" How are your balls not rotting yet? "

" Just shut it , Tormund"

Jon sighs, tired if anything else of having the same old conversation every week, if not every few days.

" Val -"

" I won't hear a word about Val"

He spits, this time with more fire than the other man expects.

" But-"

Jon gets up, takes the bow and decides to go hunting, alone.

He does not spare his wildling friend a glance.

To say the truth, Tormund insistence all his problems might be resolved with fucking is more insulting than annoying.

It has been a year he is with the FreeFolk- but he thought he had made pretty clear from the get go he meant to keep true to one part of his vows. No wives of any kind, no children ( no lands, no crowns, no homes, no families).

He had left the Wall because he was sick of Westeros, Ill at the very idea he would end his days among black clad brothers, more of the unwanted and disgraced sons of the realm. He did not want to look at the evidence that things in the realm were not going to change.

But his penance? That he had accepted.

Tormund could think it was all very romantic, the idea he had wedded himself to his grief and remorse for Daenerys and that eventually he would allow another woman to soothe him. To give him a flock of sons and daughters to make him smile again. To make him happy.

Tormund can think like that because he has a simplicity of mind and soul and and a twisted sort of sentimentality but Jon ... knows far too well by now he is a very different kind of person.

Happiness looks to him as the natural outcome of being able of living according your beliefs, and he feels after what he has done he would be not able to live with himself, if he made of himself the kind of man who can do ... what he has done and reach for a free life regardless.

He does not want Val. All her persistent pursuit of him accomplishes is making him wary of her presence.

He does not want to want her or any other woman in their camp.

Once he liked to imagine a son to call Robb- now he finds a strange comfort in knowing no part of him will live on when he is gone, feels a sinister sweetness in knowing for certain there will be no more Targaryens.

Daenerys was always the true Last Dragon anyway - nor he nor Rhaegar could usurp that title when she wears it so well.

The most vivid picture his memory has of her is that last day, her straight back as she comes toward him and Drogon flies upward behind her, giving her for a moment the appearance of having a couple of wings herself.

She once told him Targaryens believed they would be transformed in dragons after they died. For her, he believes it actually possible.

He even prays for it some nights, when he can't sleep, and all he can hope for is that she is well, and free and magnificent and at peace in some other world.

Most of time he feels he has not much right of thinking of her, especially with love or admiration or any other feeling than remorse.

He killed her, he made it so her brilliant spark was extinguished from the world.

He made her last weeks to feel even worse in an already bleak situation, and deserted her when she was most in need of support.

If she was sick, he certainly did not lift a finger or speak a word to ensure she would receive any care.

Last month of their relationship was cold at the best.

No, he doesn't deserve to warm himself to the flame of her bright memory.

Still, it is how he can tell he truly loved her, in hindsight.

Now he can admit he was wrong about everything, that he looked for honor where there was none, that he was confused and adrift and left other people in charge of deciding how he felt and thought at the most critical time of his life.

There were days, those first rough months he could not accept the thing he had reduced himself to, or understand how he came to be here, he doubted everything.

He questioned whether he had ever loved his silver queen, if this was why he had allowed himself to be swayed so easily.

Then he would remember Ygritte - the way she made him to feel, she who was so brazen and unapologetic and certain about her place in the world in years he was struggling to make his own.

Ygritte taught him of courage, of what it was being truly alive. When she died he swore himself he would never love anyone the way he loved her, than it was impossible to love someone more.

Yet he had chosen honor over her too- he had determined to leave her behind, never truly even contemplated changing his life plans around that first young love. He had not killed her but he had not acted to preserve her life neither.

And today he lives among the wildlings himself he can tell maybe back to then he thought he was somewhat above Ygritte, for his upbringing, for his goals, his attachment to duty.

With Daenerys he had felt a bit of the opposite, at least at first.

She was this incredible gorgeous creature who was strong and willful and good, with a temper and an idealism that matched his. Every inch a queen, a pillar of granitic strength.

He thought himself miraculously lucky that somehow she too seemed to see in him something worth of her interest, desire, love.

Even now he cannot contemplate how or when he lost that feeling.

They had something so pure at first, it was still strange to think how fast it had collapsed.

And it was unreal to think he had plunged a knife in her heart. Because she had frightened him with that talk of more wars, and the unapologetic iciness in her eyes at all that blood on her hands.

He made himself her judge, and then he had murdered her, leveraging her trust in him.

Well, now he could judge himself too because he had nothing but time to think over his actions.

All he had set out to do was to prove his birth did not define his lack of value ... all he discovered in pursuit of honor was that you did not need to be a bastard to act like one.

Not a nice picture , is it ?

Jon wishes he could pinpoint the exact moment he lost the man he wanted to be. It had to be before he killed her.

Was it when Sam told him about his true parents? Had it really taken so little to shake his sense of self, to turn him into a weakling?

Once more it does not feel possible, yet it has to be true, because Jon has no other explanation for the way he acted.

Or maybe he was always this way, and he never noticed until the truth of hard facts dissolved that shield he had hidden behind.

Is he a cold man after all, who cares more for faceless strangers and ethical principles than he does for women he claimed to care for?

If Sansa or Arya did something unforgivable, would he turn against them too, just as easily?

Is this the sort of man he is?

He no longer thinks he knows much about love.

When you love someone, if it is a feeling good and true and authentic, does that mean you should put them first , their care above the care you have for yourself and the things you want for your life?

Should not Daenerys or Ygritte have mattered more to him , if he truly loved them? More than this idea of doing the right thing at all costs?

There is a line somewhere he cannot see?

There's something lacking in him, if he was more worried with his moral judgment of Daenerys than of her well being, those days she must have had a need of someone?

What is the point of loving anyway, if it can be swept aside so easily, if it fails right when it should endure?

What is the point of honor if it turns you into a bad man? Or is it the truth that he is so far gone he cannot tell the honorable thing from the dishonorable one until after he has done the deed?

He will not trust himself ever again to tell the difference, but he wishes he had never extinguished Daenerys fire from the world, that he had followed his heart.

That he had given more to her, if their days were to be numbered.

Then he might have the consolation of remembering the good times among the bad ones and perhaps feel entitled to mourn her.

Instead he has nothing left but the awareness he failed her and himself in every way possible.

She did deserve better, no matter what she might have done or how he might have felt about it. He wishes he could have been the sort of man who gave her better.

But wishes are dead horses riding you nowhere, and penance is all he has left.

Funny, how the more people insist to give him a free pass the more he feels like carrying the weight of what he has done for the rest of his life is the one way he can even aspire to redeem himself.

So yes, he can actually tell with absolute certainty he is * never * going to want Val and the brood of imaginary wildling children.

He does not want to ever, even imagine this exile as a life he might enjoy.

He wants to be left alone and free to end his days brooding, remorseful, dancing to the idea at least he had not sunk so low to build an happy life over murder.

It is bad enough to know Arya and Sansa did want him free, walking out of this tragedy as immaculate as actual snow.

Like the Starks became the new Lannisters, just as corrupt but with a coating of hypocrisy on top.

He has already lost everything he has ever cared to hold. Why would he want to lose even more?