The walk back home seemed much longer. Any energy Dany had from the anticipation of seeing Drogon and the other dragons had long worn off, and she felt as though she had been awake and active for days rather than a couple hours.
Jon placed a gentle hand on her back as they walked into their home clearing. "Do you want to finish this tomorrow?" he asked quietly into her ear, his whiskery face brushing her cheek.
"No," Dany replied softly, "No, I just need to sit down."
When they first entered the house, Dany experienced a momentary panic at the sight of no Rose, nor Enda or Nerell. However, it was quickly abated as Willa led them back to Rose's room, where Rose was curled up in bed and Enda and Nerell slept on the floor.
They looked so peaceful. So natural together, the sorrow that had contorted Enda and Nerell's bodies gone and replaced with contented sleep. Dany caught herself wanting to stand and watch over them sleeping, like she sometimes did with Rose, but heard the muffled shuffling of those behind her and drew herself away.
Silently, all four adults backed out of the room and returned to their previous seats at the table. "They've been doing that every day," Willa said once they were sitting, "They nap at the same time and go to sleep whenever Rose does. I think Enda and Nerell would sleep all day, though, if it wasn't for Rose waking them up in the mornings. She's the only reason they ever see the other children - everyone wants to play with Rose."
"I can't imagine how they're feeling," Dany murmured, looking to Jon whose eyes reflected her own heartache and still had the curious glint from before. Dorand had died so needlessly: for greed in the most awful of trades. After a life spent surviving and keeping his family safe, what a horrible way to go. And now...what about those promises he made? The wants he had?
He would never hear about their elk hunt. He would never go hunting with them. He would never see the sun set over the sea, nor take his children there. Everything was just cut short. And now his children were alone. Anyone alone in the world is a terrible thing.
"They're strong kids," Tormund grunted, breaking Dany's thoughts, "They'll pull through. So will we - if these fuckers are coming back again for the dragons like you think, we need to be ready to end that. So. What do we do?"
"W-why are you asking me?"
"Dany, just because you're not the Queen of whatever that fucking long title is doesn't mean you can't make decisions," Tormund said exasperatedly, "This is your home and I'm asking you, Dany, a member of this clan and the person in Shadowedge who knows the most about this situation, what we should do."
Dany opened her mouth to defend herself for a moment before closing it again. This was a lot to take in for only being awake for about half a day in the past week. But he was right. She had told Tyrion and Sansa she couldn't help because of the path she was afraid to go down: getting a taste of true power again in a land that feared her and resented her. But this was different. This was her home. She wasn't taking power, she was helping her clan defend their home and their family. To stay exactly as they were: with Jon by her side instead of pitted against her, without people undermining her and inciting paranoia, in a place where she was no outsider.
She knew how to live here. How to nurture life instead of only causing death. No outsider could do that. No outsider knows how to live here without someone to teach them.
"Gather everyone together for a meeting next sunrise - "
"Two sunrises from now," Willa interjected, "You're not going into Shadowedge until you've rested another day at least."
"Two sunrises from now, then," she said to Tormund, glaring at Willa though silently acknowledging that she was right, "This is a decision we need to make as a clan - it's already affecting everyone with the dragons here."
A familiar twinkle sparked in Tormund's blue eyes and he smiled. "All right then, I'll see to it," he said, raising a hand to clap Dany's shoulder before thinking better of it, possibly from Jon visibly stiffening, and just patting her gently. He turned to Willa, motioning with his head towards Rose's room before he and Jon rose and headed outside, discussing how best to spread the word of the meeting.
Willa pointed a finger at Dany as she rose. "When I come here tomorrow, you'd better not have done anything more rigorous than walked to the barn, pet Embar's nose, and walked back. Or I'm going to make the entire clan meet here instead. Actually, that's not - "
"I promise," Dany said, holding up her hands in defeat to fend off the possibility of everyone gathering in her tiny house. Before Willa could move further, Dany added, "Willa?"
The healer turned back inquisitively, raising her eyebrows to prompt Dany.
"Maybe tomorrow you can bring Enda and Nerell again? So that they can...be around Rose more...and, well..." She didn't know how to explain her thoughts, knowing they were beyond just suggesting that Enda and Nerell get to spend some time with Rose, but her friend seemed to understand.
"I think that's a good idea," she said.
For the briefest moment, Dany thought she saw Willa's eyes flash with regret, but the healer turned away before she could be sure.
Dany kept her promise. As soon as Willa and Tormund had left with the still half-asleep Enda and Nerell, Jon had helped her back into bed and laid down as well. They lay facing each other, studying the person before them. Part of Dany wished to just lose herself in this moment and forget that there was any pain or sorrow in the world. There was only Jon. She busied her mind studying every facet of him as if she had not mapped every inch hundreds of times before: his face, his hair, the scruff of his beard that tickled her cheeks. The way his eyes crinkled in the corners. The little gold and indigo flecks in the gray of his irises that gave them depth past other gray eyes. The crest of his upper lip, which she loved to trace her tongue over, always eliciting a gentle sigh from him and making his arms immediately wrap more firmly around her. The shape of his nose, just like Rose's, and the scar over his eye that he'd had since before they met.
Reaching out, she ghosted a finger from his forehead down. "How?" she asked in a whisper. Dany had never asked Jon about his scars before. She had seen them. As many times as she had mapped his body, she had seen them. Traced over them, kissed them away with Davos's words from the first time they met ringing in her ears. She knew...mostly. But she had never wanted to know more of what could have been. Now, however, what could have been seemed so horrifically tangible. It was easier to ask about this scar, though.
"An eagle," Jon replied, "Well, a skinchanger in an eagle? When I lived with the free folk for the first time."
"Skinchanger?"
"Someone who can enter and control an animal's mind," he said, "You're a warg if you can possess a dog or a wolf's mind. They're very rare, probably even more so now that there's so few of us. Free folk have an...interesting relationship with them, but the people in the South have hunted them down over time, fearing them and their power. When I was a boy, I wanted to be one."
Dany raised an eyebrow. "Sometimes Westeros seems stranger than Sothoryos. And there are Brindled Men there."
Jon smirked, playing with a strand of silver hair. "I'm not sure about sometimes," he said, "We have a half-ice dragon hatchling name Nut flying around the clearing where you and I were married under the branches of an apathetic heart tree."
"That's fair," Dany joked with a smile, "Although I'm glad they're here. Part of me thought I would never see another dragon when we left the Mammoth's Head, even with the egg. Seeing Drogon made me hopeful again."
"I'm glad they came too." Jon's face grew much more serious and he dropped Dany's hair to stroke over her cheek. "Part of me thought...when Myl came running...that I'd lo- "
Dany placed a finger over his lips. "Shh, don't say it, mahrazhkem. I'm here," she took his hand from her face to place over her stomach, where she now had a name for the butterfly flutters she had felt when she woke up, "Our family is here."
Smiling, Jon ran his hand over the swell. "New, old, and winged." He cradled her stomach, at first still smiling with what Dany could only imagine were thoughts of their future child, but then growing serious again. "Dany," he started, "About the 'new' part…."
She stiffened, and Jon quickly added onto his statement, "Not the baby. It's just...I'm thinking of adding onto the house again."
"Now?" Dany asked bewildered, "Jon, if you want our children to have separate rooms it doesn't have to be that immediate. Can't you wait?" Flashes of him falling off the barn roof before Rose was born quickly materialized in her mind. Was this Jon's way of preparing for a baby like how Dany rearranged the house? Did fathers do that? And why did he always seem to do more dangerous things when they were expecting a baby?
"Well...it was more for if we had other children," he said, tongue rolling carefully over each word and eyes breaking from holding their gaze with Dany. Absently, he was tracing over her stomach in a strangely agitated pattern.
"As in more?"
"More...now," he said.
Furrowing her brow, she used the voice one would perhaps use with a rather dim horse to ask her next question. "Jon, you remember how long one baby takes, right?" She placed her hand over his to pause him from tracing over their current growing child. "Because there's only one in there right now."
"No, not ours. Well, ours, but not like that," Jon said, punctuating his words with a frustrated sigh. "What I mean is, I've just been thinking a lot. About...Enda and Nerell. And I think, well, I think - "
"You think we should take them in?"
"We can, Dany," Jon said, his eyes glinting as they had before and eagerness etched over his face, "I've been thinking about it all week and we can. With another room we'll have plenty of space for now. And Embar's already made hunting a lot easier. And we do well with foraging. And I just think that Dorand would have wanted them to keep growing up with a family. And we can..."
Before he could continue on more, Dany brought her hand to his chest, pressing gently to stop him. "Jon, calm down," she said, gently smiling, "you don't need to justify it to me. I agree."
"You do?"
Dany nodded. "I do. I understand...I was actually thinking about it earlier. Kind of. I asked Willa to bring them back with her tomorrow so they could see Rose. But...I didn't mean just to see Rose? When Tormund said that Enda and Nerell couldn't stay at Willa's, it just reminded me so much of when Viserys and I were little.
"Every time some wealthy person took us in, I thought that I would have a family. Have the perfect mother and father like I always expected, although I didn't know what that was. And every time we would stay for a while and then be right out on the streets again. Nobody really cared for us, they just wanted to amuse themselves."
"That isn't what Tormund meant," Jon said defensively.
"I know," Dany said, pressing a hand onto his chest, "I didn't mean it like that. Nobody here would do something that vain. And anyone in this village would take care of Enda and Nerell if they could. I just mean that I remember how it felt. And knowing your parents must make it much, much worse. Dorand saved our family. If Enda and Nerell agree, we can help his...ours."
Gray eyes shining, showing off their multi-colored flecks, Jon smiled and traced over Dany's cheek, fingers coming to rest on her chin which he tilted slightly upwards. Leaning in, he kissed her deeply, pouring in emotion that words, even Valyrian poetry, could not describe. "Have I told you lately what an extraordinary woman you are?" he asked, nose just brushing hers.
"Have I told you lately what remarkable man you are?"
"I love you, Dany."
"As I love you," Dany replied. He kissed her again, starting out sweetly, only to pull her ever closer as she drew her tongue across his upper lip and melted into his warm embrace.
Until next time.