Author's Note: Sorry for the delay in posting this one! Real life work project got in the way of my normal mid-week writing/editing time. Anyway, after this chapter, there will be a slight time jump. Just a few weeks but it's important if you want this slow burn to ever end. And I assume we do? Yeah, seven seasons and 20,000+ words of slow burn seems like just enough to me haha.
To all of you reading this fic, thank you, thank you! Hope you're enjoying it. For those of you who leave reviews/faves, mwah! You guys make me smile :)
Jorah
The dragon stayed with Claver's ship until they were within sight of Bear Island. Near land, Drogon veered off the ship's course, banking along the curves and cuts of the island's rocky shores to explore its rugged boundaries. Ever the survivor, he would find himself a safe place to hunker down and hide from the storm that nipped at their heels. As they disembarked, Jorah, Daenerys and the others watched the dragon dip beyond the Island's pine and spruce-cluttered cliffs.
"He won't go far," Jorah reassured Daenerys, as the dragon disappeared from view. "There's a labyrinth of sea caves just behind that inlet. He'll find them."
Daenerys nodded absently, her eyes too busy surveying the sea-and-forest landscape before her. Dawn's light, obscured by black storm clouds, cast the whole island in an eerie vernal glow, all shades of grey-violet and stunning.
The island's natural beauty was breathtaking, wild and remote, carved up in mountainous ranges and evergreens that ended abruptly at the coast.
From the crescent slip of harbor, she had to crane her neck to see the summit of those cliffs around them, so high they nearly reached the cinder clouds above. The tall pines were frosted with snow but evergreen still, standing grave and silent in the blasts of wind coming across the sea from the mainland. She could pick out white tributaries of iced-over streams cutting deep fissures in the jagged cuts of green, grey and black hills. At the edge of the harbor, two narrow waterfalls, still unfrozen and both more than two hundred feet high, poured out their white spill like a broken chain of diamonds.
Mist rolled off the water like smoke. The crash of water, from cliff to seabed, roared in a strong, soothing hum.
"It's more beautiful than you said," she murmured, more to herself than to him. Now it was Jorah's turn to nod. Words would never do the place justice. He'd been all over the world and never found anything like it.
Home, he sighed inwardly, as he led her up from the docks. The path to the Mormont Keep above was achingly familiar.
Jorah felt an odd sensation, taking those last few steps up that steep path. The haunt of his footsteps lingered here, as stalwart as the permafrost. His father's steps and his grandfather's before him were there too, etched in deep. But so many years had passed since the last time he had climbed this hill that he suddenly felt like a ghost, returning to the place of death. For it was a sort of death that had chased him away from here.
Death of honor, death of name. Can you say now that you've reclaimed them?
The heaviness of past deeds and old times weighed him down. He felt pulled down by gravity, these final steps draining him quickly. Although…to be fair, perhaps that was a physical reaction to yesterday's blood loss and a spiking fever that was currently raging in his head.
Injured or not, he'd snapped the roots of this place off sharply when he fled the Island. Two minutes back and he felt as if those severed roots were digging into the earth, attempting to find a hold, but finding only frost, cold ground and hard memories.
He felt years older and grey, so grey. Like he was fading, his body dissolving into the frosted mist hovering at the mouth of those waterfalls. He nearly gave in to it.
But one look at Daenerys, who was now watching his face with a mixture of concern and apprehension, and he righted himself once more. This was a foreign place for her. She was a stranger and a Targaryen. Knowing his family's inherent distaste for the southern lords, he knew she would not be welcome here. And would he? Seffius Claver had no qualms about bringing them to safety but would Lyanna be pleased giving refuge to her disgraced cousin and the silver-haired woman he brought with him?
The idea was unlikely.
He didn't share these thoughts. Instead, he did what he always did. He took Daenerys's arm and helped her climb the hill, steadying her hobbled steps even as he barely managed his own.
As Drogon found a seaside cave to nestle in and as the blizzard and the sea started a vicious tussle that would last a fortnight, Jorah and Daenerys were received in the Great Hall by Lyanna Mormont.
Of all the cargo Seffius Claver might have returned with, Jorah knew that Lyanna, this dark-haired child-woman before him, did not expect this. That was obvious. She sat at the center chair of the long table in the Great Hall, where her mother, Maege, had sat before her, and where Jorah himself had sat once upon a time. Her maester sat at her left side. The right chair remained unoccupied, its prior resident likely buried with the rest in the fields above Winterfell.
Others hovered at the entrance to the hall, lingering in the shadows, too curious to stay away after hearing the news spreading throughout the Keep like wildfire. News that Jorah Mormont, their former lord and master, had finally returned…and brought the dragon queen with him.
When Lyanna met Jorah's gaze, the young girl's dark brown eyes sparked with hushed up anger and tense annoyance.
"Welcome, Ser Jorah," she greeted tersely, in her thick Northern soprano, with little warmth spared on the formal words. She did not address Daenerys but watched the silver-haired woman closely and with measured interest. Jorah could read that interest plainly. Lyanna had sworn no oaths to the Targaryens, at least none intentionally…and here was one who had declared herself queen of seven kingdoms she'd never seen, whose family words were "fire and blood" and whose past actions had certainly lived up to that motto.
Daenerys, who in Qarth, had so fiercely demanded her titles and all those scraps of respect that had been withheld from her in childhood, now demurred. She demanded nothing this time but remained silent, by Jorah's side, allowing Lyanna's slight to pass without acknowledgment. Jorah could not be sure why. Exhaustion? Defeat?
He spared a glance on Daenerys and found her gaze drifting around the room, taking in the simple, sturdy look of the timbered hall, the thick logs and grey stones, green and brown banners, the silver bear pendant at Lyanna's throat, the restless nature of the maester's fingers on the table's rough oak planks. He couldn't begin to guess her thoughts. He suddenly wished they were alone and he could ask her.
In any case, he was grateful for her tact. This would be difficult, even without testing the competing pride of bears and dragons.
Jorah nodded his head to Lyanna respectfully. He had held Lyanna in his arms when she was a squalling newborn, though she wouldn't remember it. They had met briefly, again, in the halls of Winterfell before the last battle but there had been little time for catching up. Besides, Maege made her feelings clear before he fled the Island. He had no doubt that her youngest daughter harbored the same hard-edged sentiments.
I've been dead to them for years.
"Am I, my lady?" Jorah answered her greeting, finally, his voice even lower and raspier than usual, a side effect of too many hours exposed to damp and brutal weather. He heard Daenerys take a small step closer to him, as he continued, "I have no right to ask…"
"But you will anyway…," Lyanna sighed impatiently. She had more to say but at that moment, the howl of the storm winds battered the ramparts, rattling the reinforced windows and shaking the chains on every gate, as if throttling the castle for entry. Everyone in the Keep shuddered at the bone-chilling sound of its unearthly wail. Every candle and torch wavered in sudden drafts. Lyanna grumbled to her maester, "I told you we wouldn't escape this storm."
"I was hopeful the sea winds would keep it to the east, my lady," Maester Morlan replied, excusing his ever-disappointed optimism for perhaps the third time that day.
"Hope is folly," Lyanna answered flatly, before calling those loitering in the outer hall forward. She gave them a list of instructions—to maintain the fires in the castle, to board up any remaining glass, and to assist Captain Claver in the harbor, if he needed any help battening hatches and securing ships.
As Lyanna gave orders to her staff and the wind continued to howl and moan, Jorah felt relief, at least, that they'd made it in time. But with that relief, the sheer adrenaline that had been fueling his every move receded. His whole body seemed to know that they were at the finish line and threated to give up if he remained standing for much longer.
He must have faltered, for he felt Daenerys close the narrow distance between them, her arms slipping around him, lending her slight form as support. That grave concern written all over her face only deepened and he wished he could chase it away despite knowing that, this time, he was the cause of it.
My dear, sweet girl…he thought, for his mind was too tired and hazy to bother reminding him that she wasn't his at all. He accepted her embrace, his hand coming to rest on her shoulder.
Lyanna, now finished with her servants, turned back to Jorah and Daenerys, her intelligent eyes betraying nothing of her thoughts. But her natural scowl hinted at disapproval, as always. She moistened her lips and opened her mouth to pronounce a judgment one way or another.
But Daenerys spoke first. She had not taken her gaze off Jorah and she didn't now. Her eyes remained locked with his as she addressed the mistress of Bear Island, with all the power and force of tone that had brought ancient cities in the East to their knees before her,
"Lady Mormont, your cousin requires a maester's attention. Now."