is to die in the same chains she swore she freezes ger forever.
It is the ghost feeling of her loyal bear falling, dead, and her cold hands grasping at him, desperate.
It is Rhaegal falling into the water and she unable to help him, unable to freeze out the realization the blame was entirely hers- the lack of sleep and food made her forgetful, unaware, capable to forget about the fucking Iron Fleet.
It is the thought of Viserion's sweetness gone from the world, forever, an ache that dug inside her chest as a constant punishment.
It is the feeling of a whole abyss opening up inside her as she sits alone, surrounded by a crowd that celebrates for and with everybody but her as she grieves. Whole a lifetime of wandering as a beggar from city to city and she had never felt as much as an outsider as she sat there, watching men congratulating another man for her successes, her advisors suddenly distant and incompetent, and that new fear spiking and blooming in her chest as *he* just smiled, half apology half embarrassment. She knew then things could go wrong very fast- one wrong word to the wrong person and she could go back to be the scared little girl running from hired knives.
The pain always drowned her, but then another wave soothed her, the forgetfullness taking hold of all she was. A scent of lemon blossoms, the elusive sense of warmth for a home she never found, and Daenerys Targaryen forgot who she was.
Peace consumed her senses, and she floated away from all the sorrow.
One moment she was a nameless child playing in the streets, right before a red door, two baby dragons of the size of cats gently crooning at her as they asked her attention, snouts brushing her bare feet.
One moment she laughed and laughed in pure bliss as she rode a grey horse in endless plains, feeling free and young and without a care in the world.
One moment she thought she could glimpse a castle ( just like Dragonstone but so full of white and full of light, and Dragonstone was ... she could not remember) and a woman inside there, who looked much like her, but older, waiting. Waiting for her.
The woman who was nameless felt pulled in all those directions at once, but oddly, she felt like she could be able to follow all those pulls, all those strings of peace, at the same moment, in the same breath, and be better for it.
Mended, Healed, Whole, instead of broken and splintered.
And there was not a child somewhere, dark hair and a dark haired father, in a tent, somewhere?
She almost followed, happy, that feeling of contentment and belonging to all its different sources.
Was it a matter of a moment, of falling backwards and escaping the pain, the torment of lying in the freezing water with grief devouring her?
Was it the secret in the letting go?
Something held her back.
A weight in her chest and the wailing, distant but broken hearted of a infant, pulling at her from a whole other direction.
Don't leave me, it seemed the wailing hammered into her head, and she wanted to weep and forget and be left alone.
Her peaceful dreaming crashed, a scent of flowers and greenery and heat enveloping her senses so completely it left her confused, bereft, lonely again.
There was solid ground under her, and light, overwhelming her sight right before it was filled with vibrant color.
Suddenly she was on a beach, trees and flowers framing a path at the edge of her vision, and so many butterflies swarmed over the pale sand, their wings glittering in the sun.
" It is not your time yet, Your Grace".
Dear Missandei stood in front of her, a child in her arms, eyes of a delicate lilac and the promise of the trademark Stark long face.
" I don't want him"
It was all she could say.
She did not want some brat who would grow up to look at her with the same suspicious accent of Sansa and Arya Stark.
She did not want a constant reminder that she was killed, unloved, betrayed.
Once, to be mother again was some impossible dream she would have cherished.
But to be mother like this tough - it felt like a corruption, a taint.
To even think she had died with Jon Snow child in her belly felt like a physical offense.
He had taken everything from her.
All she had ever had to build herself around was her name, her legacy as last Targaryen- he had torn into that hard worn history of her without even trying or caring, and stole it.
If she had forgiven him that, out of love, he certainly had proved he did not meant giving anything in return.
No love, no companionship, no family.
A Stark was all he wanted to be, and Stark men just had clumsy pity for their unwanted aunts.
She did not want his son.
She wanted back her peace, and he was already taking it away.
" He is yours tough, Your Grace, won't you take him?"
The child face scrunched up like he was to cry again, and he looked so miserable for the way he pressed his little lips together, like he was trying to hold all the anguish in the world in.
Just looking at him Daenerys Targaryen, First Of Her Name, Queen Of No Kingdom, felt remorseful and all more broken. But she felt also all the weight of her years of striving to get something that was never hers to have in first place.
She wanted to embrace Missandei and forget.
She wanted to take the child and tell him it did not matter anymore, because the sun was rising at East finally, and she was supposed to be free.
No more pain.
Could not she take Missandei and the new baby and go at the house with Red Door?
Maybe they could all rest there. Just a bit?
She was so tired, she felt like she could sleep a thousand years.
She wanted to go home somewhere, finally, but the baby made her to feel so sad, she felt like she was back to Winterfell, in that feasting hall where she had all the sorrow of the world frozen inside her.
And all she could think it was she had no home.
Nobody wanted her nowhere, nobody loved her or missed or needed her, and even this new child would surely hate her, like his aunts, or find her disgusting, like his father in those days before...
Why had she ever thought he would want to rule beside her?
He had made clear he did not want her.
He did not even share her vision for the world, he just wanted the war to be over so he could come back to the North.
But she had not wanted to leave him behind and with the throne of her ancestors finally in her hold, she had felt such a clarity of purpose, such a renewed sense of confidence that everything was possible.
She had thought of conquering Essos, ending slavery once for all in honor of the friend she had lost.
She had thought that if she married him, maybe she could show him that building a new world was possible, that eradicating corruption at once from a failing system could be better in the long run.
She had wanted to recover that feeling between them they had shared so briefly over the boat.
She had wanted to share her dreams with him, despite everything.
And he had killed her.
She wanted to weep.
She wanted to be in the water again.
But she felt fire, inside and out of her, flames and sounds of chanting destroying her little world.
The sky was caving in.
" Take him. You would regret leaving him here, if you go back."
Missandei pleaded, teaching to put the baby in her arms.
"I won't go, and I don't want him. I don't want anything. I won't love him"
She insisted, even with the persistent feeling she was lying, and rebelling some truth older than time.
The child wailed, like he knew he was being rejected.
Daenerys felt the fire inside her burning brighter, saw her surroundings to ripple like the edges of a dream.
She acted out of instinct, and reached for the baby, caught in a sort of unexpected terror he would fade away along with everything else.
Holding him tight against her chest made her to feel strange, sad and happy and scared, but warm and full too, in ways she was not before.
She had been silly.
The baby was not a stranger, climbing in her body to destroy her more.
He was innocent, small and hers.
A miracle she had not believed possible.
Still she was sadder for the sweetness that blossomed in her, because the baby was also half of Jon and half of *them*, those who had ruined her and everything she ever worked for.
Missandei smiled at her, her image blurring.
Daenerys almost reached for her too, wanting to freeze the moment , to grasp at last tendrils of this strange dream.
She held the baby tighter as she felt a new weakness cutting through her.
She felt like she was waning, her very body twisting out of shape.
And the baby... where was the baby?
—-
Daenerys Targaryen comes back to life with a chocked grasp, her body feeling at once too tight and too warm.
There's chanting around her, and the room is dark, full of candles.
She is lying on a stone surface, and there are many dressed in red around her.
Her heart aches, her skin is heated in ways that for once make her to mind the hot temperatures.
She longs for something out of her reach, something she can't name at first.
Her senses fight to make a sense of everything- she was with Jon, and then she was not.
He stabbed her to death- and that alone looks like it should be a trick of the mind.
He told her she was his queen, now and always.
Jon was good and honorable.
Why would he do that to her?
And then other images flood back, and she recalls the sheen of tears in his eyes as she faded away from him, and she knows somehow it is real, it really happened.
He gave her to Death.
And Death was sweet to her, maybe.
She recalls the touch of it like a kiss of seatide, the ease of dreams blending together and apart, and longing claws at her breast, powerful.
She could have been at home.
Instead she is in what looks like a temple of the Red God, with people she is not inclined to trust, who will surely will want something of her.
Who will be willing to discard her too, once they got it.
Too bad she is not up to giving anything anymore.
Has she even left anything to give?
Has she even a chance to regain back ... the throne ? Has her nephew seized it?
Daenerys sits upright, gestures to the priest advancing closer to stay back.
She breathes in, breathes out, blocks outside the fear, the sadness, the black despair that wants to pull her back down, inviting her to long for ease of resting, to miss the solace of nothingness.
She thinks of a child she is afraid to believe in.
She forces herself to remember who she is - not the brittle thing Westeros tried to turn her into, not her father's daughter, someone who falls apart after a measly betrayal to the hands of advisors that were always less than her, part of the wheel she meant to break.
She is The Mother of Dragons, The Unburnt.
When she falls, she rises stronger than she was before.
She rises and rises again.
She will have from the priest all information she can and then...
If there's no path for her to walk , she will make one.