"I'm a failure," Enda muttered to her feet, as she walked into the Haunted Woods.
"No you're not," Jon and Dany said simultaneously. The couple glanced sideways at each other and Dany saw Jon give a near-imperceptible shrug before saying to Enda, "It's okay to now be ready for something. You haven't even made any mistakes, you're just still learning! And if you continue on like this, Dany and I shall collectively list every time we've considered ourselves failures and you won't leave this spot until our baby comes."
"And we won't be finished at that time," Dany added.
The sun was barely visible in the gaps between the trees. At this time, it had already begun to dip down past the Frostfangs and the chill of evening had set in. Enda, Dany, Jon, and Rose (now fast asleep in her sled with Ghost pulling it) had stayed rooted in the same spot since Arne and Dern had brought the gravely injured Njal to Willa until quite recently. Tormund had joined them. Then Dern had been sent out soon after and he and Devyn, still petrified with the shock of seeing his brother, left without another word to go tell his father what had happened. When the afternoon light got faint, Dany sent Thistle and Myl home with the promise that they would know tomorrow if Njal was all right.
Willa had only just emerged when the sun began to sink.
"I'm going to fetch Kolla," she had told Dany and Jon, "Aspen needs to go home and I - you're here!"
Despite herself, a wide grin broke out over Willa's face when she spotted Tormund. She reached for him, but her expression was quickly replaced with panic and she paused her motion. "I - why are you here now? I have a patient! I can't -"
Tormund grabbed her hand anyway and smiled. "You need to finish your work," he finished for her. "How can I help?"
"Come with me." Willa turned back to Dany and Jon. "He's alive," she told them. Dany noticed she was careful not to look at Enda. "I'll know more tomorrow when I see you again." Without another word, Willa had tugged Tormund by the hand and been off.
It had been their cue to leave, but both Dany and Jon were hesitant to leave Enda alone. They did not move until Willa and Tormund returned with Kolla, who stopped when she saw Enda still hunched over, having refused to interact at all.
"Have you been here all day?" she asked gently. As always, Dany felt warmer when Kolla spoke and she could tell that Enda felt slightly better as well, for the girl lifted her head to look at her adopted mother and nod. "Why don't you head home now, lark? It's all right."
"But what about you?" Enda asked in a small voice. For a moment, she looked to Willa and then dropped her gaze.
Kolla's eyes flashed quickly side to side and then, as if Enda had communicated something silent to her, replied, "Ah." The woman looked around and Dany saw an idea cross her face as her gaze settled on them. "Jon, Dany, do you think you could…?"
"Of course," Jon said gallantly before Dany could process the question. "She'll be well taken care of." At this, Enda's shoulders had dropped in relief.
Now they walked together back towards the clearing in the woods. Enda's words about failure had made Dany feel terribly disdainful towards Willa for what she had said earlier. Of course, it had been a very tense and stressful situation. But snapping at Enda when she was only just beginning to follow in Willa's footsteps seemed harsh. Maybe that's why she was avoiding looking at her, Dany supposed. Her friend was prickly and stubborn at the best of times, but perhaps she had felt, as Dany did, that her words had gone too far.
In any case, curiosity seemed to take over from Enda's anxiety, and she now looked quizzically at Jon and Dany. "You've thought you've failed?" she asked incredulously.
"Many times," Dany replied. She could just make out Jon nodding in agreement. The light had become dusky, almost like an obscured looking glass as the sun sank out of sight and took its meager warmth with it.
"When?" Enda insisted.
Dany glanced sideways at Jon for help. They did not often talk about their pasts amongst their clan. Except for Tormund, and Willa to an extent, not many people knew much past their involvement with fighting the Night King and his army. Fairly, Jon was more well-known given his experiences with the Night's Watch, Mance Rayder, and leading the free folk south. Many a traveler who passed through Shadowedge would regard Jon with a look of curious reverence when they thought nobody else was watching them. But otherwise they treated him just the same as anyone else; which was the way he and Dany preferred it.
Under Dany's look, Jon shrugged as if to say "we got ourselves into this," (you started it, she thought mutinously) but he offered no words for Enda and Dany instead paused for a moment before saying, "Well one time would be when Drogon was stolen from me."
Even in the darkness, she could see the girl's eyes widen at the beginning of the makings of a good story. The old thrill of storytelling swooped in Dany's stomach. Her recent confinement to her house meant that the only audience she had was a very disinterested daughter (usually asleep for storytime) and a horse and direwolf who could not understand enough Common Tongue to be particularly captivated.
"It was several years ago, when I lived in Essos. My khalasar - the group of Dothraki who traveled with me - and I were headed across the Red Waste. It was a very bad time for us. The Red Waste is a vast expanse of desert. Much like the land above our forest, but horrifyingly hot instead of cold. There is no water there. Nothing to drink.
"But, just when we were about to resign ourselves to the slow death of thirst, we found a city at the edge of the -"
"Shh!"
Jon had stopped suddenly, grabbing onto Ghost to stop the direwolf as well. Enda and Dany ground to a halt as well, both stumbling at the abruptness of it.
"Why did you -" but Dany's hiss of annoyance was cut off when her husband swung his hand out behind him to shush her again. In the same motion, he ducked down and lifted Rose from her sled, passing the child to her mother. As Dany took Rose onto her hip. As she caught the seriousness in Jon's eyes, she pulled Enda close to her other side. The girl was breathing very quickly. She, too, seemed to sense a sudden change in the air which had made the hair on the back of Dany's neck prick, leaving her feeling very exposed even in the shelter of the woods she called home.
She saw a glint as Jon produced a knife and silently gestured to the trees just off to their left. Without moving, Dany looked where he had gestured, forcing her eyes to see through the cloak of darkness. She could just make out the difference in shades of black between the trees and the spots of sky and landscape in between. Everything was still. Wind barely whispered amongst the leaves and the only movement Dany could see were the furls of breath belonging to the people around her.
Except for - there! - she spotted it amongst the trees before she heard it: the soft thunk of huge paws on the ground. Had there been no ice to crunch under the deft weight, she would never have noticed.
The group watched, still, as the cat trotted ahead across their path with a snow fox swinging limply from its jaws. Deftly, it leapt over a snowbank and disappeared from sight, taking the only sound in the forest with it.
Everyone stood frozen even after the shadowcat had disappeared until Jon lowered his knife. Enda breathed a shudder against Dany, hugging closer to her, while Dany and Jon exchanged a grim look. "Come on," Jon said quietly, leading them down the path towards where the shadowcat had crossed.
After passing the large, five-clawed tracks, it was mere minutes before they reached their home clearing and the group quickly filed inside. Jon lit a fire in the hearth, and the room was illuminated in a pleasant glow as warmth began to seep into their chilled bones.
Enda's quavering voice broke through the dim light. "It won't come here...w-will it?"
"No," Jon replied firmly. "I won't let it."
Dany started awake in the darkness as if someone had yelled in her ear. Quickly checking that that was not the case - the only audible sound was her own breathing - yielded other revelations that gripped her stomach. The other side of the bed was empty.
A glance around the room told Dany that Jon had left, judging by his missing boots, but there was fresh wood in the fire. Even with the fire burning, however, Dany felt cold where her skin touched the air, like the outside had recently entered and made its way around the room.
Knowing that she would not get back to sleep and now intent on asking her husband what exactly he meant by disappearing into the night with no indication he was leaving, Dany got out of bed and slipped into warmer clothes. After a quick check that both Enda and Rose were asleep, she pulled her boots on and quietly crept out into the night.
It was not difficult to spot where Jon had gone - there was light in the barn - and Dany crossed the clearing as fast her body would allow her, not wanting to linger in the dark. Her steps sounded loud and clumsy as she trod over the uneven, frozen ground. At the entrance to the barn, she was greeted with an arrow pointed directly at her
"What the hell are you doing?" she and Jon exclaimed at the same time.
Without answering or letting her answer, Jon lowered his bow and yanked Dany inside. As she passed by, she could see the normally soft lines on his face were taut. Embar, who was lying down in his favorite back corner, nickered sleepily to her.
"Well?" Jon hissed, turning his back to the door.
Ignoring him for the moment, Dany walked over to Embar to scratch the stallion behind his ears. She couldn't often reach the top of his head. Even atop him, Embar's neck was so long that - especially while pregnant - it was difficult to get to his ears and poll.
Jon made an impatient noise and Dany snapped his eyes to him, feeling a sudden surge of frustration. Why should he get to treat her like this? After all, hadn't she come out here for the exact reason he was annoyed? Her insides itched and she could feel her will being tested, wanting to have a go at him, to get him to react to her and just simply bother him and give him a taste of her irritation so they could be pissed off together; but she forced herself to say something more polite. "I should really ask you the same question," she remarked evenly with a politicked smile. "After all, imagine my surprise to wake up and find that my husband had decided to go on a stroll out into the woods in the middle of the night."
"I wasn't strolling!" Jon protested indignantly. Got you, Dany thought. Satisfaction melted into her frustration, splitting her thoughts into two sides of wanting to press him more and knowing that the proper thing to do was to let it go now.
She waited for a minute.
"I was...watching," he said, glancing behind his shoulder as if to illustrate his point. Dany quirked her eyebrows and, unexpectedly, Jon let out a haggard sigh and sank defeatedly onto the ground. Suddenly, he looked much smaller, almost as if the world was looming over him menacingly.
Both satisfaction and frustration had disappeared from Dany's feelings now, replaced with worry that clutched at her as she knelt beside Jon and placed her hand on his knee, circling her thumb over its side.
He gripped her hand tightly, sighing again before speaking. "Remember when we left Dragonstone?" he asked her.
Despite herself, Dany smiled for a second. It was a fuzzy memory. One she could never keep straight in her head beside the major details and feelings...and the leftover hand injury. The fear and panic from it had faded, now it was a memory of the beginning of their life and family. Of Rose and the child inside her, of Willa and Tormund, Enda, and the home they had built at the top of the world. Where would they be if they hadn't left?
"Of course I remember," she told him.
"It was the right thing to do," Jon said, his eyes unfocused as if he were reliving the experience, justifying himself. "It was so selfish. But it was right." He looked at her and said seriously, "Because I don't believe you'd be here right now if we hadn't left."
He squeezed his grip on Dany's hand more tightly, nearly pushing the bones of her hand together, as if trying to anchor her to the world and to him.
Jon continued. "And we knew we'd never be totally safe from that, but every instance since then, every time something's happened, it's been out of our control. Or at least something we couldn't have known about. At least, that's what I tell myself."
Dany opened her mouth to tell Jon that he couldn't possibly blame himself for anything that's happened, but he stopped her as he spoke more. "But I know about the shadowcat, Dany. And just sleeping inside pretending that it's not in the woods next to us, that it's not doing things I've never heard of a shadowcat doing before...I needed to be out here. I need to keep my watch."
His jaw set firmly with those final words and he fixed Dany with his steely gray stare in determination.
For the third time, her emotions had switched dramatically, and she felt overcome with the familiar wave of love coupled with an odd sensation to laugh.
"What a pair we are," she remarked, sliding her knees out from under her and leaning on Jon. He looked at her curiously and Dany shrugged. "Do you ever remember a time where you didn't feel crushed by responsibility?"
Jon scoffed, quirking his brow. "Do you?"
"I should," Dany replied, "but I don't. The only feeling I remember from childhood is yearning. Before, when I came in here, I just really wanted to have a go at you for this. For leaving the house in the night and what not. I wanted to give into that so bad - you know: a regular argument about a mild grievance. Like Willa and Tormund have. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm not even sure I know how to do that," she admitted.
Jon chuckled, causing Dany to join in as she thought og how ridiculous and true her admission was.
"Well," Jon said, "next time you want to have a go at me for something, just let me know and we can learn how to do it together." At this, both of them laughed harder.
When they had calmed down, the little ending chuckles subsiding into just smiling at each other, Dany reached to stroke her slender fingers over Jon's cheek. "You're quite a man, mahrazhkem anni," she told him.
"As are you," Jon replied. "Woman. Quite a woman. That's what I meant. Woman. Sorry, never mind. I love you, that's what I mean. Stay with me a while?"
With another murmur of laughter, Dany nodded and settled in closer to her husband. "Always," she said.