Sixteen years ago

'You are my Queen...' someone whispered to her ears.

"Who's there?"

'Now and always.'

She opened her eyes to look for the man who owns the voice. He sounds so sad... so sad it made her eyes tear up. She looked around her. She was on a place she was not familiar with. The place, which seems to be a city it was all red and black and warm, too warm. Then she noticed where she was standing. She was on black, cracked road and on those cracks, liquid flames seeps out. She gasped as it lapped on her feet, it does not hurt but it was warm. The warmest she ever felt. She circled around, only then did she noticed the chaos around her. Buildings with absolute beauty were crumbling around her, then she heard the screams. It was as if she was deaf and only experienced hearing. It rushed to her ears and right through her brain all at once, overwhelming her. She clutched her ears to block the noise, but it was too much. How can she not hear those shouts, those screams of pain, the moment she opened her eyes? As she did a full circle her eyes glimpsed a shape of a little girl from the smoke. She was not far from her.

"Mother."

Dany was not sure but she thinks the girl cried in High Valyrian.

As the smoke was blown away by a wind, Dany saw the girl. She was small, about four or three years old. The girl had a hair similar to her, silver-blonde and she was sobbing. It made Dany's heart ache that she started to walk towards her, but as she comes nearer, a man with the same fair hair suddenly run past Dany and rushed over the girl. The man's arm accidentally made contact on the girl's small shoulder and it made the child stumbled then fell down. The man did not even look back. Daenerys ran then, to help the child when suddenly the cracked road shakes then gave way and out of it was a wall of fire separating her from the child. Another scream entered her ears. A scream of the burning girl. It stopped the moment it started and what was left of the child, Daenerys knew, was nothing but a pile ashes. She looked around once more, fire envelopes the whole city, liquid fires most of it, then a great shadow and a familiar shriek made her looked up.

A dragon. She thought.

She saw the great beast, it was huge. Bigger than the ones she knew. Knew? Her head started to pound, she does not know she knew dragons. Then the beast shrieked once more. A scream of pain she was familiar with. She heard that more than once before. She looked up once more and watched as the beast burned its wings then a great column of fire devours it, wings, tails, all of it. It feels wrong, fire cannot hurt a dragon. She knew. But now she was not sure anymore. The ground quake once more and cracks bigger than the one earlier threaten to buckle her down. She decided to jump to the floating part of the road where she was standing before and felt glad that she did, for in a matter of seconds that whole road crumbled down and all the buildings within its vicinity as well.

She slowly stood up from her little island. Everywhere her eyes touched was all destruction and fire. The noises, the shouts rang still in her head, screams of help and names and words, the scream of the little girl was still echoing through her making her tremble. And the smell. The smell of ash and burning flesh.

King's Landing. She thought.

What? Where? What was that? Was it a place?

Then a sound so different from the one she was hearing distracts her from the thing she was trying to remember. It was not a scream. It was a song. Her head turned to the one producing such an entrancing sound. It was from her far right. It was coming form a kneeling man with white hair so long, the longest she had ever seen. The man's head was bowed down and he was holding something. The man's forehead touched the thing he was cradling, only then did Dany noticed that the thing has dragon wings. That wasn't right. The voice sounds like it was coming from a girl. Dany wished to see, as she thought of that, the floating stone where she was standing moved nearer and nearer to the man, eager to fulfill her wish. She was close enough now to see when her little island stopped moving. Then what she saw made her gasp. It was not the fact that the man was the most beautiful thing she ever saw, but the fact that the man was kneeling on nothing but flames. The flames which it seems to be coming from the man himself. The flames that seems to fuel all the fires her eyes can touch. Then she saw the thing the man was holding, if she thought he was shocking it was nothing compared to the girl he was cradling. She had dragon wings on her back. The song too, was coming from her. The girl was holding the man's face with care and they were looking at each others eyes with so much love that Dany's heart started to hurt with envy. The girl smiled then and whispered the last words of the song to the man before closing her eyes, her hands slowly slid down the man's face then fell limp on her side.

The girl was dead. Dany knew that much.

Dany watched as the man lifted up his face to the sky and then produced the most heart wrenching scream she ever heard. A scream full of pain and sadness and loss, silencing all the noises around her. When the man was done venting his pain, he stood up with the body of his lover on his arms, his beautiful face was crumpled in fury. He lifted his eyes and surveyed all his surroundings with disdain. Dany noticed the flames going hotter and hotter and the liquid fire all around her going higher and higher. Then multiple explosions happened simultaneously that made Dany cower and hold her ears. If the screams and the destruction of huge structures was loud, those was nothing compared to the sound the whole island was emitting now.

Then she heard a voice. It was unusual because she thought she cannot hear from all the destruction around her, but it seems the voice was coming from the fires, from all of them.

"Wretched. Vile. I gave them life. I gave them light."

She opened her eyes and she saw the man, or the resemblance of him for where the beautiful man was once standing, now stood a creature made of fire. The only thing that made Dany sure it was the same man was the girl's dead body who was still laying in her lover's now fiery arms. The body did not turn to ash as it was supposed to be in such heat, as if the girl's body itself was immune to fire.

"My Lightbringer." The voice says once more with pain and absolute sadness.

Then the man burst into a red, black and gold wildfyre. It was warm--the warmest that she ever felt, the most painful of heat--that Dany felt her skin burned and her blood brought to a boil in her veins, she felt her flesh melt like tallows and her bones started to cracked.

As she burned, everything rushed back to her. All that she did, all the ones she had lost, all the things done to her, all the pain and suffering and rejection and betrayal, she remembered it once more. And the most painful of all, his kiss and the stab of his knife through her heart. The burning sensation she felt was too powerful and overwhelming that her heart was slowly numbing, but the pain of her losses was not forgotten, it was still there, deep in her heart, branding her of all the people she had lost along the way, searing her with the things she had sacrificed. She will not forget.

But the pain, the heat, it was too much. She gave up. Let me die and be done with it. Let it cleanse me. She thought. Burn all of it away. The pain, the loss, the loneliness, the anger, the feeling of betrayal. All of it. Burn them all.

When the pain stopped she knew she was dead and she was glad. There was nothing more purer than to die by flames.

Instead she did not die.

Xxxxxxxxxx

She gasped as she opened her eyes, she sat up from where she was laying and she remembered everything.

You are my Queen...

She gasped a shaky breath then looked down at her chest but instead of finding the scar her lover left her she noticed something else. She was on fire. Her entire body is on fire. Red, black and golden flames. The man's fire.

"My Queen," a woman's voice caught her attention and she looked at her side and she saw her.

She was wearing the red robes and ruby necklace of a Red Priestess. She remembered someone, another woman who wears the same garments.

Melisandre.

The woman in front of her was not the priestess she knew, of course, Melisandre was dead, isn't she? This new priestess was pretty with eyes as green as emeralds and she was looking at her with awe and something else, the kind of look a worshipper would look at her god. She's looking at her with veneration. Then the priestess lowered her eyes and knelt.

"Oh, Queen of Queens we are at your mercy." The Priestess said, then voices echoed around her to Dany's surprise.

She looked around and she saw more than a dozen men and women bowing to her as she sat on what seems to be an altar placed in the center of a great room. She wished she was not naked as all of those people gawked at her and how she wished the flames would stop. She pulled her knees to her chest and hugs her legs to give her a certain amount of privacy and protection as well.

"Where am I?" She was surprised by the sound of her voice. She was expecting it to be nothing but a croak but what she heard can't be her voice surely? It sounds so...normal. It sounds nothing like the voice of a person who rose up from the dead.

Then she remembered.

She was scared to look down to the mark she knew that will be there, she felt her heart beat fast though, which was a relief. She was breathing too, a fast gasps of breath. She was alive and she was starting to panic, she knew she wasn't supposed to be...breathing.

...now and always.

"You are in Volantis, Queen of Queens, at the Temple of the Lord of Light." The woman said as she stood up with grace from where she knelt and looked at her once more with that awed expression. Dany wished she would stop looking at her like that.

"Why?" Dany asked, she did not even know what she was asking. There are too much in her head. Her past and the dream she had of a place long ago, a place she cannot name but she felt she ought to know.

She started to tremble as she remembered the dream and the things she did before she died. She hugged herself tighter. Is it possible to feel cold when you are in flames? It seems that you can. Atleast that was what she felt.

"My Queen," the Red Priestess tried to comfort her by touching her arm but she only got near her skin by an inch when she wrenched her hand back and hissed with pain.

Dany looked up to see that the hand the Red Priestess tried to touch her with were red from burns. The other priests and priestesses are standing now and looking at the hand of their...friend with what seems to be envy.

"Why am I here?" she decided to ask.

One at a time, Dany. She said to herself. One at a time.

"Your dragon brought you here my Queen," the Red Priestess answered her once more. She hid her now injured hand on the sleeves of her robes, she was fine by the looks of her, if Dany didn't knew any better the woman looks exhilarated by the injury.

Dragon. Yes, the last of her child. Drogon, named after her husband.

"Why am I here?" she asked again.

"Y-Your Grace?"

She looked up, the Priestess looks worried now.

"What is your name?"

The Priestess' eyes cleared and a pleased smile showed on her lips.

"Kinvara is my name, Queen of Queens, I am the First Priestess in the Temple of the Lord of Light."

Dany nodded.

"Kinvara, why am I here?"

Kinvara's smile faltered once more.

She must think I'm mad, asking the same questions, she thought, so she rephrase her query.

"I'm dead. I know that, I felt it, I remembered it. Why am I here?"

"My Queen I--"

"You will be saying that the Lord of Light brought me back and he still has need of me, is that it?" Dany said.

She was angry now. For what, even she did not know, but she knew one thing: it's better be angry rather than be scared.

"He brought him back to life too. The man who did this to me," Dany pointed at her chest where she still felt the stab the man she loved inflicted upon her. "Is this his destiny, to kill me? Did he brought him back for the sole purpose of killing me, his family, his lover, his Queen when all of the things I ever wanted was within my grasp?"

She was shouting now and she must have looked menacing for almost all the men and women around her started backing away from her. Only then did she noticed that the flame that envelopes her body like a second skin was now spreading around her form like an aura. What was once flames of three colors now was only red. Angry, fiery red.

"And how do I make this stop!" She shouts, pertaining the irritating flames that she does not know how to control.

"Calm down my Queen--"

"Queen? Queen of Nothing! That's what I am! That's what he made me!" she can't even say his name. She can't. It hurts.

You are my Queen...

Then she started to sob.

Your are my Queen...

...not Dany then. How about my Queen?

"All those people, dead. Jorah, my sons...Missandei," her voice cracked as she remembered her dear friend.

Dracarys!

"And even before that, my brother, the one they call the Last Dragon, my niece and nephew, my mother and father, my son Rhaego, Drogo, Ser Barristan. All of them, dead. But not a single one of them was given a chance to come back. Why me? Why did your Lord choose a murderer?"

She heard the screams once more and the sound of a bell echoing in her head, but it was her friend's last words and the sound of her disembodied head hitting the ground that was louder than all the noises, the most painful. She murdered her friend as well, her sweet Missandei, dead because of her pride, because of her greed. Then she remembered her dear Bear, her Jorah with his sword in his hands, shielding her, protecting her until he was laying on the ground and it was her who tried to protect him. He died in my arms, the arms of a woman who never loved him the way he was supposed to be loved. Her fault. Rhaegal and Viserion, all her fault. All of it.

She felt weak now. Defeated. Tired. Why me? She asked once more. I'm done with all the pain, did I not suffer enough for my sins?

"He could have chosen my brother Rhaegar, why me? Have I not atoned enough for all the sins I have made? Is my life and the life of everyone I ever loved not enough to pay the price?"

"My Queen, I don't know," Kinvara said with a sad shake of her head. "Only the Lord of Light knows the answers to all your concerns. But I know one thing. Your purpose has not yet been fulfilled."

Dany looked up at the Priestess. She was vaguely aware the light around her was now abating, turning mellow and light in color, turning back to its normal colors of three.

"I don't want his purpose." Dany said looking directly at the emerald eyes of the woman in front of her.

I want peace. The vision of a house with a red door with lemons outside her window enters her mind once more.

"Even when your purpose is already there inside your womb?"

Xxxxxxxxxx

Present

It was true. Five hundred bodies laying perfectly on the bay. Brienne never understood the power of magic nor does she believed in it, but experiencing and seeing all those things, from dragons, to walking undead armies, to the King who sees all makes any skeptic a firm believer. But believing was very much more easier than understanding.

Brienne looked at the King beside her. He was sitting regally on his mare, or should she say, strapped on. The King is crippled. Bran the Broken the common folk calls him. But sitting there, if you looked past the belts that tied him to his saddle and you would forget the fact that he called himself The Three-Eyed Raven you'll find the King as ordinary as a young man could be. He's comely, Brienne admits but there were something about the way he looked or the way his face was set that made him looked something more than a man...something unexplainable.

And he is, Brienne thought.

She looked at the bodies once more and then to the flowing banners attached to an iron pole at the top of the first row, right at the middle of a path which she believes the purpose was for approaching the said standard. Lord Tyrion, Podrick, King Bran and her was watching as the Gold Cloaks try to unearth the pole to bring it to the King. To burn it? She does not know what the King wants with it. But first they must get the pole out. There are more and more small folks knowing about the incident, the Gold Cloaks are trying to hold some spectators back but there are some who managed to get a good look at the banners even before the King and his companions visited the site. Soon, the whole realm will know.

"Why not just rip the goddamn thing off!" It was Lord Tyrion, probably losing his patience as he looked at the sigil of the House he formerly served.

She watched as the men tried to rip the first banner, the one situated below the red dragon of House Targaryen. She watched as the men screams in horror as their gauntlets burst in to flame as they touched the twelve headed dragon banners. This happened for a lot now, apparently the pole, including the banners was cursed. Anyone who touched it, burns. Lord Tyrion ordered the men to wear thicker gloves but, it has no use apparently. That second banner, though, she's not familiar with it. Twelve headed dragon with different colors on each head, all of them breathing fire on white background. None of them was familiar with it, not even Lord Tyrion and she knew that unsettled him.

"Away," the King said. The Gold Cloaks bowed to the King and walked to the side.

Brienne looked at him as he urged his horse down to the path. She and the others followed behind the King. Brienne noticed how perfectly the path was measured. As if it was really made for one horse and rider and only an enough room to turn a horse around. As they tread behind the king she can't ignore the fact that the bodies are perfectly well tended. There are no visible blood on their armors, there are those who had stab lines marring it but otherwise the dead were given a proper burial service. Even their swords are there, clutched on their dead hands right on their chests. As the sun shone on the bay, one will notice how the armors and the swords perfectly gleamed like it was just oiled.

A very nice death, she thought. Then she shake her head, she can't possibly admire their enemy.

The Mad Queen has taken back her family's ancestral seat, that's for certain. These are the soldiers of Dragonstone, tasked by the King to garrison the castle, and all of them, all five hundred of them were dead. For how long, she was not sure. They will have to wait until the King gave an order to board the bodies to the cart to be examined by the Grandmaester.

The King stopped.

"Stay here," he ordered.

She was about to protest but Lord Tyrion reached for her, then he shook his head. So they waited a good ten feet away from their King. King Bran approached the pole slowly and when he was about an arms length away from it he raised his arms as if to touch it.

Suddenly if happens. The banners burst in to flame and out of it dozens of dragons flew around their King.

Sorcery.

The men from the city watch started scream and stumbled back, away from the burning standard.

"Your Grace!" she screamed and tried to approach the King but her horse was too afraid to take her heed, she cursed as she swings her legs and jumped down her horse and tried to reach the King by foot. She unsheathed Oathkeeper to use it to swat the flames perhaps, she was not sure but she felt better when the sword was there in her grip.

"Stay back."

The calm voice of the King gave her no solace, for one, the King always sounds like that and she thought that even in pain the King will still sound like that. As she decided to reason out with the King the flames suddenly stopped. She heard the thumped of feet on the ground as her companions jumped down from their horses as well.

The King turned his horse around and then saw her King's face. She will never forget it, the first time she ever saw a semblance of emotion on his face and it was not a sight she would wanted to see again. It was anger, marring his young face and as pale sunlight touch it, Brienne could have sworn the King resembles an old man.

"To the Red Keep," he commands with his usual calm voice. "And take those with you." He pointed the bodies.

They all nodded and hurriedly climbed their horse. Podrick led the parade and he shouts the King's order to the Gold Cloaks, who--some still trembling-- hurriedly approached the bodies and started piling it on the carts. As Ser Brienne were about to turn his horse around, her eyes lingered on the head of the column, where the banners and the pole stood, there's nothing left but ashes and some molten steel.

Magic, she knows, and a different one. Fire magic.

"And write another letter," the King now address his Hand. "Send it to the Dragon Queen. I wanted her to be in the Great Council."

Note:

Okay I get it. Some of you are pissed off at Jon, so am I. But I tried my best not to, because this fic would not exist without his tremendous showmanship of stupidity. And I would like to think that whoever that...craven...was on the show was not the Jon I like. That was D and D's Jon, not the Jon we saw and loved from the previous seasons. I wrote this fic because I can't get it out of my head how they treated my baby girl and practically used her. I hated Sansa to the bone especially when they are at the crypts and she was blaming Dany, while Dany was risking her life out there. F*cking bitch. Thank you Missandei for shutting that disrespectful Cersei 2.0 mouth. And the way Bran was seeing things and he should've warned Dany about Euron or her "madness" (I still think she was not mad, she was just angry and hurt and lost), but he remained silent and just watched how to make a f*cking wheeled chair. Yeeeeeah...f*ck you. And Jon...some of you are right. I hate him at first, but then again, he was confused, he saw Dany burn people alive, it was easy for him to believe the people he knew for a long time instead to a woman he only met for, what a month? So don't worry, though I like Jon I'll give him a good ride in the depression and guilt lane. Mark my words. And some are saying that Dany should not go back and help Westeros, ohhhh baby, she needs to go back, but not in the way you think she should. Let's just say, Westeros would be caught between ice and fire.