"What's got you so morose lad?" Davos asked when he finally found his King. They were on their return to Winterfell; Jon had been growing ever more distant from his men the further north they moved. Jon was standing on the shore of the White Knife, throwing stones into the rushing waters.

"I'm not morose Davos, I'm thinking."

"Aye," Davos agreed. "However, for you my King, thinking leads to brooding, and brooding leads to melancholy, which you are prone to. And I promised your sister I would do my best to return you in a better state than you left."

"So you and Sansa are conspiring about my state of mind now?"

"I am your Hand, and she is your sister. It is our job to be concerned about your state of mind."

"I'm fine Davos." Jon said with a sigh, knowing he was not getting rid of his hand unless Davos was satisfied with his response. In truth Jon was brooding, he'd been in a dark mood since they left the Riverlands and had finally escaped to the riverbank to be alone with his thoughts. "I'm just thinking."

Davos snorted. He knew his king well enough to know when he lied, not that Jon Snow had ever been the most adept liar. "About the Queen?"

Jon didn't dignify the question with a response, instead leaning down to grab another handful of stones. He picked out the largest and threw it as far as he could into the river, eyes never leaving it as it flew in a high arc. It landed with a faint plop, and he could hear Daenerys in the back of his head would that be so bad?

"Definitely the Queen then." Davos said. "Look lad, you don't have to tell me what has got you all upset this time, and I won't pretend to understand it. The pair of you are in a uniquely difficult situation, if she was any other woman, I would have told you to marry her already."

The king threw another stone, this time with more ferocity.

That's it then, Davos realised, Bloody marriage again.

"Did you ask her to marry you again?" Davos knew that the queen had refused Jon before but didn't fully know why.

"No." Jon said, throwing another stone.

"Then what did you do?"

"I didn't do anything." He threw another stone. "She asked me what I was afraid of. And I told her the truth."

Davos watched as his king tensed up, like a snake ready to strike. Or a dragon he thought dryly. Whatever Jon had told the queen had unsettled her too. Davos had seen Missandei before they left, and she had seemed distracted in a way that usually meant the Queen was upset.

"And what is it you are scared of?" Davos asked as he watched his King tense up.

Jon sighed and forced himself to relax is shoulders as he turned to face Davos. "Getting a child on her."

That did earn a laugh from Davos. "The way you two go at it it'll happen eventually."

"I'm careful." Jon said full of righteous indignation, and Davos could see that the conversation was making him uncomfortable.

"At least two of my sons were conceived when Marya and I were being careful." Davos said, feeling a stab of pain in his heart when he thought about the sons he had lost. His hand idly drifted up to his neck, searching out the bag of bones that was his luck. Even after all these years he tried to draw comfort from them. He dropped his hand. "Why does a child with the Dragon Queen scare you? Other than that any offspring of you both would be an absolute terror?"

That got a soft smile from Jon, and Davos could see him imagining children of his own. "I'd be scared for the child, Davos, and scared for her. Both our mothers died that way. And the child would be a target. And a-" Jon stopped himself.

"A bastard." Davos said. "Seems to me the truth of the child's birth would be what you make it."

"It's no life for a child, being made to feel unwanted. In the way." Jon said, a hitch in his voice. "And I wouldn't know how to be a father."

"Aye, but any child between the two of you wouldn't be unwanted." Davos reached out an arm to grab his King's shoulder, steadying him as buried pain and grief began to wrack Jon's body. "And no-one knows how to be a father until it happens to them."

"Even if we both wanted and loved the child people would talk."

"People will always talk, its whether you let that talk have power over how you live your life." Davos could see his king was becoming lost in his own thoughts again. "You ran away to the Watch because of what people said about you. You tried to hide your parentage because of what they would say. You avoid so much because of other people. But it's when you disregard that talk you make your greatest mark Jon. When you let the Free Folk south of the Wall, when you went to the Dragon Queen with tales of fantastical ice monsters and a winter that would never end. People will talk and speculate about any child you father, regardless of the mother."

Jon sat in his solar, his desk covered in letters and maps, avoiding his courts and especially his sister. He had told them he needed to catch up on correspondence after being gone for so long. It was only half a lie. I truth he didn't want to talk to any of them, to be forced again to confront his emotions.

And so he sat in his solar, and he brooded. Brooded over his last conversation with Daenerys and her curt response when he had seen her off. The intense hurt in her eyes when he had he reminded her he didn't care about having children. Because he truly didn't, he had never thought he would be a father, never had a desire for it until he met Daenerys.

But she did care, he knew it. She wanted him to have the world, to have the love he hadn't had as a child. She wanted him to hold his son in his arms and teach his daughter to fight with a sword. To take his children riding on dragon back, and ranging beyond the wall to visit the free folk. And when she mentioned these things she wanted for him he felt an ache in his heart, one that hadn't existed before her. And when he told her he only wanted those things if they were with her she had cried and pushed him away, telling him he knew nothing, much like another lost love had.

Sighing he returned to the task he was meant to be completing; he picked a letter from the top of the pile and began to read. It was from Edd Tollett, now lord commander of the Nights Watch – or what remained of it. Jon had tried to disband them after the war for the dawn, but Edd had shaken his head. "The Night King came twice before, one day he will come again. And where would we go?" Jon had been loath to admit Edd was right, that the Watch would still be needed in the distant future. And that many of the men of the Nights Watch would not be welcomed back to the Seven Kingdoms regardless.

The letter concerned the garrisoning of Queensgate, a group of Wildling and Northern women had taken if for their own, declaring women could maintain the wall as well as men. Smallfolk called them the Wall Widows because though they were not all widowed, they had sworn off men just as the men of the nights watch swore off women. Apparently there were arguments between Morna White Mask who led the women of Queensgate and the men who led the other forts. But beyond the argumentative nature of their leader, Queensgate was doing well. The women had quickly put the fort back into good order, and it had begun its work as a crossing point between the North and the True North. While the Wildlings and the True North were not part of Jon's Kingdom, they were under his protection, and he had decreed that all denizens would be able to travel freely between the two.

Jon was slumped in his chair when Sansa entered his solar, carrying a plate of food because the King had again missed dinner in the great hall of Winterfell.

"You cannot keep avoiding us Jon." Sansa said as she placed the food in front of him. Before moving to the table by the door that held glasses and a flagon of wine.

"I was doing quite well until you barged in here like you own the place."

"I seem to recall you naming me Lady of Winterfell." Sansa's face softened as she looked into his eyes and saw the exhaustion and pain in them. "How was the Queen?" Sansa asked as she sat down, studying the King in the North's face. Ghost thrust his head in her lap and she lazily scratched at his ear.

Jon emitted a low, non-committal grunt as he reached for a heel of bread.

"That bad?"

"We fought." Jon said, ever a man of few words.

"About the trade you were meant to be discussing, or about yourselves?" Sansa asked bluntly, not wanting to indulge her brother's tendencies today.

Jon sighed and ran one had through his hair. "The later."

"About marriage and children?"

"Yes."

Sansa sighed, her brother could be a nightmare when he got like this, worse when it was about his Dragon Queen. Her opinion on Daenerys had softened over the years, from a fear that she was going to steal away Sansa's remaining family, to an appreciation that through her it had grown. "She's scared Jon."

"I know." That was a conversation he had had with both Sansa and Daenerys. "So am I."

She reached across the table to rest her hand on his. "She also loves you deeply. You just have to be able meet each other in the middle of your fear."

Jon's eyes flicked up to her face.

"You were born to be king. And sometimes it means you have to be scared, and compromise."

"I was born because Rhaegar Targaryen was obsessed with prophecy, and Lyanna Stark had poor impulse control." He cracked a smile. "At least father managed to train all of that out of me."

"It never had a chance." Sansa replied, a gentle mirth in her voice. The North had no room for chasing prophecy that may or may not be true. If you lived a life that tried to fulfil it, you risked walking blind into your death. If it was real, it would happen regardless of your actions. And as to impulse control, all Starks had a rebellious streak a mile wide, but Jon's had been tempered by being raised believing he was the unintended result of such impulses, and more brushes with death than she cared to count.

"She would marry you if she thought the witch wrong." Sansa and the Queen had spoken about that episode of her life when they had met again after Arya gave birth to her son. Sansa had demanded to know why the Queen of the Six Kingdoms had dropped everything to fly to Storms End for the sister of the Northern King. She hadn't expected her to fell apart in her arms, spilling the story of her first marriage, being sold by her brother to gain an army, and giving birth to her stillborn son alone while her husband lay dying. Daenerys had wanted to make sure Arya wasn't alone like she was. "And you both need heirs." She watched Jon's face as he returned it to his normal brooding and impassive expression. "I know why that scares you."

He shrugged and reached for the bread again. Chewing it slowly he mulled what Sansa had said over, letting the dreams of a future filled with children with silver hair and solemn grey eyes chase around his fears for a child treated like it was an unwanted inconvenience. Or worse be regarded as a bastard by the realm.

"I'm not sure I'd be scared for the babe anymore." He said after he swallowed. As king he could just declare that the child was legitimate anyway. Or decree that the treatment of bastards was unlawful. He had nearly done it in the North twice already. The first after a lord had weaponised his supposed bastardry against him, accusing him of fabricating the story of his true parentage. The second after another had begged him to make his bastard son legitimate, so his hall would not pass to his brother and his wife. "I'd be scared for her. She had two bad marriages already, and Rhaego. If I married her, got her with child I might lose her entirely. Better to let sleeping dogs lie."

Ghost whined at the melancholy tone in Jon's voice, expressing his unhappiness with his master's resignation to a future that left both him and Daenerys unfulfilled.

"I agree Ghost, he is being stupid." Sansa addressed the Direwolf, as Jon shot her a glare. "I'm not saying you need to marry her now, but you do need to talk about this. Actually talk about it. No jests about stealing her away beyond the Wall. You both have good reason to be apprehensive. Don't even worry about the political parts. Davos and I can sort that with Missandei and her Hand, in a way that keeps both of your kingdoms happy." She gave Jon a thin smile. "You deserve happiness Jon, true happiness, not whatever you two have going on now, because every time you come back you are a wreck. And if the Northern lords have a problem with this, fuck them. Without you they wouldn't be alive to be pissed about it."

"I will sansa." He said, truthfully.

"Good because we need to discuss Queenscrown."

When Daenerys slept she saw Rhaego, saw him as a new born babe, a child, an adolescent and a man grown. Saw him alive, saw him injured, saw him dying, saw him dead. Saw him with his father, mourning his father, leading his own Khalasar, with his own son. These were dreams that had plagued he for years, since the death of her son and husband in the Dothraki sea and her visions in Quarth. The terrible game of what if her dreams played. What if I had made him listen to the Maegi? What if I never saved her? What if I never entered the tent? For years those questions he had haunted her dreams, even as the avoided them in the light of day.

But her dreams were changing now showing her another future that may be. Children running through the halls of the Red Keep, through Dragonstone, through Winterfell and beyond the Wall. Children crying for their mother, their father, their wolves, and their dragons. Children who tackled a man with dak hair and grey eyes to the ground, banishing a forlorn look from his face, easing the tension she saw around his eyes.

She saw a girl, with coal dark hair, and violet eyes so dark they looked black. She was a babe, a child, an adolescent and a woman grown. She wore armour of boiled black leather and black ring mail, and a scarlet half cape. She wore the softest silks and heaviest furs. She saw her fighting among the wildlings, mourning over a great pyre, laughing as a child, and leading a people.

She saw a boy, with silver gold hair and pale grey eyes that sparkled with mirth. He was a babe, a child, an adolescent and a man grown. He wore heavy silvered plate and a grey cloak flowed from his shoulders. He carried rippling grey sword with dragons on its cross guard. She saw him dancing at a feast, dancing with his blade, reading in the sun as a child, and praying before a weirwood.

She saw other things she did not understand. Blue winter roses covered in blood. A volcano erupting with purple and grey lava. A monstrous pack of wolves, howling in the Kingswood.

Daenerys awoke with a stark, her right hand flying out across the bed, searching for something to ground her, searching for Jon. But he was not there. He was a half thousand miles away, back in Winterfell, and she was in the Red Keep. Alone again. So very alone.

She raised a hand to her face and rubbed the heel of it into her eye, making starbursts behind her lids. When she opened them again she could see the vibrant red fingers of dawn clawing across the sky. Shepherds warning, she through grimly as she lay there , dreading the thought of sitting the throne today. She knew it would be a bad day for it.

Eventually she crawled out of her bed, pulling her soft lambswool bed robe around herself. Spring was warming Kings Landing to the point she rarely needed the heavy furs she wore when she first landed on Dragonstone. She knew she would be spending the morning in the Throne Room, hearing petitions from lords and commoners alike. Some she knew to expect, her small council had briefed her that the Lords Bracken and blackwood would be bringing their border dispute before her today, and she knew she would be ordering Edmure Tully to settle it once and for all. The Head of the Seamstresses Guild wanted to publicly thank her for the new trade from the North. There were others to be dealt with. A gold cloak who had abused his power who she was sentencing to be gelded and sent to the Wall. Bandits in the Kingswood, and more near Harrenhal. A baker who's only son wanted to join the Citadel. A mother who's daughter wanted to join the Silent Sisters.

The last two had wanted her to set their children right, tell them they needed to stay and serve their parents. And she had felt a pang of sadness in her chest when she had looked at the mother who cried as Daenerys permitted the daughter to join the Sisters. And longing as the Baker had torn at his hair when Daenerys gave the son leave to join the Maesters. She knew that whispers would follow her when she left the throne room. That a motherless, unwed, barren Queen could never understand the struggle of a parent. And it made the ache in her chest worsen. A new desire grew within her, to be disappointed in the choices her children made. The children she would never have. If she had not been so disciplined in her emotions, she would have burst into tears there on the Iron Throne. When she closed her eyes she saw the children from her dreams racing around the throne room, wolf pups nipping at their heels.

When she did retire for the evening she sent a page to find Missandei and bring her to Daenerys' study. When the Naathi woman arrived Daenerys indicated for her to sit. Missandei knew to let her Queen sit in silence until she was ready to talk.

"I need to go to Dragonstone." Daenerys said eventually, keeping her voice even. She had felt the pull since that morning, the pull that always called her home, or to Jon. That led to her exploring the keep and the isle alone, discovering the secrets her ancestors had hidden there for her.

"Your grace," Missandei said, her face contorted in confusion. "You cannot be serious? You just returned from the Riverlands."

"I did. And now I need to go to Dragonstone." Daenerys said, her gaze even and her hands tightening around the wine cup she held. "I won't be gone more than a week. I leave in three days at dawn."