"What if we just stayed here all day?" Jon asked. His quiet voice roused Dany to open her eyes into the breaking dawn light. She had not been sleeping, but lost in the closed-eyed thoughts that one had in the middle of the night. There was no use to keeping your eyes open if you could not see anything.
Rolling over in Jon's arms to face him, she stretched before answering him, reminding them that they were naked as the change of skin contact pricked their flesh. "Mmm," she said mellowly, "Then Rose would go hungry and so would I. And you would have to face those consequences."
She smiled, reaching up to place a kiss on his lips before settling with her head on his bare chest. A contented hum rumbled from him and Jon brought his hand down to stroke Dany's silver hair, which seemed to glow like that last of moonlight.
Neither of them had slept very much after getting home from the fraught meeting of their past. It had been strange, almost animalistic, Dany thought, to find that as soon as Rose had been put down for the night she wanted nothing more than Jon. They had spent the night wrapped together, making love slowly and taking comfort in the pleasure of each others' bodies while speaking very little.
She supposed they had slept at some point, for Dany believed she was missing a few hours of time. But each block of missing time was bookended with memories of needing Jon more and again. Some of the memories still lingered on her skin: where he had held her tightly to his chest, where he worshipped her breasts, and where his hands had splayed across her buttocks to pull himself deeper inside of her. Dany smiled to herself, sure that he had similar memories to feel as well.
It's familiar, she thought in answer to her earlier idea. After the day of hearing about events so foreign, so hurtful, all they needed was familiarity in the end. True comfort, and something entirely and intoxicatingly real.
For a while, as the light in the little house became stronger, she lay comfortably on Jon, lost in the rhythmic stroking of his hand over her hair. But hearing Ghost stir in Rose's room roused Dany once more.
"She'll be awake soon," she murmured to Jon.
"Let her tell us when to go up," he replied, pulling her closer.
This time, however, Dany shifted away, sitting up to stretch. "We have to finish doing things here early, anyway," she said, "We need to go back into Shadowedge."
Jon scoffed, shooting Dany a derisive look. She responded with a stern look of her own. "You need to speak with Sansa," she told him, "The way you treated her yesterday even made me uncomfortable."
"You do remember what she did, don't you?" Jon asked hotly.
"Do you remember what I did? What I was planning to do?" Dany countered, "I remember what happened very well. But I also see, now more clearly than ever, how much Sansa was - is - looking out for the North. This is the present, Jon. Everything else is in the past. If we dredge up old conflicts, how can we ever hope to move forward?"
Jon regarded her with narrow, gray eyes. "I can't promise anything," he said to her.
"Nor can I, yet," Dany admitted, "Seeing Tyrion yesterday was...odd, I suppose. More than seeing the others. But I wasn't about to whip Longclaw out and start slashing either."
Jon rolled his eyes, though he looked abashed at the accusation. "All right, point taken," he said defeatedly, "Well we'd better get up then. Unless you'd like to go without meat, I need to go hunting today at some point. It smelled like a storm coming in yesterday and the deer may be on the move."
They took their time, given that it was so early, to go about the morning. Jon got himself dressed for the day while Dany began to heat up porridge over the fire. While there, she checked on the egg as well, as had become her habit every morning.
"Jon," Dany called as she stared at it, "Come here, come look."
"Is it okay?" Jon asked urgently, rushing over with only one boot on, "Oh."
So it isn't just me, Dany thought, bringing a gentle hand up to run over the shell. It was no longer the consistently dull egg they had seen since the Mammoth's Head. Something was different. A mild, radiant sheen had spread across the shell. It was weaker than the brilliance it showed when glowing, or the brilliance of its clutchmates, but it was definitely there.
"What do you think made it change?" she asked, voice tinged with awe.
"I don't know," Jon replied, stroking a hand over the shell, "But it's definitely alive, Dany. You're really helping it."
Wrapping a hand around his waist, Dany responded, "We are."
The sound of laughter from father and daughter made Dany look around from fixing her boots. Rose, seated on Jon's knee, was having quite the exciting breakfast.
"Aaaaand one more bite!" Jon said playfully, giving Rose her last spoonful of porridge. Once finished, Rose's giggles resumed and she clapped her hands together disjointedly (a relatively new skill she had learned with Willa).
Jon chuckled too, smiling broadly at Dany as she came over and knelt down beside them. "I'm impressed," she said, swiping a small bit of porridge from Rose's cheek, "Almost all the breakfast made it into the baby's mouth!"
"You make it sound like I'm a novice," Jon mocked, looking dramatically aghast as he handed off Rose to Dany and got up from the chair.
Saying nothing, Dany cocked one eyebrow in response which sent Jon chuckling again and Rose giggling along with him. He walked over to the door of the house, pausing to grab some of their twine from a hook on the right side. "I want to set a few snares before we go and check the ones I set yesterday," he told Dany, reaching for the door, "In case I don't have a chance to go out later."
He opened it up, letting in the cold air which had turned damp in the night, before pausing in the doorway. "Or I guess my chance ended now," he said grumpily.
"What do you mean?" Dany asked, placing Rose on the bed and striding over to peek out from behind him. Has the storm rolled in already? While the air said it would soon, that was not what had made Jon stop.
Coming up the path from Shadowedge were two distinct figures who had clearly not made the journey before. Their pace was hesitant and, when they finally stepped into the clearing, they paused, making eye contact with the two people standing in the doorway, before heading over.
Jon groaned, fortunately only so Dany could hear. She pressed a steadying hand into his back, but privately felt like groaning as well. Can't one part of my life not have people from my past infiltrating it?
"What brings you out this way?" Jon asked Tyrion and Sansa unsmilingly as they came to a halt in front of the house.
Sansa was the first to speak, her voice strong but with the same brittle undertone as yesterday. "I need to talk to you," she said to Jon, "Just you."
Before he answered, Jon glanced back at Dany. She nodded encouragingly, pressing into his back with slightly more force. He sighed, but nodded as well. "All right," he told Sansa brusquely, "But you'll have to come into the forest with me. I need to set snares."
With one more glance at Dany, he headed into the forest with Sansa right behind him. Her auburn hair stood out against the landscape not unlike the weirwood trees that dotted the forest. Soon, they were out of view and Dany was left standing in the doorway with Tyrion in front of her.
"Did you come for moral support?" she asked him, "Or for me?"
Tyrion shrugged. "A little of both. Do you mind talking?" he replied.
"I suppose not," Dany said, "Sitting in silence really isn't an option with you is it?"
Inside, she grabbed her darning and turned to pluck Rose up from off the bed. Thinking twice, however, Dany turned back on her heels and looked at the egg over the mantle. It seemed much too exposed now. Considering her options quickly, Dany grabbed a basket of furs and cloth and placed it in front of the fire. She took the egg off the mantle and put it in the basket before covering it with another fur. It looked odd, but not conspicuous. Although it would be surprisingly heavy if the unassuming passerby picked it up.
Dany took Rose off the bed and headed outside with Ghost on her heels. Jerking her head, she had Tyrion follow her to the lean-to and set Rose down on the mat she would be using, Ghost taking up a guardian position to the side. Tyrion lingered awkwardly at the front.
"You can sit if you'd like," Dany said as she sunk down.
"Thank you, Your Grace," Tyrion said, "Or is it My Lady? Which do you prefer now?"
"Neither," Dany told him, looking at her first piece of darning work, "Actually, it was a bit strange to hear you say that yesterday."
"What would you prefer?"
"Dany is fine," she said, "Everyone calls me Dany now."
Tyrion's eyes widened, and for once he seemed rather dumbstruck. "I'm...not sure I can do that," he told her carefully.
She laughed, feeling unexpectedly light at his sudden predicament. No matter what had happened, she now could remember distinctly why she had chosen Tyrion as her Hand. And why she enjoyed his company.
"We're not in the Seven Kingdoms anymore, Tyrion," she said, "There are no titles in the north. But you don't have to call me anything if that's easier."
"For now, I may take you up on that offer."
"That's fine," Dany said, beginning her work, "I'm guessing you came to finish the conversation from yesterday?"
"Yes, but also to hear your side of the events first. The tidbits we got yesterday were quite becoming of an eventful story. And," he said, gesturing to Rose, "I would love to hear more about your daughter. What's her name?"
Dany smiled at Rose. Gendry had been right, she really was the perfect combination of her parents. In that moment, Dany realized how surprising it must be for someone like Tyrion to see her with a child. How often had she stated how certain she was that she could not have children?
"For now, her name is Rose. And, as for what led us here, it's a very long story," she told him.
Tyrion folded his hands, leaning back against the lean-to wall in mock preparedness. "You listened to mine yesterday," he reminded her.
"Well, it started the same night that yours did. Only, I did leave willingly," she began.
Despite herself, the whole story began pouring out through Dany's words. It was different, Dany thought, to talk to Tyrion instead of Jon or Willa. She did not know if she would consider him a friend, but more of someone that, even as they began to disagree more and more, she respected. It was someone who had not been there, and yet, unlike Willa, someone who could follow along with the journey from Dragonstone all the way to Shadowedge.
She started from the moment Jon had come to her in the room at Dragonstone, describing the sudden whirlwind in which they had raced away from the castle and onto the beach, skirting around the firelight where they knew Tyrion had been standing. From there taking him on their journey across the Vale.
"You walked through the Mountains of the Moon in the middle of winter?" Tryion asked, eyebrows raised.
"We didn't know what would happen if we met people so we just...didn't," she replied.
"But what about when you met travelers?" he asked.
Dany smiled, remembering the camaraderie of the times spent sharing a meal with the Vale travelers. Bleakly, she wondered where they are now. So many had plans to go onto other lands after crossing the Vale. Had they been able to survive the civil wars ripping apart the other regions? From everything Tyrion had said, so many innocent people had not.
"Well, Jon did all of the talking, so the main concern was that they would recognize me from my hair. And that was consistently dyed brown until we crossed into the North from Sisterton."
"Which you left right when everything happened," Tyrion said, keeping the timeline straight.
Dany nodded. "We...we thought about going back then," she told him solemnly, pausing her darning as she remembered the events on the Sisterton docks at dawn, "But...what good would it have done? We were already polarizing the people before we left. So we kept going. Straight north until we hit Castle Black and joined up with Tormund and the free folk. I wrote a letter to Grey Worm, telling him I was alive, and the next day we were beyond the Wall. We settled here, built the house. Rose was born six months later."
That ended lamely, Dany thought to herself. At the same time, she was grateful for it. What a different two years had it been compared to the experiences that Tyrion and the others had gone through. And as much as she felt horrified each time she was reminded of what had happened to the people she had left behind, she was selfishly relieved to have been so far away. For deep down, in the darkest depths of her heart that she never wanted to know again, Dany knew that no ending in the Seven Kingdoms would have been free of fire and blood.
"So that's why they left," Tyrion said, nodding his head. When Dany cocked her head, intrigued, he continued, "After King's Landing, your armies returned to Dragonstone. One of the only things we could agree upon at the Great Council was to offer that they could settle the area around Dragonstone permanently. But when I returned, the island was completely empty. No Dothraki, Unsullied, even Drogon was gone. I liked to think that you had returned from wherever you had been and left with them - though many still believed that you and Jon had died with Cersei."
"You said you began to have your suspicions about something else happening?" Dany asked curiously.
"It was very odd of my sister to have not responded either way when we accused her of kidnapping the two of you," Tyrion explained, "And though the two of you running away did not add up in any situation, neither did the miraculous silent kidnap of a very skilled swordsman and a very resourceful woman from inside the castle. I suppose we wanted to believe the latter, in the end, because it was the easier idea to accept without losing faith that the world could get better. If our leaders didn't believe that, could we?"
Dany bit her lip, feeling the sting of Tyrion's words. The guilt. "The world can get better," she replied, tying off the end of her last bit of darning, "I just have come to realize that I wasn't meant to get it there."
"You're so sure about that?" Tyrion pressed.
He ought to know, she thought, he deserves to know. "With everything that had happened," Dany explained, "After how I was received in the North. And then losing Jorah, losing my children, losing - Missandei. Losing everything for people that didn't even want me there...if I hadn't left, I don't know if King's Landing would have looked any different."
Though he had looked on the verge of saying more, Tyrion remained quiet. Dany expected that what she had told him confirmed thoughts from long ago, thoughts that she knew Varys had shared and that, at one point, she would have considered treasonous.
It had begun to snow outside. The small, white flakes fell lightly from the dove-gray sky to begin blanketing the clearing. Little rims of snow already stuck to the roofs of the house and the barn, and outlined the petals of the winter roses.
Dany watched as Tyrion gazed out onto the landscape, a curious look on his face that did not often cross one who had seen and read about so much of the world.
"What a beautiful home you have," he remarked.
Yes, Dany agreed silently, looking from the clearing to her daughter beside her, it is.