Author's Note: Mid(ish) week post because 1) as Queen of the Slow Burn, I think I owe you guys some actual Jorah/Dany moments (and there will be SO MUCH MORE, I promise) and 2) I'm just feeling ambitious. Special extra thanks to Smashing Teacups for helping me through a canon-compliance issue…she keeps me honest, folks 3
As always, thanks for reading! :)
Daenerys
Daenerys swallowed hard as she surveyed the grim scene around her.
She was in a sea of corpses, in a valley of mud and ice. Some of the corpses were twice dead, some on the shadowed side of living. The charred ruins of the Wolfswood smoldered half a mile behind her, casting a dull orange glow over the countryside.
She was north of the battlefield, behind the back line of the Night King's army, limping through the gruesome remains of the past morning's skirmishes. Drogon nursed his wound beside her but would not allow her to touch his injured wing, as the cut had gone deep this time and pierced the hide above his shoulder. When she attempted to remove the spear, he bared his teeth at her viciously, much like he had that day in Essos, while she sat up on the rocky crags of the hill country and watched all three of her children play and fight over a young goat.
They are dragons, Khaleesi. They can never be tamed.
She grimaced in pain as she tried to put weight on her left ankle. It was no good. After taking the spear, Drogon's landing had been rough. She couldn't hold on and slipped off his scales as he touched down, rolling off the dragon's back clumsily and hitting the ground with too much speed. Her injuries might have been worse if she hadn't fallen into a pile of corpses that broke her fall with their pools of blood and flesh.
Her hands were scratched up and bleeding. There was a gash on her forehead, which bled profusely and which she tried to stopper using a handful of dirty snow. She couldn't use the left ankle. She was drenched in mud and blood and…freezing.
She pulled the snow away from her forehead immediately and felt her breath catch, on the new chill in the air as night fell. She'd been cold all day but suddenly and instinctively she knew this was different. Her adrenaline, so high during the battles of the day, had disappeared. With it, went the embers keeping her warm from the inside. Her hands started to shake and she buried them deep in the folds of her blood-stained, fur-lined coat.
"Drogon, we can't stay here," she whispered to the black dragon, through trembling lips. Perhaps he didn't feel it—the change in the air, the impending storm. He was a creature of fire, after all. Well, so was she…and yet, this was a cold she could not shake.
Oh, damn this country. Tears of frustration and exhaustion pricked at her eyes. She closed them briefly, trying to conjure up the heat of Essos but it was a foolish thing to do, as memories piled on memories and her path to this very spot crystallized too sharply, with everything she had hoped and dreamed for so long disintegrating into dust and ash.
The Iron Throne was hers by right. How many times had she said those words aloud?
Said with defiance to the sad remnants of Khal Drogo's khalasar on the night her dragons were born, promising them vengeance and justice against those who would see them trampled on the steppes, as carrion for vultures. Said with rage to the Spice King in Qarth on the steps of his beautiful mansion, after she'd humbled herself in his undeserving presence. Said with pleasure to the Masters of Astapor, Yunkai and Mereen before she slaughtered them all. And said with such confidence to Jon Snow and Ser Davos Seaworth when they came to treat with her at Dragonstone.
And all that long time, it wasn't true. The Iron Throne was no more hers by right than it had been Robert Baratheon's.
Her brother had a son. Rhaegar Targaryen, heir to the Seven Kingdoms, had died with a natural born son still living. A secret affair, a legitimate marriage, a trueborn son—with all his father's titles and claims to her father's throne. She was not the last dragon, after all. And no more was she queen of anything…unless she wanted to take what wasn't hers and become a usurper herself.
Queen Daenerys Stormborm, the hypocrite. She couldn't do it, she wouldn't do it. Not to Jon, who her dragons had felt kin to from the first, who had supported her and bent the knee to her, despite his pride, his deep roots in this country and the stark fact that it was he and no one else who recognized the gravity of the Northern threat and did something about it.
Even before they knew he had a better claim, it was clear that he would be a better monarch. He wouldn't crush his enemies, he would unite them. He had already, many times over. This stand against the Night King's army was evidence of that. Too bad he would never get the chance to make a better world.
They were all marked for dead, long before she was even born. She remembered again her visions in the House of the Undying. She had misread all the signs. Perhaps if she hadn't been so blindly fixated on that damn iron chair, she could have seen it sooner and done something about it. But now…if there was a lesson in ice and fire, it was buried beneath snow and ash.
A crack of bones echoed in her ears and she turned sharply at the sudden sound. An undead soldier creaked and groaned as he lifted himself up from the carnage, only a few yards away. His ice blue eyes were fixed on her. She stared back uneasily.
More cracks and groans followed, as three more rose up from their defeat, missing limbs and bones, with skulls smashed in and bodies broken, but living still. Slowly, but with menace, they limped her way.
"Why can't you just stay dead?" she whispered more to herself than to the undead, quickly surveying the ground at her feet for a weapon.
She found the hilt of a broken knife, arrow heads sunk in the ice and shards of dragonglass. The fields were littered with Jon's dragonglass. She grabbed the longest piece she could find and tried not to cry out in pain as she straightened up, forgetting and putting too much weight on that ruined ankle.
She couldn't run. And Drogon wouldn't fly her away from danger this time. Selfish and sick of war, he continued nursing his wounds and did not spare a glance in his mother's direction. Daenerys didn't blame him. His fire was spent. So was hers. She had promised her children victory and glory and she'd delivered nothing but pain and misery and death.
She clutched the shard of dragonglass tightly. The chill of frosted obsidian burned her hand but she held on. The undead soldiers plucked spears and swords out of the corpses that surrounded them and circled her slowly.
One of the more fearless ones tried poking the dragon with the sharp, curved edge of a discarded arakh. It glanced off Drogon's scales on the first try. On the second, Drogon turned his attention away from the black spear lodged in his wing long enough to snap his powerful jaws just once. The brittle bones of the undead soldier splintered into fragments. Unwilling to be subjected to the pricks and pokes of bone-clattering gnats, the dragon shook off the snow that had gathered on his hide and flew off clumsily, the spear still lodged in his left wing, to find someplace quieter and safer to nurse his wounds and heal. He flew low to the ground but soon disappeared into the dark swells of evening.
Daenerys had no time to call him back. She could only watch, grief-stricken, as he abandoned her there, alone, to face her would-be murderers with only that shard of dragonglass.
The first one struck at her with a short sword, raised quickly and then brought down towards her skull. With a cry she blocked the sword with the shard of dragonglass and ducked at the same time. Her tenuous balance was shattered so easily by that first blow and she fell. She rolled away as the other two swung their own weapons down, missing her by inches only.
Her vision was blurred by tears of frustration and the dire knowledge that she would feel cold steel slice into her flesh on the next blow. She lost hold of the dragonglass and dug her hands into the blood-smeared snow that she'd fallen into, trying to find it again. She fumbled wildly. She found nothing but frost and cold bones in the mud of a hundred corpses. The fickle darkness of twilight blinded her, sounds muffled and her sense of touch numbed with every second. She crawled, expecting the death blow at any moment. More tears. She felt buried alive.
Are all graves so cold?
But suddenly, she was on her feet again, dragged up by strong, steady arms that lifted her out of the grave she'd fallen into. She was pulled back against a chest clad in leather and armor, with a man's arm looped around her waist and a gruff voice in her ear that she knew better than any other in the world.
"Stay close to me," Ser Jorah commanded, releasing her only after she had gained her footing once more and then only to cut down those undead soldiers that attempted to charge them again. The knight made quick work of two of them and they fell back into the pit of death they'd come from.
The third, iron-tipped spear in hand, twirled his weapon with menace. His movements were fast and light-footed, reminiscent of a Braavosi water dancer. Except this water dancer was missing half his face. Jorah parried the dead man's first blow away and prepared for a second.
Daenerys was rooted to the icy earth. She couldn't move if she wanted to. Her hands shook violently and there was a cold tremor running through her entire body. She stood in a tainted place.
But then, a howl. Unearthly and filled with death, the howl echoed across the frosted fields, coming from the very edge of night in the southeast. The orange-colored embers of the smoldering Wolfswood lit up the fields in an eerie glow. It reflected off the sky above, black and churning, ready to split open. In the far distance, there were two lonesome specks in the sky, tumbling, falling from great heights as dead weights. She couldn't see them clearly but somehow she knew they glinted green and gold.
She swallowed back new tears as the specks fell out of sight.
A great wind followed on the heels of the wailing howl. Touched by the unnatural breeze, the last dead soldier crumpled to a heap of bones before them. Jorah sheathed his sword and went to fetch his horse.
"Where's Drogon?" Jorah asked her, once he had returned to her side, with the white mare in tow.
A sudden vision of the silver mare that Khal Drogo had given to her as a wedding gift flashed across her mind. She almost reached out to stroke the animal's face to make sure it was real and not a ghost…oh, but perhaps the horse wasn't white at all, just covered in snow. The snow was falling much heavier now. White flakes fluttered down from great heights.
The horse breathed heavily. Jorah must have pushed her hard across the moors.
Daenerys shook her head, her fuzzy mind finally hearing the question he asked.
"He's not here. He flew off," she answered miserably, utter defeat in her sad, small voice as she added, "I don't know where he's gone."
Seeing a vacant look in her eyes, not violet now, but black in the odd play of dying fires and encroaching night, he said gently, "He'll find some place to wait out the storm. You'll see him again, Daenerys. But right now we have to go. We can't stay here."
He stroked the horse's neck, brushing away the snow. He adjusted her bridle and tightened the saddle. The animal was weary but anxious, hooves taking small side-steps as Jorah worked, the overwhelming smell of blood and frost mixing in the mare's flaring nostrils.
"Did you see Jon and Rhaegal?" Daenerys asked him, hearing the tremble in her words as the cold wrapped its fingers around her throat.
"Aye," he answered, with a dark expression. He did not meet her gaze. "Last I saw, he was chasing the Night King to Winterfell."
"…he could have survived." It took a moment for her lips to form the empty words.
They'd both heard that howl. They'd both seen those specks in the sky fall. He didn't answer her, only laid his scarred and scratched hand against the horse's shoulder, speaking in low, wordless tones, soothing the mare into a less fitful state.
"Jorah," she pleaded, close to tears again, needing to know if…
"Nothing's certain." He said finally, perhaps even honestly. If she could see his eyes, she would know for sure. But his gaze was still firmly on the horse. The mare settled under the knight's calming hand, despite the continued swirl of snow and smell of death. He turned to her, those eyes finding hers once more, raspily imploring, "We have to go."
Daenerys nodded blankly. Jorah's eyes betrayed him. They always did. And her own soul knew the truth, despite her vain attempts to pretend otherwise. Jon Snow, the only other Targaryen in the world, was dead. She was the last dragon once again. Once, that thought would have made her defiant. Now it only filled her with dread. She felt ready to topple over. If not for Jorah's steadying hand taking her arm, she might have.
With a practiced motion, he lifted her onto the mare and then pulled himself up behind her. His arms encircled her shivering, shaking form as he picked up the reins and urged the horse on, northwest—which was just as good a direction as any of them, she supposed. It was all death, north, south, east and west.
Frost crept across the cockles of her heart. She felt it bite at the mouth of her veins, begging to be let in. But the warmth of Jorah's familiar flesh-and-blood presence after so much ice-and-cold, in the air, in the snow drifts, in the eyes of a hundred thousand dead—men, women and children, friends and foes alike…
She clung to him, feeling safe for the first time all day.