Jon
Snow. He came to on the floor of the godswood with the word ringing in his ears. From Tormund's hearty bellowing to Stannis' wry gravelly commands. Ser Alliser's endless jeering, Ramsay Snow's taunts. More of the same coated him head to toe in what looked like fresh fall, which took a deal of shaking off- just enough time for him to forget everything before it all came rushing back. Fath…Lord Eddard Stark as a boy, not the hard solemn man Jon had known in life. Brandon, the elder brother, even fierier than Lord Stark had described him. And the sister I heard him mention fewer times than I have fingers on my hand. She had looked akin to Arya, they shared the grey Stark eyes and dark Stark hair… But it's Father Arya resembles. I look like the sister he never mentioned, the woman a prince died for. Jon put a hand to his mouth to stifle a sob, a scream. Then he fell right on his kingly arse, though he barely felt it. He gasped, then gave a sniffle. I'm not his son. It went through his head faster than any other thought, and it made him sniffle again. I needn't have bothered trying to be like him, I- That someone could sneak up on him was a possibility he never could have expected, and yet somehow someone was there, standing bold as they pleased in front of him while he sobbed like a babe. Jon gasped, the shock of cold air in his lungs staunching his wounded spirit.
"What's wrong, Jon?" Eddard Stark asked, though he was neither the boy Howland remembered, nor the man Jon had revered. Some magic of the trees, what little part of Jon's mind remained unpanicked mused. Ned's mouth curled in a quiet northern smile.
"You might have guessed something was amiss when you rode the dragon, my lad."
"Which dragon?" Jon asked, making Ned Stark snort aloud.
"The one that breathes fire."
"I'm going to need you to be a little more specific-" Jon knew he was making an ass of himself, but anything would do to shove what he'd seen into some deep recess, one so dark it would never again come to light. Ned interrupted him, looking less amused.
"Enough. I ask again, what's the matter?" Jon could stand to sit no more, rising to face the ghost, spirit, the memory the trees had of the man who'd raised him like a son. As a son, Jon amended.
"Once, I hated being a bastard. I hated being a Snow…"
"What changed?" Jon tried to comport himself.
"I told myself that being your son was enough. If I couldn't be a Stark, I wouldn't be a Stark…at least, I'd be your son. No one could take that away, not with an insult or even a knife in the heart." Ned Stark's face softened a bit.
"You wish all was as you were raised to think it was."
"I wish I were the son of the most honorable man I've ever known, instead of someone else's."
"Even a prince?" Now he looked dumbfounded.
"Prince, peddler, and everything in between."
"What of your mother, then? The mother who gave her life to give you life." That sobered Jon considerably, and the tears stopped. "Do you think Howland and I did what we did because you were Rhaegar's get?" He gave a humorless chortle. "Then you know noth-"
"I'll not hear that from you, least of all people. You might have told me, that day on the moor, before I went off to freeze my life away at the Wall."
"Tell you what? It was no affair of yours. I promised Lyanna I would protect you, and protect you I did."
"You had no right to give me to the Watch-"
"I had every right. You were my bastard son. The only way I was I the wrong is if you accept you are who Howland Reed's memories say you are." Jon couldn't help his eyes going misty again.
"Another man's son."
"My sister's son. You are Rhaegar Targaryen's trueborn get and heir, aye…but you are my son." Jon couldn't shake the feeling that all of it was wrong, somehow, that the trees themselves were mistaken. If indeed this is their doing.
"I'm not a king, Lord Stark."
"It's a Snow you aren't. You never were." Jon thought desperately for the next straw to grasp.
"The babe Lord Howland saw born had a sister, a twin. I don't."
"Jon Snow doesn't. The same can't be said for Aemon Targaryen, and that's the name your mother gave you." I don't have a mother was on Jon's lips, but he didn't have the nerve to say it to Eddard Stark's face.
"Jon Snow is the name you gave me. My sisters are your daughters." Or would have been, had your lady wife allowed it. It was Ned Stark's turn to look stricken.
"You don't know how many times I've thought how this talk might go. How often I wondered what I might say, what you might say. It figures the real thing turns out to be nothing the least bit like any of my flights of fancy." A soft sound, barely audible, made Jon's head turn toward the pool, the mists rising off it making seeing much of anything impossible. Jon figured he'd merely heard things, turning back to Ned Stark to find that he had vanished. Tellingly, there were no tracks in the snow to betray his coming or going. He was never here, Jon thought. At least, in flesh and blood. The sound came again, louder. But someone is.
Jon stuck to solid ground, unwilling to wade blindly into the pool. Knowing me, I'll trod on Viserion's bloody tail and he'll snap me up on reflex, the dozy rake. At the water's far end someone was sitting in the shallows, head on their knees and crying softly. Jon's first instinct was to splash up to them, but halfway there he froze. The other person was clad in some sort of dark green-grey leather, the garb of a crannogman- yet no one born to the bogs had hair the color of starless night. Stiffly Jon pressed on, trying to keep his feet under him even as the water soaked into his boots and up his legs to above his knees. When she looked up at him, she found him waiting with an outstretched hand, burn scars and all. Seeing his own bloody birth was one thing, but nothing could have readied Jon for looking into his own face outside the silver world of a mirror. There was more than a little of Arya in her, of course, but it was Eddard Stark that Arya most resembled. The girl, the woman in front of Jon had the dark Stark hair and the grey Stark eyes that Lyanna Stark had given her. That she gave us both. Though, there was something about her nose… A shade longer. She has the prince's nose. He found himself without the faintest idea of what to say, until a thought came to him.
"Our sire comes up miserably short standing next to our fathers. If you're feeling you've rather traded down…you're not alone." You're never alone. She took his hand and he lifted her from the water as easily as he could manage without falling on his kingly ass.
"I have the best of fathers. I don't need a second."
"No more than I do, Meera. It is Meera, isn't it?"
"You saw the same memories I did. While you were with Bran and my father, I was with the dragon queen and my mother." She let go of him, looking no more at ease.
"I don't expect what you're feeling is much of anything good."
"No, not particularly. Bran always said you were so like your own father, I'm surprised you're faring as well as you are."
"About what? The prince? Bugger him blind. Until today I didn't have the faintest idea who my mother might be. Daenerys suggested Ashara Dayne…well, to find her alive and well at Winterfell was something I wasn't expecting. When she told me she wasn't my mother, I thought that would be the end of it." He shrugged. "Now I know. I know my mother and father loved each other dearly. I know it was his devotion to her that led him to claim me as his own and live with the smirch upon his honor, a wedge between himself and his lady wife at the very roots of their life together. I know I'm not a bastard, no more than I'm a Stark."
"You are." Meera replied. "A Stark. I lost count how many times people toasted your empty chair and called 'King in the North', name or no name, mother or no mother." She was quiet for a little while, taking him in, the anxiety on her face receding before she turned to look for the others. "Why do you suppose they left us?"
"To give us a moment, I suppose. To meet in private and let whatever we decide stand."
"Decide?"
"Whether we want to tell anyone, I don't know." The mist grew deeper, and Jon felt the snow begin melting in his hair. "Not that it will remain a secret for long no matter what we say." No wonder Rhaegal took to me, no wonder Drogon let me yank his chain. Meera took a sharp sudden breath, Jon turning to see a pair of golden horns break the surface of the pool, the eyes of molten gold sun-bright even below the water.
Easy, b- Jon's words were brushed away with an impatient almost careless slap, strong enough to seat him squarely in the water. Viserion's pale head slowly began to surface, water pouring off him and steaming off his body when it couldn't reach the pool fast enough. The dragon gave a tickling rumble, his nostrils greedily gulping down Meera's scent. Jon remembered the way Viseron had looked at him in the Neck. Found the real item now, I'd say. The dragon snuffled a bit, then gave the rasping grunt of a bull lizard-lion. At once Meera's expression changed, her mouth dropping open. "You have to go to him, Meera." Jon said, not moving from where the dragon's riposte had dumped him. She gave no indication she had heard and remained quite immobile, but Viserion didn't seem to mind. Finally she took off her glove, stretching out her arm to run her fingers down the dragon's flawless ivory snout. Viserion's eyes closed lazily. Then the water around him began to cascade off his sides, the dragon giving a contented rumbling. Like far-off thunder. Viserion's wings slid out of the water next, stretching out behind him before he brought them down, bathing Meera in a sweltering wave of humid air. She didn't blink, much less flinch, though her hair blew out of her face in a seamless black curtain behind her head. When she made no further demonstration, Viserion yawned and returned to the pool's deep center, bellowing loud enough for even those in the crypts below the castle to hear. I have found what is mine. This time Meera had to pull Jon to his feet, still looking quite starry-eyed.
"They're that sort, alright. I don't know if it's all dragons or just the three, but they've got pride in spades. They're the top and they know it." And they've yet to count ten years. The Black Dread had seen two centuries and more, and most of those from within the Dragonpit. With no such chain…who could say how long the three might live? Viserion was certainly not shy about letting the whole castle know his mood, what had even a cold giant to say to a dragon when in wroth? When Jon took her hand again, Meera's tightened around his own. "Let's go," he told her. She nodded minutely, though remained rooted firmly in place with her eyes on Viserion's mist-cloaked form. Jon eased her into turning away, leaving the pool and then the godswood to the dragon, still bellowing his supremacy for all to hear. Sharing is not in a bull lizard-lion's nature, nor a dragon's, Jon thought. I do not envy Bran that task.
They found the rest waiting just inside the godswood's entrance. Jon slipped his arms around Dany and kissed her before she could speak, feeling her quick breaths against his face.
"None of that, sweetling. You and the babe are my concern just now, naught else." She sniffed very lightly and nodded, content for the moment to let him hold her. The Reeds took their daughter in their arms, Lord Howland patting Meera's back as Lady Jyana touched her forehead to her daughter's temple, murmuring soothingly. Bran sat with a stone wall at his back, looking rather gobsmacked. "Are you alright, Bran?"
"No, but I'll be in a moment. This sort of thing happens when I use the trees like that, even with the Singers' help." After a few minutes he groggily got to his feet, brushing himself off. "I thought I was doing what I could to make you a princess, Meera. I suppose the joke's on me." He gave a nervous chuckle. To Jon's surprise, Meera gave a hiccupping giggle.
"But why? Why did you do what you did my lord, my lady? My father as well." Jon asked. Howland Reed turned to him.
"I suppose the simple answer is to protect you both from Robert, who could not be trusted to keep sober for a fortnight let alone take the news his hated enemy begot children on his betrothed."
"And the not so simple answer?" Jon prompted. "We did it to protect you from the world. That world. Endless jockeying for favor, for power, empty words and selfish actions. Tywin Lannister would have seen the two of you dead faster even than Elia's children. Such a match as the dragon and the wolf would have turned the capital's eyes north instead of west, just when House Lannister was poised to rule through Robert." Lady Jyana replied, laying a hand on her husband's shoulder.
"A game, they call it down there. Well, they were free to play it and make pieces of themselves. We were long gone by then with all that mattered in tow."
"But I have your eyes, Father." Meera said, looking thoroughly distressed.
"You did, as did I when we were safe at Greywater Watch. The Neck is more than bogs and crannogs, thanks to the means by which it was made. When the Hammer of the Waters fell and sundered the land, the magic lingered in what came after. Over time, it came to linger in the people dwelling there as well."
"But Asper Hysh looks nothing like a crannogmen and she's lived in the Neck all her life." Jon said, frowning.
"Ferden found her at the edge of the bogs, left to die by farmers who could not bear another mouth to feed or even a landed family's unwanted daughter. Asper is First Man by raising, not blood. But my lady wife, my beloved daughter…"
"The Daynes are First Men, yes, but Rhaegar was no First Man." Daenerys said.
"He was Valyrian, though. A kind of men storied for the traces of the Freehold in their blood. When the years passed and Meera's eyes stayed as green as her brother's, I figured neither the First Man in her veins nor the Valyrian took the least bit exception to running as one. But such power as lies within the Neck is not eternal, it seems." Howland turned to Meera. "When you left for the world without, it must have only been a matter of time. The same as with your mother."
"Howland Reed." Branch's voice made Jon start.
The Singer held a weirwood-handled sword in his hands. Valyrian steel.
"That's Meera's." Bran said at once.
"Yes, it is." Howland replied.
"Perhaps you'd care to tell how it came to her, my prince." Bran blinked. "She found it in the Three-Eyed Raven's cave."
"The what?" Jon asked.
"A man broken, after a fashion. Kind of like how I was. He could use the trees, too."
"Once, he was a king's son." Branch replied, to which Bran nodded.
"He told me some of it. That his mother named him Brynden, that he loved one brother and hated another…but we had the Night King to worry about, and people dead for years were no bother of ours."
"Names in the Common Tongue are only more words. Brynden, Bloodraven, Three-Eyed Raven, all words."
"But didn't he disappear on a ranging beyond the Wall?" Jon asked, trying to remember the storied officers of the Night's Watch's past. "He chose to take the black after a council because he killed a Blackfyre attendee when he'd promised him safe passage." Daenerys nodded.
"Aenys Blackfyre. I suppose Bloodraven did it to show just where the matter of House Blackfyre winning the Iron Throne lay. Well, were Drogon about he could have settled the matter on his own terms." Jon couldn't help but snort.
"Brynden Rivers didn't disappear. He lingered in our midst, waiting." Branch said, tapping the sword's hilt. "He had this with him. Over the years, the tree's roots grew around it." He handed it to Howland.
"As soon as I saw this sword, I knew the end of our efforts was in sight. Brynden Rivers was famed for his weirwood bow, but he had skill enough to carry another weapon as well." Then a glittering dragonglass dagger was in his hand as if from nowhere, biting into the white wood until with a crack it fell away. The crossguard was rippling gold with a ruby in the center, the pommel a golden fireball. The handle itself was black as the blade, golden wire trailing around it to perfect the grip. "Dark Sister was made for a woman's hand." Howland Reed said. "A woman of House Targaryen. Perhaps it didn't mind waiting all those years when it had you to wait for, Meera." he continued, handing it to his daughter. Reflexively her hand tightened around it, though Jon did not miss the trembling in her fingers.
"I would sooner be your daughter for true." she said finally.
"You are. There is Stark in every Reed, and Reed in every Stark. You may not have my name…but you have my blood."
Jon's thoughts were jumbled afresh at Howland Reed's words.
"I think I'm ready for a sleep." The little man certainly looked bone-tired. Laying one's life bare will do that, I suppose.
"You can't leave me, not now." Meera said at once. He gave her a sad look, half adoring and half enduring.
"I will never leave you, Meera. I am of your life that was, that's all. Your life to come is around you. Your husband, your son, your son not yet born." Jon felt Dany squeeze his hand.
"Rest sounds like a good idea. And I want dearly to see the hot springs you've spoken of so prettily, Jon Snow." Dany said, trying to take on her high-handed affect she used to jerk his chain so effectively. Jon knew she just wanted to be alone with him so they could talk. A talk is rather bloody warranted, I'd say. The lords and chiefs and all the rest can wait. And the added wrinkle of the Others trying to kill us all.
"Jon, I'm going to take Meera back to our room. When you're ready, come up and join us. Uh, we have something to tell you, too." Bran told him, leading his princess from their midst after her parents.
"What do you think it is?" Dany asked once they were alone, almost guilelessly.
"I can only guess that they found something of my father's they want to give me. Sansa was always adamant that I accept…well, circumstances as the lords wished."
"Being King in the North." Dany prompted.
"No, that the cooks serve beets at every meal." That got a giggle from her.
"They can serve rocks for all I care-"
"-please, you don't stop eating unless you want to make some ridiculous demand." Jon cut her off, heading through the outbuildings to keep out of the crowd.
"Hmph! A queen can demand what she likes when she likes, and from whom she will!" Their lovers' spat lasted until they found the springs, great earthen bowls from which bubbled steaming water. "Ooooh…" Dany murmured, clearly intrigued.
"Something like that. No need to complain there's a wolf in your bath this time either, there's room for both of us." Only then did he remembered what had gone on in the godswood, the truth a knee in the gut all over again. Dany didn't fail to notice, pulling something from her pocket.
"Maybe you should have this after all, Jon." she said, showing him the ruby Arya had found.
"No." Jon said immediately. "It was your family's."
"Was it?" Her implication made Jon shiver.
"You were raised a member of House Targaryen. You are Queen Rhaella's daughter, and that was Targaryen plenty for the lords in the throne room. Ser Bonifer was surely a means for the gods to sweeten your arrival in Westeros. He's a man of great conviction, yes, but also great principle. Targaryens aren't known for their revolutionary ideals…it might well have been your Hasty blood that so couldn't abide slavery's existence." He piled his clothes at the water's edge and stepped into the spring, just barely suppressing the urge to groan in relief. "The first time I've been warm in a good while, not counting staring down a dragon's bloody throat." Almost shyly, Daenerys followed him in. With no thick layers to pad her outline, Jon could see the undeniable swell of her belly. The sight drove all else from his mind, even what had happened in the godswood. He went to her, helped her keep her feet, gently guided her into his lap as he sat. She had no such compunctions about letting him know she was happy about being warm, letting out a grateful sigh that echoed off the stones. He knew better than to try talking to her, wholly unsurprised when he heard her soft snores not ten seconds later.
They ran. Through the foothills first, then the great craggy paws of the mountain proper, and then the endless green of the wood. Any prey they came across went down under a gale of teeth, on two legs or four, living or dead. The white shadows alone were too quick to catch, but they smelled of snow and cold, not hot red meat, and so the Pack let them flee. Eventually they found nothing but dead waiting for them, the living of the cold races content to let the Pack rush past unmolested. There were cold ones, too, among the moon-besotted chorus every night. Blue-eyed, white-furred, that missed no hint of prey. No biting gale could gnaw them, no heavy snow deter them. While he and his kind had to break through the snow every morning, emerging soaked and shivering, the cold brothers and sisters often had already found breakfast. They had no love for the men clinging to their heels, survivors and small groups deep within the mountain fastnesses, but he had soundly beaten into the wildest of them that they would fill their bellies with what lay before them and not behind. The silver-grey female had minded the she-pup the whole way without so much as a whine of weariness, keeping her out of the worst of whatever cold would come upon them. Every night the air was alive with countless calls, the silver female's sad and full of longing while the pup's was an enthusiastic squeak. By the time the forest began to thin, even the white shadows had it seemed thought better of providing resistance. So close to where the shadows congealed, though, the webs of those they drove wrapped thickest around the dark sentinel pines. Mothers kept their pups close come sunset, not letting them past their sharp strong teeth until sunrise, when the hooting web-weavers retreated into their hollows, under logs, or into thick foliage. He noticed too that the sun was no friend to his cold brothers and sisters. Just as the far lights of the man-den began to flicker into view at the furthest edge of his vision, the Pack found themselves cut off by a wall of walls of web, so thick he could not see through them. Many among his kind began to growl. The sun, though even weak and lazy enough to keep the weavers off the Pack, never lasted. Come night, the hooting things would keep at their wall, encircling the lot of them until they were snared. Many looked to him, to see what call he would sound. He lay beside the silver female, nuzzled the pup and waited.
Below, his once-brother bellowed still, like one of the creatures that clung to the stony beaches his kind had once called home. Ugly, trumpeting things, though the resident males among them could reach prodigious sizes and were very strong besides. Whenever he killed one the carcass had drawn envious eyes, none more so than the spindly not-men who grunted to each other restlessly while he ate his fill. Once, one bold enough to approach had tried to run him off. He learned that day that cold meat was not good eating, nowhere near as good as the bounty of the sea…but neither was it nothing. Still worse, he found they were worse than cowards when facing flame, the blazing sun in his throat enough to stagger them, to make them all but blind as his shrieks made their ears screw up. They were greater than true men, of course, but he had seen bulls kill the very men driving them, seen a pack of feral dogs chase one stinking of loose bowels down in an alley in the land across the great water. To be greater than a man was nothing much of note…but when men forewent what kept them small, when they abandoned the tethers so many of them wore the way he wore his scales… He'd seen the results, seen them with his own two eyes. The man was no true man, half a whimpering pink thing…but when the moon in splendor found him, bathed him in silver light…the sniffling babe-man had turned, abandoning his soft pink form. The wolf-man feared nothing, not claw nor fang, and even turned his own on the hard wild men of the stony sibling-island. Then still another had come, come without wings nor flame, past the cold lanky forms as they slept and up to where he laired- a feat that until then he supposed could not be done. His opinion on their great stone pens and paddocks had sunk still lower since that day. The stones they hid behind for succor made them small, made them weak, pink, harmless. How could they not see it? Even when face-to-face with what they could be, the little men that crawled up stone walls and buzzed like flies around their mud perches or the tall men whose blood ran hot instead of cold…men quailed away, hid, wore their colorful less-than-furs as if they'd stop so much as a breeze. Even when he understood that his larger once-brother shared more than just a hatchling's attachment with the woman who'd brought them into the world, he'd been resolved in putting the world of men behind him the first chance he got. The idea of one atop him as if he were a common mule…but then, men were not all common mules themselves. There were pigs, chickens, goats, cows, as used to life inside a prison as the beasts they claimed to own. Scarcer were the hissing snakes, snuffling bears…and the wolves scarcest of all. The man who scaled the mountain was one such. He smelled of slate, of sweat, of roasting meat and matted furs. He smelled of snow. At once, he'd acted, slinking down to him. He even smelled like the woman who favored his once-brothers. Here behind the stone walls he so detested, so despised, he got a look at the man's clutch-mate, a dazzling lithe she-creature the lazy one in the lake so loudly claimed. Deadly, he knew. How could she not be, with the scent of the creeping men all but seeped into her flesh? If anything, she was wasted on his once-brother, who spent more time asleep than awake. He supposed it was all for the better. His pale brother was lazy and his dark brother miserly, each like to be content hoarding his choice to himself while the hatchling inside each woman grew. He was not so bound. His own choice was not only male, but the head of the countless man-herd, man-flock, man-pack. There were others very near him, the wolf-brother and the raven-brother, but there was no contesting who should lead the pack. Upon the mountaintop of the island, he supposed all within view of his lair was his. High above the man-pen, he wondered if the same applied to his choice, wherever he was down there. Perhaps that was why the cold things had so incensed him. They were attacking the man-pen, eager to get at the harmless pink things within…flouting his choice's ability to keep them safe. Daring him to try and stop them. Well, stop them they had, with the man atop him laying out where to put his fire so that it would hit hottest, hurt hardest. Not all of them were felled, of course, but when one among the survivors screamed defiance, he'd roared right back. Look at me, he'd bellowed. Look at all I have. I have everything, and you have nothing.
A glinting in the trees caught his eye. In a long breath he was above them, mood souring quickly at the sight of the cold bars that had been set about a pack that dwarfed the one they'd brought over the little water. It soured further as he caught the shapes of cold bodies with too many legs gathering in great number at the edges of the twinkling prison. There were dead men, too, moving blindly about, and things still colder that stood out from the rest like blue stars in a black sky. Too late he realized they could see him just as well, beginning to dance about with deadly rhythm and coordination. He felt the wind begin to blow, cold and long-fanged, directly into his eyes, nose, mouth. Soon the wind would blow too strong for him to intervene. He dove, not bothering to voice his incandescence. His fire did that for him, cutting through dead flesh and cold bars in not a moment. The threats to the pack's rear were no concern of his, that was not the way to go and the wind was soon too strong to fly directly into anyway. Something in him questioned how high even a man as his choice could climb, when faced with an enemy that could drive the very wind. Then he was scything down trees in a gout of flame, the pack dashing toward the earthen outskirts of the great man-pen. For a moment he wondered how they would reach safety. No matter, he supposed. His task was to keep the cold at bay, and the things that dwelled within it quailed from the light, the noise, the heat of the walls of flame that burned between them and the pack. Shouts, calls, cries from the man-pen told him the pack was being attended to, the grinding of stone as part of it was lifted for the pack to pass under. The wind got stronger, the air colder, until he had to work twice as hard to stay aloft. They were not trying to kill him, he knew. If they could do it, they would have when he'd burst upon the cold tall men. They were trying to drive him away. He kept at them, forcing them into the darkness under which the wind blew too strong to contest. Only when the last of the cold lights flitting among the burning trunks vanished into the wood vouchsafed the flames did he turn back with a contemptuous flick of his tail. When he reached the high stone branches of the pen, perching atop them to his great distaste, he looked back. Already the fires were going out, smothered by snowfall or the screaming winds. His pride was injured further when several of the cold tall men emerged from the forest's new edge, howling defiance as loud as ever. Above them, new stars blinked into being, coming steadily closer.
Jon woke when his face fell into the water, splashing madly as Dany shrieked. "Fuck me!" he yelled, loud enough for Dany to recoil. At once there was a mad bashing on the door, until a boot took it off its hinges.
"SNOW!" Tormund yelled. "The green's giving them all they can handle!" It took Jon a moment to blink the last of what he'd seen out of his eyes (and a slap from Tormund) to fully bring him around. "They're bringing their wind to bear again!" Wonderful, what do you want me to do about it? Then Longclaw was being pressed into his hands, Tormund was helping him dress.
"Take Dany to the grotto below the castle." He turned to her. "Drogon isn't here, so you're best kept out of the middle of things." Though she didn't argue, she bit her lip.
"Only if you promise we'll get another chance to use the springs." Tormund snorted aloud.
"She's got more sense than two of you, Snow."
"And ten of you, Giantsbabe."
"Har! So she does! Come on then, dragon mother. We'll see you wrapped up nice and warm while Snow pisses on the Others' heads." If only, Jon thought as he raced to the surface, climbing the tallest building within his immediate vicinity. Rhaegal was clutching the roof of the First Keep, screaming murder at the clouds of ash and snow that whorled over the wolfswood. There's noth- Then Jon was hit harder than he'd ever been in his life, and he was looking at the treeline as if from hundreds of feet closer. Weak-kneed and through Rhaegal's eyes, Jon could see the shapes in the coming gale, lithe and batlike, with long thin heads. As in the Vale, he thought, with Others atop them besides. He knew Winterfell as well as his own body, so he pushed into Rhaegal's mind his location before he yanked himself free of the dragon's grasp, going to his knees. Wingbeats stirred above him and then came the sweltering air pouring off the dragon's body. He didn't wait for Rhaegal to land, simply leaping from the rooftop to grab one of the shoulder spikes before pulling himself onto the dragon's back proper. The people on the ground were Jon's first concern, but again Rhaegal yanked his thoughts from Winterfell so hard he felt as if he was going to fall at any moment. Who's riding whom? Jon thought weakly. Then there was a shriek, the cascading shatter of icicles across Rhaegal's belly, and the briefest glimpse of a storm-gray drake zipping by so fast a bronze lance could not catch it. It happened thrice more before the dragon could move, though the streams of icicles coming Rhaegal's way might have been snowballs for all they hurt him. Not me, though, Jon quailed, vomiting into empty air. I'm not covered in dragonscales. Again Rhaegal shook him, so badly Jon's body was not his own for a terrifying moment and he felt himself slide back, his own panic blunting the dragon's force just soon enough for him to snap his hands onto the spikes. Boy, do that again and I'm going to fucking fall off. We don't need to worry about them if you're going to beat me senseless before we're awing. The divide was deeper than that, but there was not the time. I can't give you a ranger's sight if you're going to act the forest fire, no more than you can fight if I'm busy vomiting down your leg!
The dragon's vehemence subsided, the tempest in Jon's skull quieting to a stormy rumble. They began to climb, Jon's nerves and nausea dissolving into Rhaegal's thoughtless ease in the air as Rhaegal's instinctive fury steeled with Jon's discipline. Even so, Jon felt the butterflies in his stomach might well have been eagles. Four, he thought. That we've seen, anyway. There's aught to say there can't be five or more. Rhaegal latched onto that thought. Pack tactics, boy. Runners push the quarry to where the strikers lay. Jon didn't bother trying to control Rhaegal's flame, he knew as much about breathing fire as he did farting lightning. The heat-sight was what he was interested in. They're too cold to hide from your eyes, boy. You'll miss them seeing normal, but they can't hide from this. The colors of the world faded until all was red or blue…or deep black, in the case of the quartet of drake-shaped objects following them up. Keep going, Jon told Rhaegal. As far as they know, we can't see them. He was exposed, ripe for the pincushioning…which was the point. They'll want to do damage, so they'll get close. You'll only get one chance, but it will be a good one. Rhaegal was the stronger creature without a doubt, but the drakes weighted significantly less and so kept up with him even robbed of the ability to glide. They're made to dive, though, not rise. They'll tire if we play this game for long. Jon waited until he felt a cold breeze on his neck, the wingbeats of the drake beneath him too close to dodge…or to flee, he thought, springing the trap. They didn't shoot down at their pursuers right away, instead simply stopping the climb to let the fall begin. The next thing Jon knew, he was staring into the face of an Other, not ten feet away- his blue eyes wide and mouth agape before Rhaegal bulled through him and his mount both, catching the next drake in his bronze teeth. Dragonfire writ an end to the beast and the one still behind it, cutting away the thin cold skin between the crystalline bones of the fourth even as it sent a futile stream of icicles wildly through the air. Ignore it, Jon thought as the whole of the world unfurled in all directions below. Ignore it, he ordered himself as Rhaegal shot directly earthward. The first Other had been knocked clear of his saddle, the second had likely been bitten clear in half, the third was vapor…and the fourth was barely outpacing them as they dove. Every instinct in Rhaegal's body screamed for fire, but Jon checked him. It will only slow us. By the time the flames reach where he is, he'll already be further down. Then Rhaegal hissed, his jade-cut eye narrowing. Runners and strikers. You are the smart one. Down they went, until the godswood's droplet became a puddle, then a pool. By then the drake's momentum was the only asset the Other on its back had, and it was woefully inadequate to handle the white dragon exploding from the pool, a golden lance catching drake and rider both as a bronze gout enveloped them from behind. For a split second Jon thought Rhaegal meant to pull up and take his chances in the trees, then he caught a glimpse of Rhaegal's reflection shooting up at them from the pool. Uh…
It was like jumping off a cliff, or maybe a waterfall. They hit the water like a brick through glass, knocking the wind out of Jon as he tried not to fall off Rhaegal's back. Up, up! Then he (the dragon) was breaking the surface, sliding out onto the godswood's green grass while he (the man) gasped like a landed fish. Sliding gracelessly down a green wing, Jon fought to force air back into his lungs. At last he caught his breath, which promptly had him on his knees and emptying his stomach all over again. Aemon, the First of My Name, he thought madly as he spat out the last of the bile, easing himself wearily into a sitting position. He waited for the world to stop spinning before he chanced standing, hoping all of it was an acquired taste. The flight from Skane to Skagos had been nothing, it was the up-and-downing of fighting awing that was the real trial. The spinning around, the hurtling toward the ground… Jon's gorge rose again but to his surprise he was able to force it down. While Rhaegal watched him raptly, Viserion unbelievably had already fallen back asleep, drifting slothfully back into the pool's deep water. Jon realized that despite everything he'd managed not to lose Longclaw somehow, the sword still in its scabbard on his belt. The fuck's anyone need a sword up there for? Still dazed, still teetering, Jon found himself shuddering at the thought of leaving the godswood without having entered. At least I'll not have to tell everyone the great long story, he thought. Riding the dragon will speak for itself. That's if I ever manage to reach the bleeding hall. Rhaegal made no move to follow or impede him, his eyes having gone to the trees between Jon and the rest of Winterfell at large. Suddenly the cold caught him and Longclaw was in his hand in a flash. Jon expected to find one of the drake-riders leaping down at him from a tree branch, but what padded between the trunks was no Other. The wolf, if wolf it was, was of a size with a direwolf, but regarded Jon icily with eyes he would know anywhere. The drafts of cold air that drifted from the wolf's nostrils were a hint, too, that something was amiss. Cold, the way the Others' giants are cold. It could not have acted less aggressively, though, sniffing after Jon in mild interest. The next two wolves were direwolves proper, absent of any cold aura or breath and willing to get much closer. That or they want to get away from their cold brother. Jon's breath hitched when he realized he knew these two…or rather, Ghost did, Jon having spotted them in his brief time in Ghost's skin.
The hairs on the back of Jon's neck stood up. Slowly he turned, getting the shock of his life when he found the white wolf seated not ten feet behind him. And grown larger still. The wilds had done for Ghost what they had for Nymeria, and now he stood taller than the Skagosi shaman's dagger-toothed cat. If he was put off by the smell of dragon, he didn't show it, padding up to Jon in two easy strides. Taller than me, now how'd that bloody happen? Yesterday I had you in one arm and you a milk-soaked warm rag in your mouth. Now you're running down giants, mammoths, and whatever else you and yours think might make good eating. Jon ran a hand down Ghost's head, the wolf's nose never stopping.
"It turns out I'm not who I thought I was. I'm Aemon bloody Targaryen, boy, First of His Name. Now what do you have to say about that?" A playful nudge later and Jon was on the ground, laughing like he'd forgotten how. "Have I got someone to introduce you to." A dazzling grey she-wolf strode haughtily up to Ghost's left side, her gaze puzzled. Jon whistled. "Had I known you were gone after someone so fine, I'd have gladly left you to it." When he heard the scuffling in the undergrowth behind her, his heart leapt- then soared as the puppy-pack came tumbling into view. Then it stopped at the sight of one among them, neither fanged nor furred for all she tussled with the rest. The little girl was five at most, red hair a hopeless tangle that ran down her shoulders. With a huff from the silver-grey the horseplay stopped at once, the puppy-pack coming meekly over to the warmth of her side. Black and brown and deep grey. Orphans among the Pack. The girl alone did not come, which Ghost seemed to expect. On seeing Jon she bared her teeth and growled, darting behind Ghost. He nudged her back into view, the girl whining in distress all the while. Jon forced himself to take a step forward, even as the whining grew higher. Ghost nudged her again, gently but firmly, toward Jon until she was at his feet. "I'll bet you're hungry." he finally got out. When she looked up, her gaze was grey, as Jon knew it must be. It wasn't possible…and yet Tormund's prodding of Jon toward Ygritte once upon a time had quickly turned to raucous laughter at the frequency of their couplings. When he tried to pick her up, she bit his hand. You're Ygritte's daughter, alright. The morning they'd come upon Moat Cailin surfaced in his mind. They'd watched an entire mob of wights go up in golden flames, and yet all Tormund seemed to care about was keeping Jon clear. And memories of Ygritte. His breathing hardened. I'll have the truth of this from him. The air warmed and at once the cold brother made himself scarce. Made for the cold dark quiet of the Land of Always Winter, as the drakes were. Small wonder he wants no part of a dragon. Despite her hesitance beforehand the girl quickly buried her face in Jon's shoulder as Rhaegal passed overhead. "None of that, sweetling." He murmured soothingly in her ear. "He's the last thing you need fear." When Jon went the Pack followed, though Ghost did not shadow his steps as once he did. Not now, when he's running at the head of the Pack. A huff in his arms took his mind off Ghost. The free folk would know who the girl was at once and given their fondness for telling tales, likely the rest of the castle knew as well. Before we handle all that, though, there's someone you need to meet. He planted a kiss on the top of her head, realizing she'd fallen asleep. There. Kissed by snow as well as fire.