Chapter 3
Daenerys' chambers
Daenerys kept staring at her bedroom ceiling, painted as a cloudy night sky. She was thinking of what Jon had told her the night before. He did not defend what he did, and he understood what he should have done instead. That was good. At least... that. It was not about him, or just about him though. The decision to unleash Drogon on the city was hers. And she was not incapable of controlling herself at that point. She had deliberately decided to burn the city. And having Jon with her again was forcing her to face what she had done. She had been busy all those years, figuring out how to be a mother, a queen, hiding from Bran's magic, keeping her daughter safe, trying to forget how much she loved sleeping in Jon's arms at night, how safe she had felt with him...and how wrong she had been. She had not questioned herself, to understand why she had burned a city. She was not mad when she did it, she was enraged. But not at the people she had burned though. So why did she burn them? She was not mad, she was in pain. Was it a revenge? She wanted to hurt Tyrion, to hurt Jon, to hurt Cersei, to show her power to stop others from trying to hurt her. That was it. She wanted to scare them all, so that they wouldn't have hurt her anymore. She wanted to stop the people of King's Landing from treating her like the Northmen had done. With no them, there would have been no need to try and conquer their love. And they could not have hurt her rejecting her. She had to fight her brother, she had to conquer her husband's respect, her armies, cities, her fleets, she saved the North, yet she had to persuade the Northmen to love her. She failed and she was tired. The people that loved her wholeheartedly had died. She had burn the city, so they couldn't have hurt her. Alas, that's who she was: somebody that was desperate to be loved, and terrified to be hurt. How could she find redemption for what she had done?
"Why that face?" asked Daario bringing her food in bed.
"You will spoil me. What am I supposed to do then when you are in Mereen?" she smiled languidly, while he was opening the curtains letting the sun kiss her feet.
"I do not want to go back to Mereen. I am scared for you." he stopped for a moment "And jealous." Now he was besides her, as he was most of the time when he was with her. The despair he had felt when Drogon brought him her body, it felt like drowning, he still could not shake it.
"So you are afraid I will sleep with him and then he will kill me again?" she mocked him.
"Do not joke about it."
"I am sorry." she caressed his face "Drogon could take you, so you'd be faster and could come back sooner."
"No, no magic. Bran could sense it, or could travel in birds to spy on us. The spells are cast on the cities, on this island, not on the territories in between; it would be impossible to cover them all."
"Do you think that Jon knows?" she asked dubious.
"No, I am sure of this: he has no idea."
Dining room
Jon had woken up when the sun was already high in the sky. He had not slept in a proper bed in years, and his back was really grateful to him that morning.
He wandered around in the villa, looking for Naerys, or Dany, or something to eat. He had decided to go back to the dining room and start from there.
Daario and Daenerys were working there, while drinking wine and nibbling fruit.
"What are you thinking?" asked Daario.
"I am not really sure on how to solve this." answered Daenerys "they are both right."
They heard something falling in the corridor.
"I am sorry, I did not mean to disrupt your discussion, again. I was trying to go away before you noticed me but I hit a plate, and ..." Jon was embarrassed, mostly for what had happened the night before.
"Come in. I suppose you did not eat." Daenerys pointed at plates full of fruit and bread and cheese.
"Thank you. I would not want to..." Jon was hesitating.
Daario cut it short "Sit."
Jon sat and started eating.
"As I was saying, I do not know what to do." continued Daenerys.
"Give them a sword each and they will sort it out." said Daario, but he regretted it straight away for the way that Daenerys looked at him. "We could ask the former bastard here how he would do it.". Daario regretted this phrase too: Daenerys burned him with her sight.
She proceeded to explain politely "Jon" it was painful to even say his name "A farmer needed money and went to war as a mercenary. He managed to survive, but when he came back, his farm was occupied. Now he wants his farm back. However, the person that occupied the farm kept the field fertile and added flocks to it too, and obviously wants to keep it. They are asking for the queen's justice in this. What do you think?"
"Didn't your husband have a similar case to this, not with farming, but with pastures? You suggested him how to solve the quarrel, don't you remember?" answered Jon.
Daenerys looked in her memories. "Yes, Yes you are right. Drogo wanted to make them fight, but I said they should share and work together." she was surprised "Who told you that?"
"They still tell stories about you in the Dothraki sea. You are missed." answered Jon, too ashamed to look at her in the eye.
"Did you cross the Dothraki sea?"
"Yes, I...the last three years or so have been spent trying to retrace your journey. Pentos, Vaes Dothrak, Qarth...if I had known you were alive, I would have rushed through it though." Jon kept eating his cheese.
"Why?" she asked.
"I wanted to know the woman I loved. I wanted to know the woman I killed."
Daenerys was speechless. Even Daario could not find anything to deride him.
Daenerys came out from the astonishment "So now you think you know me, you have my memories, you have my past. You think you know who I am now and for what I stand."
"No, I think I know better the woman that I killed. I know her path, how she got to be who she was."
She slammed her cup on the table "You could have asked me. You could have believed me."
"Do you think I don't know that?" Jon was nearly in tears.
"I did not win King's Landing the easy way, because I fought for you first. All the men I lost, and Jorah, and Missandei, my own life, were lost because of you. And now, after all that has happened, you are putting time to get to know me? After you killed me? All this dedication to my memory, all this trouble only now? Have you made any progress in knowing who YOU are, and for what YOU stand. Because that was our problem: not my beliefs, but the fact that you did not know what yours were. It was your confusion that killed me, not your ideas. You kept being pulled by your sisters, by Tyrion, almost as if it matters from which family you come, to establish what you want. Loving me for you was like betraying your sisters, your family. But you are your own person, Stark or Targaryen, bastard or king, father or husband or alone. I could see that, but you couldn't. I could see that because I had to understand who I was, aside from Drogo's Khaleesi, Viserys' sister, the mad king's daughter. You have travelled Essos for three years, you travelled my past, but have you travelled your heart? Have you finally understood what you want?" Daenerys was fuming with rage, and after years of missing him and feeling her heart lacerated thinking of him, she was finally letting her anger out.
The cry of a child called them back from the dark place where they had gone. They turned to the door, and they saw Naerys crying. She had walked in the room when Daenerys was yelling, but she had never seen her mother raising her voice, thus she had gotten scared.
Daenerys went to calm her down "Nothing happened. I got upset and I needed your father to understand I was upset. But I shouldn't have yelled. Would you forgive me?"
Daario picked her up "Why don't we go and play with your dragons? Have they learned some new tricks while I was gone?".
Naerys seemed to calm down, she went with Daario, and Dany and Jon could hear her in the corridor blabbing about what she had taught her dragons.
"Where do we go from here?" asked Jon.
"I don't know. I wish I did, but I don't."
"If it helps, you could never hate me more than how much I hate myself."
"You are wrong." she was about to say "I could never hate you." but she stopped. "I am terrified of you." she said.
"Do you want me to leave? You were at peace before I arrived here."
"The man I adored, the father of my child, had killed me. Was I at peace?"
"What do you want me to do?"
"What do YOU want to do, Jon?"
"I want to stay here. With you. With Naerys." he tried to lightened the mood "even with Daario: he is not too bad. Gorgeous eyes."
She burst into a smile "Then stay. I better check on Naerys too. Excuse me." Daenerys stood up and went looking for her daughter, leaving Jon happy he made her smile, and heavy-hearted for not having done it sooner.
TO BE CONTINUED
