Dany awoke suddenly, very early, the next morning with a brooding headache behind her right eye. Cowering from the pale light that filtered into her house, she felt like a cave creature that had only just emerged after a season's rest in the darkness. She could tell, squinting to look between her lashes, that Jon was out of bed, but she did not hear any evidence of him moving around the house. Probably checking the damage, Dany thought.
The wind from the storm had picked up in the evening, and though Rose fell asleep easily amidst the howls and clatters from outside, Dany was not so lucky. She lay in bed for hours listening to Jon's steady breathing mix with the storm, attempting to will herself to sleep as her mind slipped deeper into a dark place of memory and fear.
Jon had been right. She did want to make these amends. To own up to her mistakes, her faults, her failings, even if nobody else would. To be the person she wanted her daughter to be when she came of age. Strong, independent, kind. With none of the brutality and all of the love. Doing this - saving these people - could be the answer. But to take up the helm of ending slavery through violence and destruction as she had done once before? Was Slavers' Bay any better now? Had she ever really succeeded in doing anything past causing more strife? And did she know any other way to stop the slavers than through violence?
She had always scoffed at Tyrion's ideas of trying to solve things with words, preferring the immediacy of actions to get what she needed. And yet, now, it seemed as if the roles were reversed. How desperate must Tyrion be to advise that they should come and ask for her help, knowing how the Daenerys Targaryen of old liked to solve problems? I'm going to tell them I can't help, she thought unconvincingly.
She could help.
She didn't want to help.
She didn't want to help the way she knew how. And at this point, it didn't feel like there was another way. Was there?
Dichotomic thoughts still running through her head (Forgiveness and fear? Forgiveness or fear?), Dany gave up trying to get back to sleep and rolled out of the bed. Quietly, she padded barefoot to Rose's room, where her daughter still slept.
Rose had demonstrated herself to be an extremely heavy sleeper. She did not notice as Dany came into the room and sunk down onto the fur-covered floor next to the bed, arms over the frame. Her daughter's little hands were curled into fists reaching high over her head almost in some sort of celebration. Dany placed her chin onto her arms, smiling to herself as she watched Rose sleeping. The baby's little nose momentarily scrunched up and she squirmed in bed, settling herself more comfortably.
What does she dream of?
Dany often wondered what Rose dreamt at night and thought of during the day. She was eager for her to begin talking and eventually to begin sharing her thoughts, however simple or complex they would be. And, at the same time, she would have been very content for this moment to last forever. Just her and Rose, together in their peaceful little house during the quiet after the storm, and nothing else. Except Jon, she added sleepily in her thoughts, blinking slowly.
"Dany," Jon whispered, shaking her shoulder, "Dany, wake up."
"Hmm? Jon? What is it?" Dany asked, raising her head off her hands too fast. Her vision spun for a moment and her headache protested. Momentarily disoriented, Dany could not understand how she ended up laying off the side of her bed with her mouth feeling as though she had held Ghost's fur in it for quite a while.
Not her bed, Rose's bed. Oh, right, Dany thought as the memories of the early morning came back to her. Blearily, she saw that Rose was still sprawled out in bed and estimated that she could not have been asleep beside it for very long.
Long enough, however, that the house smelled nice and seemed to have warmed considerably. Jon had added to the fire.
"Why did you go out so early?" Dany asked him as she stood up and stretched. He did not answer immediately, instead motioning for them to leave Rose's room and leading Dany out to sit in a chair near the fire.
For a moment, he hesitated as he stood in front of her. "The barn roof caved in," he told her baldly, "Snow turned icy overnight. It was too heavy, must've been a weak spot somewhere."
"The whole thing?" Dany asked slowly. Between the delays, no trading, and now the roof, she had begun to question if they would ever be able to get sheep.
Jon nodded defeatedly, sinking down onto the ground next to her. "I need to go into the village," he said, "See if there's damage there first. And then get some help to clear the rest of the roof and pull something over it for now until we can get a new one in order. I was able to salvage some of the wood, but I don't think anything is usable."
"Why don't you wait a bit? Once Rose is up, we can come."
"Dany, the snow's past my knees out there. Even if I carried Rose all the way...it's probably easier that I just go alone. Anyway, I didn't think you'd want to go?" Jon looked at her quizzically. Before they had gone to sleep for the night (rather, Jon had and Dany had laid awake), Dany had left it that she did not want to speak to anyone the next day. Unless they had brown, beaded hair, gold eyes, and smelled like herbs. And their name was Willa. This morning, however, Dany was certain that if she did not speak to Tyrion, her headache may actually split her skull in two.
It's cowardly to hide, she had told herself, but not cowardly to make a choice. She realized in the midst of the night that all the information she had learned was from Jon. Why hadn't Tyrion spoken to her like he was apparently supposed to do? Why had Sansa told Jon, but not Dany? And why had Tyrion gone against the plan he had come up with?
In the end, Dany's need for answers and headache relief won out over her wish to hide alone in her house.
"No," she told Jon, "I...I want to go. And I think I have an idea for Rose. You said you salvaged some of the roof?"
"Yes…?"
"Good," Dany said smiling, "Then let's get ready."
It was easily her best idea since insisting on a feather bed. Jon and Dany trudged on the way to Shadowedge, making sure to deliberately stamp in order to break up the glistening ice layer overtop the snow. In his hand, Jon held a length of rope that led to a loop slung around Ghost's large neck to keep him from running off with the baby.
"Ga! Ga ga ga ga!" Rose shouted, clapping her hands as slid across the snow aboard a piece of the old barn roof attached to the huge direwolf.
Dany smirked and Jon rolled his eyes. "You do realize we look ridiculous, don't you?"
"Frozen Shores clans do it, why can't we?" she challenged lightly, heaving a little as she swung one leg out of a snowdrift to make her next step.
Jon offered her his free hand to steady herself. "Maybe you should hop on," he joked.
"Ha ha."
There was definitely a part of Dany that would have considered it if it had not meant a total loss of dignity. The snow was nearly to her thighs, something that hadn't happened in several months, and traveling even the hour into Shadowedge had turned into an arduous task. She couldn't imagine how their visitors were feeling. If Dany had been dressed in even the garb they wore in the North, she would have been a lot more grumpy. There were multiple reasons that free folk did not wear capes, and one of them was definitely because they snag on icy snow.
Red-faced and panting by the time they crossed into Shadowedge (keenly avoiding the camp of Northerners) and stopped in front of Willa's house, Dany needed a moment to catch her breath before going in.
"You're sure you don't want me to come?" Jon asked her, resuming the discussion they'd had amidst the stumbling, cursing, and stamping of the journey.
Dany nodded. "I don't want anyone to appeal to you in order to appeal to me," she told him, "And anyway, you have the barn roof to sort out."
"Okay," Jon said. He hesitated for a second before grabbing Dany's waist and pulling her in for a surprisingly searing kiss given that they were outside a house in the middle of Shadowedge.
Her mind blissfully wiped for a moment, but before she could respond more than to begin wrapping her arms around Jon's neck, Dany heard an interruption. "Mamamama!" Rose chattered.
Both parents smiled into their kiss before breaking apart. Placing one last kiss on Dany's lips and then one on Rose's head, Jon left with Ghost.
Dany picked Rose up from the makeshift sled and turned to knock on Willa's door, but instead found her friend opening it.
"Hi," Dany said, smiling awkwardly with the realization that Willa had been aware she and Jon were out front, "Do you mind watching Rose for a little?"
"I suppose not," Willa said grumpily, opening the door wider, "Why? Do you have better things to do?"
What? "What's that supposed to mean?" Dany asked hotly, following Willa into her house, "I can ask someone else if you're not in the mood."
Willa whipped around, eyes blazing, before she saw Dany frowning and softened. "No," she said apologetically, "No, I am. Sorry. Rough morning. Is everything okay?"
"I can stay," Dany said immediately. For the first time, she noticed Willa's face. Pale. And puffy around here eyes which still seemed to glisten. Her cheeks were jaggedly red, as if she had tried to roughly dry them on her sleeve.
"Aye. You and nobody else. I'm not helpless, Dany," Willa said hollowly, giving one note of mirthless laugh and looking up at her ceiling, "Gods, I feel so stupid. I mean she's just so tall and a knight and she's incredible. If she was one of us she'd be an amazing spearwife. And I'm just...a healer."
Brienne? Dany frowned, confused, although Willa seemed to take it as a cue to keep talking.
"And now she's going back and, I mean, who can fault him? He said he'd guide them. And came and told me and I just...let it go. But apparently not saying anything is wrong? What could I say, Dany? And then I said that they might as well go off. Just like old times, apparently. Why is he sticking around here anyways? Ugh, I'm such an idiot."
No, Tormund. Understanding replaced the confusion, albeit mixed with a little surprise. She hadn't realized Willa felt about Tormund more than she or Jon did. Although I haven't exactly been paying close attention, she realized with a pang of regret.
"Tormund's taking people back past the Wall?" Dany asked, trying to comprehend the story and at the same time realizing what that meant for her. Willa first, she told herself.
"Ship's damaged," Willa replied dejectedly, "You'll hear about it. That's where you're going, isn't it? To talk to your kneeler friends."
"Look, I know you've had a bad morning, but stop biting my head off," Dany told her firmly, "And anyway, why are you moping in the first place? You just said you weren't helpless. If you screwed up, go fix it! Obviously you mean something if he came to talk to you."
Willa blinked at her. "But what about - ?"
Putting her hand up to stop Willa, Dany smiled encouragingly. "Don't worry about Rose, I'll take her," she said, standing up with Rose still in her arms, "But when I get back, you'd better have talked to Tormund."
"Don't most people comfort their friends in need?" Willa asked sarcastically.
"Do you want me to?" Dany asked as she headed for the door.
Willa shrugged. "Not particularly."
The Northern camp was a whirlwind. People seemed to emerge in and out of every tent at lightning speed so that it looked as though there were seventy people instead of forty. Rose was extremely interested in all the excitement. Her head whipped back and forth around Dany's body as she squirmed to take in everything. A few people paused as Dany entered the thick of the activity, immediately knowing which tent she should go into from the lack of people coming in and out of it.
Not particularly interested in being announced, she simply slipped inside the tent, interrupting a seemingly heated discussion between several parties.
"As soon as every last one of us is back behind the Wall without anything to show for it, we've sentenced ourselves to die," Sansa was saying very seriously.
"Or maybe we just haven't looked at every...option yet," Tyrion replied, deflating as he caught Dany's eye in the entrance.
The others, including Gendry and Brienne who had been watching the discussion like it was some sort of tourney, turned to look at her and Dany suddenly felt extremely homely, memories of her past positions in discussions like this very present in her mind.
Steeling herself, Dany spoke. "May I speak with you?" she inquired directly to Tyrion.
Sansa hadn't quite mastered the art of being discrete and Dany, forever ingrained with the ability to read a political room, caught the blue-eyed look of pure "You fucked up" directed at Tyrion.
Clearing his throat and ignoring Sansa, Tyrion nodded. "Perhaps elsewhere," he said, roaming up to her and gesturing out of the tent. She caught the glance he threw back at the others as they left together.
"I heard your ship was damaged in the storm," Dany started as she led Tyrion to the northern edge of the village. The children enjoyed playing on a stone circle there, and she felt it was set apart enough from the activity in Shadowedge and the camp.
"Alas, apparently icebergs can come fairly close to the shore. And damage ships," he said, chuckling grimly.
The stone circle was ringed with snow and ice, but she was able to find a large flat stone to sit on and prop Rose on her knee. Tyrion sat next to her, folding his hands in his lap and looking at her seriously.
"You're walking back then?" she asked.
"The ones who could make it that far," he explained, jokingly pointing at himself, "A few of us are, myself and Sansa included, are staying behind. It takes less time to walk to the nearest settlement in the North not yet destroyed by slavery or White Walkers and get horses for the rest of us to ride back than it would to rebuild the ship or fetch a new one. I apologize to say we'll be darkening your corridors - er - village a while longer. I'm guessing that that isn't what you came to talk about?"
Dany regarded him coolly. He knows, she thought savagely, and now he's staying? But her thoughts assuaged quickly. They hadn't chosen the iceberg to hit their ship. Nor had he or Sansa probably been too pleased to be told that they would only slow down progress without a horse. There had to be a reason he had held back yesterday. A reason he had just been arguing with Sansa. If he was staying, it was all the more reason to close out the topic now.
"Why didn't you tell me why you were here?" she asked plainly, "Jon told me what the plan had been for yesterday. What changed?"
If anything, she expected Tyrion to wordsmith his way out of this. To come up with some clever plan or ruse that, even though Dany was prepared to recognize it, she would feel impressed by and respect the attempt. Instead, he sighed, closing his eyes and nodding.
"You did," he told her, "When we decided to come up here to see if what Ser Brienne had heard - I'm speaking as if Jon told you everything - it was to come and talk to who you were. Someone who was, I assumed because I thought you had led your armies away from Dragonstone at the time, so singly focused on her goals that an appeal to her to end slavery in Westeros would help us all. Or to simply use you, because who knows what would have happened afterwards? We all wish to extend our lives a little longer.
"But then I met you. Got to know you again. Perhaps got to know you better in the past two days than I ever did when serving as your Hand because this is who you've chosen to be. And how long has it been since you were focused on those goals?"
At this, Tyrion gestured to Rose and Shadowedge, and then in the direction of her house in the clearing and worked in a small smile.
"Two years," Dany replied, looking out at the village with him, "I haven't wanted those goals in two years. I still don't want them."
"Why should we try to force them upon you then?" Tyrion asked, "And what good would it do any of us? When you told me yesterday about your fears of what would have happened if you and Jon hadn't left that night, how was I even to ask you to help us? Not out of fear for what you think you could become. Seeing as we're being entirely truthful, I'm sure I've always known deep down that you've had that side. But out of respect for you walking away from everything. Out of respect for your choices.
"I am the last of the Lannisters," he continued, "My family died at each others' hands in a life spent politicking, scheming, and being generally arrogant. I killed my father. I watched as my brother died when my sister blew up an entire city and killed four hundred thousand innocent people. And yet here I am, still politicking and scheming. Still as arrogant as the day before. Perhaps with slightly better intentions, but we're calling our ducks ducks.
"You walked away from becoming your family. In essence, you were the last Targaryen. And yet now you've made your own family. Your own life. After everything our world has put you through. Every thankless person that you have tried to help who took piece of your good heart. Every time you've sacrificed yourself to do the right thing. You didn't deserve me putting you into that position again. There is no right choice in this case. But for you, there is a better one."
They did not speak again for a long while, instead sitting in silence and watching the day unfold. The camp tents were coming down - Dany briefly wondered where those left behind would be staying - while the villagers went about their normal chores. Dany was drawn to picking out the villagers below. She knew each of them by name. What they liked, who their children were, where they came from. And they knew her: Dany.
"I may not be able to help you," she said, looking down at him and breaking the silence, "but know that you're welcome in Shadowedge. We have no surnames here."
"I'll remember that."
Still feeling strange, although more resolved, Dany made her way back to Willa's house with only Rose in tow. She expected, as she got to the front of the healer's home, that her next task of the day would involve dragging her friend out of the house and telling her to stop moping like a maiden locked in a tower and fix it.
It would have been a welcome change, but Dany had never really given Willa much thought as a romantic being. It seemed that she viewed other people like she viewed plants: enjoyable to interact with, but also easily hands off. They never really spoke about that other side of people. The few times Dany mentioned it in the beginning of her friendship sent Willa melodramatically gagging.
Therefore, it was with some trepidation that Dany opened the door and readied herself to delve into Willa's loving side: a stranger to all.
Or...not...Dany thought as she slowly covered Rose's eyes with her free hand. From their current angle, it was very difficult to distinguish whether Tormund had the beard or Willa had suddenly sprouted one.
Quietly, Dany backed out of the house and closed the door.
Ghost the sled dog. That's all.